While a federal judge and outside architects have expressed concerns about the super-sized scope of Donald Trump’s proposed White House ballroom, the Commission of Fine Arts voted unanimously on Thursday to approve the project.
This is where I note that Trump fired the entire commission panel last year and filled it with his hand-picked allies.
From the Washington Post:
Thursday’s vote was the first concrete checkpoint in the Trump administration’s nine-week push to get the president’s ballroom building approved by two committees charged by Congress with reviewing designs of federal construction projects.
Having secured the fine arts commission’s blessing, the president’s team will turn its attention to the second of those committees — the National Capital Planning Commission — with a goal of winning its approval in the first week of March and starting aboveground construction on the ballroom as early as April.
His plan to build a new ballroom building that would match the “height and scale” of the main White House building has largely ignored concerns from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, architecture experts and preservationists that it will be too big and spoil the centuries-old symbol of American power and democracy.
As you’ll recall, Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House last year without seeking any approval from review panels or Congress.
According to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month, only 25% of respondents said they supported tearing down the East Wing to build the ballroom, compared with 58% who opposed the project.
It’s worth noting that the 116-year-old Commission of Fine Arts was intended by Congress to include “well-qualified judges of the fine arts.”
One of the panel’s current 7 members is newly sworn-in Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s executive assistant who works just outside the Oval Office.
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