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Trump’s ballroom fight sheds new light on an underground White House bunker

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Trump’s ballroom fight sheds new light on an underground White House bunker

President Trump holds a rendering of the East Wing modernization while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday.

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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Trump’s dreams of a White House ballroom have highlighted what was once a relative secret: the construction of a military bunker beneath the now-demolished East Wing.

The administration started knocking down the East Wing in October to make way for Trump’s long-desired White House ballroom, a project that will cost at least $300 million. The plan has drawn disapproval from members of the public and ire from architectural and conservation groups, one of which sued to block it back in December.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon sided with the National Trust for Historic Preservation this week, when he ruled that construction of the ballroom “must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”

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Yet, as the White House appeals the decision, Leon is allowing construction to continue for “the safety and security of the White House” — a nod to the administration’s argument that the renovation is about more than aesthetics.

That’s backed up in court filings from the case, as well as Trump’s own public comments.

A snapshot of the construction in February, after the East Wing was demolished to make room for a ballroom.

A snapshot of the construction in February, after the East Wing was demolished to make room for a ballroom.

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“The military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One over the weekend.

He said the proposed 90,000 square-foot ballroom “essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under,” adding that the “high-grade bulletproof glass” windows would protect the facility below “from drones and … from any other thing.”

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The existence of a World War II-era facility — called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) — has been an open secret for decades, especially after the government released photos in 2015 of White House officials sheltering inside on Sept. 11, 2001.

But little is known about the current status of the bunker, which CNN reported in January had been dismantled in the renovations, or what kind of structure might come to replace it. When asked on Monday to share more about the underground complex, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stayed tight-lipped.

“The military is making some upgrades to their facilities here at the White House, and I’m not privy to provide any more details on that at this time,” she said.

Trump was more forthcoming with reporters that same day, as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office, reiterating that the judge’s decision allows him to “continue building as necessary … to cover the safety and security of the White House and its grounds.”

Trump read through a handwritten note listing off the permitted upgrades.

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“The roof is droneproof. We have secure air-handling systems,” Trump said. “We have bio-defense all over. We have secure telecommunications and communications all over. We have bomb shelters that we’re building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we’re building … So on that we’re okay.”

For decades, little was known about the FDR-era bunker

The White House built the East Wing with an underground bomb shelter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, over concerns that the building could become the target of an aerial attack.

“This secret space featured thick concrete walls and steel-sheathed ceilings with a small presidential bedroom and bath inside,” the White House Historical Association wrote on social media in 2024. “Nearby rooms provided ventilation masks, food storage, and communications equipment.”

It has been upgraded in the decades since. On the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a number of White House officials under George W. Bush — who was in Florida at the time — took shelter there.

Former First Lady Laura Bush recounted the experience in her 2010 memoir, in which she wrote about being “hustled downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal.”

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President Bush talks with Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

President George W. Bush talks with Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

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“I was now in one of the unfinished subterranean hallways underneath the White House, heading for the PEOC,” she wrote. “We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of mechanical equipment. The PEOC is designed to be a command center during emergencies, with televisions, phones, and communications facilities.”

Key administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, were also there, seated at a long conference table in a small room. The government released hundreds of photos of that day — showing officials talking on landline phones and videoconferencing on large screens — in response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015.

Bush wrote that the Secret Service suggested the couple spend the night in the bunker: “They showed us the bed, a foldout that looked like it had been installed when FDR was president … we both said no.”

A decade later, when Barack Obama was president, the White House undertook a major, multi-year renovation project that involved digging a massive hole beneath the Oval Office, exposing what appeared to be a tunnel underneath. The General Services Administration (GSA) denied it was bunker-related, calling it a standard revamp of the air-conditioning and electrical systems.

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A digging project near the West Wing, pictured in Jan. 2011, looked to many like bunker business.

A digging project near the West Wing, pictured in Jan. 2011, looked to many like bunker business.

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“However, what reporters and photographers saw during the construction appeared to go well beyond that: a sprawling, multistory structure whose underground assembly required truckload after truckload of heavy-duty concrete and steel beams,” the Associated Press wrote towards the end of the project in 2012.

It noted that the White House had tried to keep that work hidden by putting up a fence around the excavation site and “ordering subcontractors not to talk to anyone and to tape over company info on trucks pulling into the White House gates.”

Many people didn’t buy the official explanation for what some media outlets came to call “The White House Big Dig.”

A 2011 New York Times report cited unnamed administration officials speculating that the effort was actually “security-related.” People did not take the GSA’s story at face value, the article added, “despite the size of the hole, the controlled silence of the construction workers and the fact that funds were allocated after Sept. 11, 2001.” A 2011 Washington Post piece put it more bluntly: “It’s a bunker, right?”

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Questions about the bunker surfaced again during Trump’s first term, after the New York Times and CNN reported that the Secret Service had rushed him inside and kept him there briefly during a night of Black Lives Matter protests outside the White House in May 2020. Trump later confirmed that he had spent time in the PEOC, but denied that he’d been rushed inside — told Fox News he had gone in briefly during daytime hours “more for an inspection.”

What we know about the new construction 

Still, the existence of a bunker — and plans to construct a new one — were not necessarily top of mind for people when Trump began demolishing the East Wing last fall.

Critics were quicker to call out the lack of public input and congressional authorization, the sheer scale of the proposed ballroom and concerns about environmental impact and historical preservation.

