Crypto News: What happens to Trump’s ballroom now?

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This week, Seattle opened the world's first light rail on a floating bridge, connecting downtown to suburbs across Lake Washington. The project is a historic engineering feat that required a host of technological innovations, which we wrote about in January.

A grand ballroom in limbo

As the Iran war has raged on and with low approval ratings for Donald Trump at home, one event this week had the US president seething: On Tuesday, a federal judge halted the construction of his 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, in a ruling that ordered the administration to seek approval from Congress before resuming the project. The suspension, however, did not stop Trump-appointed members of the National Capital Planning Commission from issuing final approval for the ballroom plan on Thursday.

Demolition of the East Wing of the White House in December. Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg — Demolition of the East Wing of the White House in December.

This disconnect highlights the Trump administration's persistent commitment to rubber-stamp the project against all headwinds, writes Kriston Capps. Other pain points include the tens of thousands of public comments from historians, architects and ordinary Americans critical of the lavish replacement for the historic East Wing that officials unceremoniously bulldozed in October. For Trump, the ballroom is more than just a building; it's a big part of the 79-year-old president's aggressive fixation on shaping and cementing his legacy. (And it's not just the ballroom; check out renderings of his future gold-laced presidential library, so huge it could fit a full size Air Force One.)

The commission's ballroom approval may come as little surprise to those following along. Federal agencies like NCPC and the US Commission of Fine Arts have deferred to the president at every step, fast-tracking an oversight process that normally takes months, if not years. NCPC Chair Will Scharf defended the agency's action on Thursday, railing against the public comments as irrelevant to the commission's actual work. "We are not some sort of free-ranging ballroom justice commission," he said.

Meanwhile, the court order to halt construction raises other burning questions. Above all: What's going to happen to the hole in the ground where the East Wing once stood if the White House fails to persuade a court or Congress to do its bidding?

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