President Donald Trump offered a rare public salute to Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday after the Kentucky Republican voted to approve plans for the new White House ballroom, a 90,000-square-foot project that cleared the National Capital Planning Commission on an 8-1 vote just days after a federal judge ordered construction halted.
Trump took to Truth Social to mark the occasion, singling out a senator he has clashed with for the better part of a decade. The two men first sparred on a debate stage in August 2015, and Trump called Paul a "sick Wacko" as recently as last November. But on Thursday, the president struck a different tone.
Fox News Digital reported that Trump wrote on Truth Social:
"I would like to thank the hardworking Commissioners and Staff of the National Capital Planning Commission, who just voted overwhelmingly, 8-1, to approve the magnificent White House Ballroom now rising on this Hallowed Ground."
He continued:
"I am pleased to announce that even Board Member Senator Rand Paul, known as an extraordinarily difficult vote, voted a strong YES."
The description of Paul as "an extraordinarily difficult vote" is, by Trump's standards, practically a compliment. Paul has made a career of being the lone dissenter in his own party. In late March, he was the only Republican to vote for a war powers resolution aimed at limiting the president's authority over foreign military intervention.
The 8-1 planning approval came despite a legal setback earlier in the week. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a 35-page ruling halting construction and declaring that the project must receive Congressional approval before work can proceed. The ruling drew a sharp line between presidential stewardship and presidential ownership.
Judge Leon wrote:
"The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!"
He added: "No statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have." The Trump administration has said it plans to appeal the decision, with the Department of Justice expected to handle the challenge. Our earlier coverage detailed the full scope of the federal court order blocking construction.
But commission chair Will Scharf drew a distinction between planning and building. He told the commission at the start of Thursday's meeting that the judge's ruling only prevented construction, not the planning review itself.
Scharf said:
"We'll move past that and continue our consideration of the East Wing modernization project."
That framing allowed the commission to proceed with the vote. The Associated Press reported that the 12-member commission voted 8-1, with two members voting present and one absent. Scharf told the commission he believed "this ballroom will be considered every bit as much of a national treasure as the other key components of the White House."
The sole vote against the project came from Phil Mendelson, chair of the D.C. Council and a Democratic member of the commission. The Washington Times reported that Mendelson said the project was "just too large." His was the only opposition in an otherwise bipartisan endorsement, a detail that undercuts any effort to frame the ballroom as a partisan vanity project.
The commission's approval vote and the lone Democratic dissent tell a clear story: this project has broad institutional backing. The objection was about scale, not principle.
Trump has said the ballroom would be funded through private donations and could cost more than $400 million, as Breitbart reported. He described it on Truth Social as something that, "when completed, it will be the greatest and most beautiful ballroom of its kind anywhere in the world." The project is slated for completion by 2028.
The East Wing of the White House was demolished on October 23, 2025, in Washington, D.C., as part of the modernization effort. The project goes well beyond a ballroom, Trump has previously revealed that the construction includes a significant military complex beneath the new structure, adding a national security dimension that the "too large" objection conveniently ignores.
Rand Paul's yes vote matters precisely because he has been one of the most persistent Republican thorns in Trump's side. Their rivalry dates to the 2015 GOP primary. Paul has repeatedly broken with the administration on executive authority, war powers, and spending. He is not a rubber stamp for anyone.
That independence is what made Trump's public acknowledgment notable. Just The News noted that Trump specifically highlighted Paul's yes vote as a sign of broad support for the project. When the senator most likely to object votes in favor, it says something about the merits.
Paul's willingness to cross party lines cuts both ways. He has frustrated the White House on foreign policy and spending fights. But on the ballroom, he sided with the administration, and Trump was gracious enough to say so publicly. That kind of political victory lap is more effective when the praise is earned rather than expected.
The planning approval is a win, but it does not resolve the central legal question. Judge Leon's ruling stands for now. Construction cannot proceed without either a successful appeal or Congressional authorization. The Trump administration has signaled it will challenge the decision, setting up a separation-of-powers fight over who controls improvements to the White House grounds.
The commission's vote means the project has cleared every planning hurdle. The design is approved. The funding model, private donations, sidesteps the usual appropriations fights. The only obstacle left is a federal court order that says the president needs Congress's permission to build on property he occupies but does not own.
That legal framing deserves scrutiny. Presidents have renovated, expanded, and rebuilt portions of the White House for more than two centuries. Harry Truman gutted the entire interior in the late 1940s. The question of whether a 90,000-square-foot addition crosses some constitutional line that previous projects did not is one the courts will have to answer.
For now, the project has bipartisan commission backing, a plan to fund it without taxpayer money, and a timeline that stretches to 2028. It also has a federal judge who thinks the president overstepped. The appeal will determine which of those facts controls the outcome.
When even Rand Paul votes yes and the only no comes from a D.C. Council Democrat who thinks the building is too big, the opposition starts to look less like principle and more like reflex.
