When wealthy special interests can purchase access, influence and favor from public officials, Americans lose trust that the government works for them. President Donald Trump’s planned construction of a massive ballroom at the White House undermines the fundamental trust and expectation that the government works on behalf of the people.
Trump’s proposed White House ballroom is currently being funded entirely by private donors, some of whom are kept secret, rather than by Congress exercising its power to spend money in the public interest.
Campaign Legal Center, alongside Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), submitted an amicus brief in National Trust for Historic Preservation v. National Park Service calling on the courts to stop the president’s ballroom construction unless and until Congress approves and funds the project, as the Constitution requires.
What happened to the East Wing?
In October 2025, the Trump administration swiftly demolished the East Wing of the White House, the space historically used by the Office of the First Lady. President Trump proposed building a 90,000 square-foot ballroom in its stead.
President Trump and his allies have raised nearly $400 million in support of this project from private donors. Major corporate donors, including Meta, Coinbase, Ripple and Lockheed Martin, have donated huge sums toward the construction. These companies also have significant interests before the federal government in the form of billions of dollars in government contracting, regulatory risk and enforcement actions.
In December 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve America’s historic sites, sued the U.S. government to stop the construction of the ballroom because Congress had not approved the destruction and reconstruction of the East Wing at the president’s whim, and had not appropriated funds for the project.
This project is a prime example of pay-to-play governance.
The ballroom project is only one example of the administration’s pattern of granting official benefits — including high-ranking appointments, government contracts, and pardons —to wealthy special interests in return for their contributions to Trump-affiliated entities, like the Inaugural Fund, Freedom 250, or Trump-aligned Super PACs.
Given the president’s apparent personal fixation on constructing the ballroom as a marker of his legacy, private donations are likely to form the basis of a corrupt bargain where special interests can purchase favorable government outcomes for themselves.
For example, Coinbase and its major investors have donated $12 million to MAGA Inc. (a Trump-affiliated Super PAC), $1 million to the Trump Inaugural Fund, and an undisclosed amount to the ballroom. Coinbase’s payments seem to have paid off. In February 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped a civil enforcement action it had brought against the company.
Coinbase is just one example of the many private interests seeking to curry favor with the administration through donations to the ballroom. This is not how government “of the people, by the people, for the people” should work.
We must protect Congress’ power of the purse.
The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, control over the nation’s spending.
As the Constitution outlines, the federal government cannot spend money unless it is approved by Congress. This constitutional bulwark was designed to protect against corruption and to ensure the accountable, transparent use of taxpayer funds.
Congress has neither approved the construction nor authorized funding for the president’s proposed ballroom. It is for this simple reason that the courts must stop the project.
The Constitution’s system of checks and balances ensures that no individual or single branch in our government holds unaccountable power. By unilaterally demolishing the East Wing and trying to construct a massive ballroom with private funds, the president has acted outside these traditional checks, raising the exact risk of corruption that the Constitution seeks to prevent.
Strong separation of powers ensures our system works for the American people.
Campaign Legal Center and CREW’s brief highlights the administration’s embrace of transactional governance and the risks of corruption in privately funding the ballroom. The brief explains that constitutional safeguards exist to prevent corruption and uphold our system of checks and balances.
This case reflects a troubling trend of powerful special interests using donations to the president’s “legacy” projects to distort government outcomes to their private ends, rather than the public interest. Such a trend is antithetical to the rule of law.
Campaign Legal Center is focused on ensuring that government is accountable to voters, not wealthy donors who can buy access and influence. In courtrooms across the country, Campaign Legal Center remains committed to protecting the separation of powers and preventing corruption. Join us.