The National Park Service gave President Donald Trump the go-ahead to tear down the White House’s East Wing earlier this year after a streamlined environmental review concluded the negative effects of the president’s planned ballroom wouldn’t be too significant and despite the final design remaining a work in progress, new court filings show.
Fighting a legal challenge, the Trump administration belatedly made public its assessment of the ballroom project, including the National Park Service’s determination that there would be “no significant impact.”
The Trump administration also defended its need to continue with the ballroom construction, in part, by arguing it is a matter of national security, according to the court filings. In its lawsuit filed Friday, the National Trust for Historic Preservation requested the construction be halted.
The White House’s lawyers didn’t go into detail about its national security claim, but the East Wing has long sat over the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a secured bunker.
“Any pause in construction, even temporarily, would … hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission,” wrote Matthew Quinn, deputy director of the Secret Service, in a court filing.
The administration has requested that U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, a President George W. Bush appointee, keep arguments regarding national security private.
The assessment and accompanying declarations shed new light on the plan that has been both highly public and cloaked in secrecy.
The documents released Monday have also sparked new questions, with one former NPS leader noting that the taking down of one-third of the White House — a national historic landmark — is by definition a significant impact. That should have triggered a more in-depth review, called an environmental impact statement (EIS), that requires a lengthy period for the public to weigh in under the National Environmental Policy Act, said Jon Jarvis, who served as director of the National Park Service during the Obama administration.
“It seems several steps have been left out this time by the NPS,” said Jarvis, who worked at the park service for roughly 40 years. “The public controversy alone should have triggered a full EIS.”
The 31-page environmental assessment is the first document to emerge detailing the Trump administration’s navigation of federal rules in order to build a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom attached to the historic White House property. The Trump administration tore down the East Wing in late October to eventually make room for the event hall.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else,” the National Trust for Historic Preservation said in the original lawsuit opposing Trump’s ballroom project. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.”
‘Long-standing tradition’
The NPS assessment shows that the agency green-lighted a plan to “deconstruct” the East Wing and colonnade as early as August. It’s unclear from the documents if the National Park Service was aware that a full demolition would take place, as that term is never used in the review.
The finding of no significant impact — known as a FONSI — was signed by NPS comptroller Jessica Bowron, who’s been delegated the authority of NPS director by the Trump administration, and Deputy Director of Operations Frank Lands. It directed the White House to document and preserve many elements of the historic structures, such as light fixtures and cobblestones.
The assessment was not previously made public, despite similar documents being published in the park service’s planning database.
NPS did not respond to a request for comment or explain why the document was not previously made available. POLITICO’s E&E News requested the assessment and FONSI in a public records request in November.
However, NPS justified its finding that deconstructing the East Wing would not have a significant impact on the historic grounds, a national park site, by noting that the East Wing is a living building that must adapt to the needs of sitting presidents.
The deconstruction “continues a long-standing tradition reflected in the park’s enabling legislation of adapting the White House grounds to accommodate essential executive goals,” NPS stated in the document.
The assessment also makes clear that the park agency believed the East Wing’s structural components from wood paneling to light fixtures would be carefully inventoried, removed and set aside for historic preservation or even to be reinstalled in a new building.
That encompassed parts of a movie theater inside the East Wing, as well as outside components including columns, Seneca sandstone, the East Wing’s commemorative cornerstone, a bronze plaque from the 1942 renovation, wrought iron fencing and cobblestone paving.
According to a court filing, Clark Construction salvaged historic materials within the East Wing and East Colonnade. John Stanwich, the NPS liaison to the White House, reported that stone columns, doors, windows and historic items were removed and stored.
Some questions raised
Despite its ultimate finding, NPS did raise concerns that the new ballroom would harm the “historical continuity of the White House grounds” by permanently changing its look and feel.
Echoing points raised in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s lawsuit, NPS cautioned in the August document that the ballroom as proposed would “dominate the eastern portion of the site, creating a visual imbalance with the more modestly scaled West Wing and Executive Mansion.”
Building a two-story colonnade to connect the new ballroom to the executive residence would also create this sense of imbalance, the NPS assessment noted.
“These changes will adversely alter the design, setting, and feeling of the White House and the grounds over the long-term,” the FONSI states.
The park service also found that both deconstruction and new construction posed risks to the other historic structures, such as from vibration.
Jarvis, the former NPS director, said the agency’s environmental assessment appears “written to justify a decision that was already made by powers above the NPS.”
“You could argue that the addition of a ballroom could be justified, but the EA process should have been used to determine scale and design, and to mitigate the impacts,” he said.
Other declarations filed with the court illustrate some of the mystery that still surrounds the ballroom project.
“The architectural design for the above grade elements is still in progress but has been coordinated in a manner to allow the below grade elements to be constructed as planned while the above grade design is finalized,” Stanwich stated in a declaration.
Stanwich has been the NPS liaison to the White House for approximately 11 years.
Below-grade structural demolition has begun and is expected to be completed during December 2025, Stanwich reported. He said that Clark Construction will commence work on the footings and below-grade structural concrete in the East Colonnade area in January and in the East Wing area in February.
“Above grade structural work is not anticipated to begin until April 2026,” Stanwich reported.
An Aug. 28 memo also included in the court filings noted that the park service consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service because the project potentially affected the habitat of the endangered northern long-eared bat, as well as the tricolored bat and the monarch butterfly, both of which have been proposed for Endangered Species Act protections.
The consultation consisted of a phone call, in which FWS biologists reported they add “no concerns” for ESA-listed species, according to the Aug. 28 memo.
The court filings underscore the speed with which the East Wing demolition took place, with essential meetings on how to proceed with the new ballroom still in the works.
On Monday, the day of the new court filing and approximately two months after crews began tearing down the old East Wing, the Interior Department’s representative on the National Capital Planning Commission, Tammy Stidham, said she heard from two White House officials who expressed “interest in meeting to discuss plans” for the project, according to the court filing.
“The National Capital Planning Commission is working to set up this initial meeting with Commission staff,” Stidham reported in the filing.
The White House’s omission of consultation with the commission, and other planning bodies, is one of the National Trust’s complaints in its recently filed lawsuit.
One mystery that the new documents fail to shed light on is how the White House handled potential hazardous materials like asbestos during its demolition.
The NPS FONSI makes no mention of asbestos and notes that air quality is among the impacts not given a detailed analysis by NPS because “the anticipated effects are so minor that they have no potential to result in unacceptable impacts or impairment.”
Health experts, however, have raised alarm bells over the demolition’s potential hazards, including lead paint and materials as well as asbestos.
Because the East Wing was constructed in an era where asbestos was widely used in building materials, experts suspected the cancer-causing minerals would be present. A White House spokesperson has previously told E&E News “a very extensive abatement and remediation assessment was followed” in September for hazardous materials, and it did not acknowledge questions on if asbestos was detected or provide further details on the abatement process it followed.
Such remediation work typically requires operators to obtain an asbestos permit from the District of Columbia’s environmental department, and federal waste law mandates operators to notify EPA of any hazardous waste treatment, transfer or disposal. But neither of those steps were followed, E&E News has reported.
The D.C. Department of Energy and Environment confirmed the White House did not request asbestos permits prior to demolition. EPA said “no records were found” in response to a public records request for notification forms relating to hazardous waste activities at the White House.
Stanwich, the NPS liaison, stated in his declaration that he’d “been informed that abatement activities related to certain hazardous materials within the Project area were performed by Clark Construction during the months of September and October 2025,” without offering further details.
