The Ballroom Is the Lid: What Is Actually Being Built Under the White House?
An evidence-based examination of the Trump administration’s East Wing construction project
Like a lot of Americans, I have a small collection of White House photographs. Over the decades, whenever travel brought me to Washington, D.C., I'd stop on the sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue and take a picture — on family vacations and business trips. The faces in those photos have aged. The fence along the front has grown taller. But the building itself has remained almost exactly the same. That sameness had become a kind of quiet reassurance. The White House is called the People's House for a reason. It belongs to the long chain of history, to every administration that came before and every one that will come after. Its stability on that block, unchanging across decades of turmoil, is part of what it means.
The East Wing is gone now. That view has changed.
When President Trump announced a new White House ballroom in July 2025, the reaction from architects and cost analysts was immediate skepticism. The numbers didn’t add up for a party venue. Now, nearly a year later, the president has confirmed on the record what the public record had been quietly suggesting for months.
On March 29, 2026, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while holding renderings of the project, President Trump said this:
“The military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction and we’re doing very well. The ballroom essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under the military, including from drones and including from any other thing.”
That is not a theory. That is the president of the United States, on the record, describing the ballroom as a roof over a military construction project. What follows is an examination of what we know, what the public record suggests, and what remains unconfirmed.
What We Know for Certain
In October 2025, the East Wing — a structure that had stood since 1902 — was demolished. In its place, the Trump administration began construction on a 90,000-square-foot expansion, initially announced as a state ballroom at an estimated cost of $200 million. That figure has since climbed to at least $400 million.
In court filings submitted as part of a lawsuit brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the administration’s own attorneys described the underground project in significant detail, listing “protective missile resistant steel columns, beams, drone proof roofing materials, and bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass,” along with “bomb shelters, hospital and medical facilities, protective partitioning, and Top Secret Military installations, structures, and equipment.”
Days later, speaking in the Oval Office, Trump added: “We have bomb shelters that we’re building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we’re building.”
This is the administration’s own account of what is being constructed, offered in federal court and repeated by the president on camera.
The People Building It
The lead contractor is Clark Construction, whose publicly listed portfolio includes the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus, the CISA Cybersecurity Headquarters, and the USCENTCOM headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base. Their website also lists projects simply labeled “Confidential Client Data Centers 1 through 6” — classified work for clients whose names cannot be disclosed.
The lead architect, brought on in December 2025 to replace the original classical designer, is Shalom Baranes — the architect who rebuilt and hardened the Pentagon after September 11, 2001, designing its secure compartmented information facilities and blast-resistant infrastructure. His subsequent government portfolio includes the Department of Homeland Security headquarters and the Treasury Building modernization. His credentials are in classified security architecture. Firms with his background are engaged for hardened infrastructure, not ceremonial design.
The Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) — the bunker beneath the East Wing where Dick Cheney sheltered on September 11 — was dismantled as part of site preparation. It is being replaced by something new and larger. White House Director of Management Joshua Fisher, when pressed for details at a National Capital Planning Commission meeting, said some aspects of the project were “frankly, of top-secret nature.”
The Hospital Question
Among the features Trump cited is an underground hospital and “very major medical facilities.” That detail raises a question the administration has not answered: why?
For generations, presidents have received medical care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, approximately 20 minutes from the White House. The White House Medical Unit provides around-the-clock on-site care. Standard protocol ensures the president is never more than 20 ground minutes from a Level 1 trauma center. Air Force One contains a full surgical suite. Continuity-of-care for the president has been a solved problem for decades without requiring an underground hospital on White House grounds.
The only scenario that changes that calculus is one in which the president cannot leave the building — not for hours, but for an extended period. The project’s stated design features — surviving missile strikes, drone attacks, and biological threats — describe exactly that scenario. That is a significant escalation in how the executive branch is preparing for continuity of government.
The Relocation Question
Which leads to a question the administration has not publicly addressed: if the president’s security is genuinely compromised until this facility is complete, why has he not been relocated in the interim?
The Secret Service stated in court filings that pausing construction would “hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission” — framing this as an active, time-sensitive security requirement.
