Background: The arena for the UFC Freedom 250 fights is pictured on the South Lawn of the White House, top, and at the Ellipse, bottom, as construction of the ballroom continues at right, in Washington, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson). Inset: FILE – President Donald Trump speaks to the media, Friday, June 27, 2025, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File).
The Trump administration is making a renewed push to build a new White House ballroom, now arguing that an alleged plot targeting “high value targets” at a UFC event on the grounds underscores the need for the project.
In a two-page filing, the Department of Justice said the “repeated assassination attempts and plots” against President Donald Trump and people around him show a national security need for a “bullet proof, drone proof Ballroom” designed to protect the president, future presidents, cabinet members, staff, families, and guests.
The administration has been promoting the idea of a new White House ballroom for months and intensified that effort by moving ahead with the demolition of the East Wing. That decision triggered multiple legal challenges, including one from an asbestos victims’ advocacy group seeking environmental records and another from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which said the demolition proceeded without congressional approval or adequate oversight.
In April, a federal judge halted the $400 million project over safety concerns, writing that the presence of a “large hole” next to the White House was “of course, a problem of the President’s own making!”
The Justice Department later appealed the injunction, while Trump publicly urged Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to “stop playing games with America’s Security!” He also mocked architectural historian Alison Hoagland, whose claim of aesthetic harm the judge had accepted during the early phase of the case.
Now, with the dispute before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the administration is again framing the ballroom as a security necessity, citing that recent alleged threat as fresh support for its case.
On Tuesday, the DOJ announced that five men were arrested on conspiracy charges for trying to “execute a mass casualty event targeting U.S. officials in attendance” at the UFC event held on the White House grounds last weekend. The men “allegedly planned to deploy drones armed with explosives in and around the UFC Freedom 250 event in order to force an evacuation of the event and then planned to deploy snipers to fire upon ‘high value targets’ within the fleeing crowd.”
To the Trump administration, this alleged plot “confirms” the national security “imperative” of reversing Leon’s decision and getting the ballroom built as soon as possible.
“This latest assassination plot against President Trump and dignitaries at the White House demonstrates the compelling need for the East Wing Project, with a Ballroom designed to defend against just such attacks,” the DOJ filing this week reads. Officials say the new facility will include a “Drone Port” and “Sniper Nests” on top, as well as “missile resistant columns, bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass windows,” and more safety mechanisms inside.
“The Ballroom’s mass and height will shield the White House grounds from attack, and give the Secret Service the visibility needed to identify attackers,” the filing goes on. “It will protect the President and guests at major events that are currently held in ‘plastic tents that cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones’—exactly the attack that this Sunday’s would-be assassins plotted to launch.”
Trump has asserted that private donors would completely pay for the sprawling project. However, records reviewed by The Washington Post indicate that the effort would actually cost $600 million — and more than half of that cost would come from taxpayers.