That argument has a historical precedent to answer for. When the White House became structurally unsound in the late 1940s — during the early Cold War, when the Soviet Union had just tested its first nuclear weapon — Congress authorized a full reconstruction and President Truman relocated to Blair House for the duration. The building was rebuilt. The government kept functioning. The president was not in the building while it was being rebuilt.
No such relocation has occurred here. There are legitimate possible explanations: the classified nature of what is being built underground may require the president’s proximity; relocating carries its own security costs; the threat environment described may make a temporary residence elsewhere less safe than remaining on site. But those explanations have not been offered. The administration has argued urgency in court while making no move toward the established protocol for exactly this scenario. That gap is a question any reasonable observer is entitled to ask.
What the Evidence Suggests, But Has Not Confirmed
Several elements of the project remain speculative but worth noting.
The donor list includes Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Carrier Corporation — which markets a dedicated product line for data center thermal management. The list reads less like sponsors of a state ballroom and more like a supply chain for secure computing infrastructure. That observation is reasonable. It is not proof.
Project Stargate — the $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative announced by Trump, Larry Ellison, and Sam Altman on January 21, 2025 — is real and requires physical infrastructure: servers, power, cooling, and security. Whether any portion is being installed beneath the White House is unconfirmed. It is a logical question to ask.
The Transparency Problem
What is perhaps most notable about this project is not what is being built, but how it is being built.
The East Wing was demolished without National Capital Planning Commission approval. The administration described the project as privately funded through donations routed through the Trust for the National Mall — but the fundraising contract was not finalized until October 8, 2025, the donor list was not published until October 22, and demolition had already begun on October 20. What funded the demolition itself, and when donor funds actually transferred, has not been established in the public record. Individual donation amounts have not been disclosed, and the contract governing the entire arrangement — which shields donor identities and excludes the White House from conflict of interest protections — was only made public after a watchdog group sued and a judge ordered its release. The named donors include major defense and technology contractors who hold or seek federal government business. The underground component has proceeded without congressional authorization or public oversight.
That last point has a statutory answer. Under federal law, major military construction projects require Congress to authorize individual projects by name, location, and dollar amount — a process that typically takes years. The clearest historical precedent, the Truman reconstruction, proceeded only after Congress authorized it. The federal judge overseeing the current lawsuit noted explicitly that there is no historical precedent for a White House project of this scale proceeding without congressional involvement, and halted above-ground construction accordingly. The underground military component sits in murkier legal territory — executive authority over classified security facilities is broader — but that question has not yet been fully litigated.
Trump told Cabinet members the national security component “was supposed to be secret,” adding it had been revealed by people who were “really unpatriotic.” It was, in fact, the administration’s own court filings — submitted to defend against a historic preservation lawsuit — that placed the most specific descriptions of the underground project into the public record.
What This Means
A World War II-era bunker is being replaced by something substantially more capable — designed to withstand not just attack, but extended occupation, complete with a hospital, bio-defense systems, secure telecommunications, and top-secret military installations. Whether this represents necessary security modernization or something more novel — a self-contained government operations center capable of functioning independently of the surrounding city — depends on details the public has not been given and Congress was not asked to consider.
I still take pictures when I’m in Washington. The building in the background looks different now. I find myself wondering, for the first time, what the next decade of photos will look like — and whether the People’s House will still feel like ours when it’s done.
The ballroom is the lid. That much, at least, is now official.
References and Further Reading
Primary Government Sources
“The White House Announces White House Ballroom Construction to Begin.” WhiteHouse.gov, 31 July 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/07/the-white-house-announces-white-house-ballroom-construction-to-begin/
United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Letter from Ranking Member Blumenthal to Shalom Baranes, Founding Principal, Shalom Baranes Associates. 22 Dec. 2025, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025.12.22-Letter-from-Ranking-Member-Blumenthal-to-Shalom-Baranes.pdf
“White House Medical Unit.” WhiteHouseMilitaryOffice / Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Medical_Unit
News Reporting — The Underground Complex
Berenson, Tessa, et al. “What We Know About the ‘Massive’ Military Complex Being Built Beneath the White House.” Time, 17 Apr. 2026, https://time.com/article/2026/04/17/white-house-military-complex-bunker-trump-ballroom/
Axelrod, Tal, and Megan Lebowitz. “Trump White House Ballroom Project Includes Underground Military Complex.” Axios Washington D.C., 30 Mar. 2026, https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2026/03/30/trump-ballroom-east-wing-military-complex
Montanaro, Domenico. “Trump’s Ballroom Fight Sheds New Light on an Underground White House Bunker.” NPR, 3 Apr. 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5772665/trump-ballroom-underground-military-bunker
Timotija, Filip. “Donald Trump Reveals Military Complex Under White House Ballroom.” The Hill, 30 Mar. 2026, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5807115-donald-trump-military-complex-white-house-ballroom/
Lebowitz, Megan. “Trump Says Massive Military Complex to Be Built Beneath White House Ballroom.” NBC News, 30 Mar. 2026, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-white-house-ballroom-underground-military-complex-rcna265822
News Reporting — Legal and Congressional Challenge
Stuart, Elizabeth. “Judge: Trump Can’t Claim That Entire White House Ballroom Project Is Needed for National Security.” CNN Politics, 16 Apr. 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/16/politics/white-house-ballroom-national-security-ruling
“Judge Halts White House Ballroom Project, Reviving Debate Over Presidential Authority.” Military.com, 31 Mar. 2026, https://www.military.com/feature/2026/03/31/judge-halts-white-house-ballroom-project-reviving-debate-over-presidential-authority.html
Groves, Stephen. “What We Know About the White House Ballroom Bunker.” The Hill, 10 Apr. 2026, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5816555-trump-bunker-ballroom-lawsuit/
News Reporting — Contractor and Architect
Phillips, Zachary. “Clark Nabs $200M White House Ballroom Project.” Construction Dive, 6 Aug. 2025, https://www.constructiondive.com/news/clark-white-house-construction-ballroom/756918/
Phillips, Zachary. “White House Ballroom Spotlights Historic Construction Risks.” Construction Dive, 31 Oct. 2025, https://www.constructiondive.com/news/white-house-ballroom-historic-construction-risks/804440/
Obando, Sebastian. “White House Ballroom Fight Shifts Focus to Contractor Risk.” Construction Dive, 17 Dec. 2025, https://www.constructiondive.com/news/white-house-ballroom-contractor-risk/808219/
Jacobs, Emma, and Amir Tibon. “Shalom Baranes Replaces McCrery Architects on White House Ballroom.” The Architect’s Newspaper, 17 Dec. 2025, https://www.archpaper.com/2025/12/shalom-baranes-white-house/
Cohen, Alyssa. “Trump’s New White House Ballroom Architect Is a Jewish Immigrant Who Has Advocated for Refugees.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5 Dec. 2025, https://www.jta.org/2025/12/05/united-states/trumps-new-white-house-ballroom-architect-is-a-jewish-immigrant-who-has-advocated-for-refugees
Diaz, Daniella. “A New Architect from Shalom Baranes Associates Has Been Hired by Trump for His White House Ballroom Project.” CNN Politics, 4 Dec. 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/politics/ballroom-trump-architect-white-house
Background and Context
“White House State Ballroom.” Wikipedia, last modified Apr. 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_State_Ballroom
“Military Construction: Authorities and Processes.” Congressional Research Service / EveryCRSReport.com, 5 Sept. 2024, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44710.html
“Some White House Ballroom Contractors Go Underground.” CBS News, 29 Oct. 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-white-house-ballroom-contractors-go-underground/
"...a self-contained government operations center capable of functioning independently of the surrounding city - ..."
I've been saying for a while now, this is his next version of 'I'm not leaving no matter what happens in Nov 2028' and he's putting the infrastructure in place so no one can force him out (assuming he lives that long). He'll have a control center to operate from. I hate it when a conspiracy theory feels so completely plausible.
Watch the movie Eagle Eye…. Perhaps that’s what’s going to be under the ballroom…