In January, as the legal battle unfolded, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the project was being undertaken with “the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United States Military and Secret Service,” without elaborating.

“The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore Top Secret fact,” Trump wrote.

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The National Capital Planning Commission voted to approve Trump's ballroom plan on Thursday.

The National Capital Planning Commission voted to approve Trump’s ballroom plan on Thursday, days after a federal judge ordered construction to stop without authorization from Congress.

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In court filings reviewed by NPR, the Secret Service confirmed its involvement but kept details to a minimum.

In one signed declaration, Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn wrote that his agency was working with the contractor on “temporary security and safety measures around the project’s construction site,” which were not fully complete at the time.

“Accordingly, any pause in construction, even temporarily, would leave the contractor’s obligation unfulfilled in this regard and consequently hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission,” Quinn wrote, before offering to brief the judge privately on more details, “including law enforcement sensitive and/or classified information.”

In a separate filing, Trump administration officials sought to submit further details in a classified setting so as to keep “the discussion of national security concerns” off a publicly available docket.

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Trump allies have been similarly vague in other public settings, including at a National Capital Planning Commission meeting in January, where Josh Fisher, the White House director of management and administration, said: “There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on.”

After a period of soliciting public comments, the commission, a government agency that meets monthly to provide planning guidance for D.C.’s federal land and buildings, held its approval vote on a tweaked version of Trump’s ballroom plan this week. It gave it the green light, despite the judge’s order just days earlier.

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Map: Minor Earthquake Strikes Near San Diego

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Map: Minor Earthquake Strikes Near San Diego

Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 3 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “weak,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown.  All times on the map are Pacific time. The New York Times

A minor earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 3.5 struck in Southern California on Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The temblor happened at 2:06 p.m. Pacific time about 9 miles north of Tecate, Mexico, data from the agency shows.

As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.

Source: United States Geological Survey | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Pacific time. Shake data is as of Monday, April 6 at 5:08 p.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Monday, April 6 at 7:05 p.m. Eastern.

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Trump reiterates threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges

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Trump reiterates threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges

President Trump speaks as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (center) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine look on during a news conference at the White House on April 6.

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President Trump repeated threats to Iran during during his Monday press conference, including against Iran’s civilian infrastructure if a deal to end the war is not reached by Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET. Negotiations, he said, must include an open Strait of Hormuz.

“Every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to, we don’t want that to happen,” Trump told reporters.

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He added: “We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation.”

After days of flip-flopping messaging, vacillating from demanding Iran open the Strait of Hormuz to telling U.S. allies it’s up to them to open it to an Easter Sunday profanity-laced social media post demanding Iran open it, Trump said a successful negotiation would have to include “free traffic of oil.”

“We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me and part of that deal is going to be, we want free traffic of oil and everything,” he said.

Asked about his mixed messages about the status of the war, and whether it was winding down or ramping up amid his latest threats, he said: “I don’t know. I can’t tell. It depends what they do. This is a critical period. They have a period of, well, till tomorrow, at eight o’clock.”

Trump said he can’t discuss a potential ceasefire, but the U.S. has “an active, willing participant on the other side” of negotiations.

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Asked if he’s concerned that bombing of power plants and bridges would amount to war crimes, Trump said, “No. I hope I don’t have to do it.”

He opened the press conference by describing the successful rescue mission for the downed airman over the weekend.

Trump spent several minutes describing the rescue mission, calling his decision to authorize the rescue as “risky” and “hard.”

“But in the U.S. military. We leave no American behind,” he said. The president claimed Iran “got lucky” when they took out the U.S. fighter jet.

CIA Director John Radcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine all recounted the rescue operation at the press conference — Trump’s first since the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran more than a month ago.

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The news conference comes days after Trump formally addressed the nation from the White House last week and said the conflict would end “shortly.” At that address, he criticized other countries, though didn’t name any specifically, and said it was up to others to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the route through which 20% of the world’s oil is transported.

Iran’s closure of the strait during the war has led to a jump in gas prices globally, hitting around $4 per gallon last week in the U.S.

The president has also been threatening a surge in strikes on Iran Tuesday, unless the strait is reopened by tomorrow evening.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” Trump said on social media over the weekend, “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”

The post comes as negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have made some progress. A 45-day ceasefire proposal was submitted to the U.S. and Iran on Sunday. On Monday, Trump called the proposal “a significant step.”

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The president has repeatedly said the war would last roughly six weeks. But now, in its sixth week, the timeline on when the war would end and how achievable Trump’s objectives are remain unclear.

For weeks, Trump has been moving the goal posts on the administration’s goals with Iran, including whether the U.S. will remove Iran’s uranium stockpiles. Trump has also suggested that the U.S. could end the war but strike Iran again later if they aim to build up nuclear defenses.

Polling shows that Americans oppose the war in Iran. Even among Republican supporters of the president, his approval rating has dipped. A CNN poll released last week showed that Republicans who strongly approve of Trump’s job performance dropped to 43%, compared to 52% in January.

High costs, including gas prices, remain a top of mind concern for voters heading into the midterm elections in roughly six months. On Monday, Trump said the high prices might last into the summer.

“We’re never going to let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said of Iran. “And if we have to pay a little extra for fuel for a couple of months, and we’ll do that, but we’re never going to allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

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NASA’s Artemis II crew readies for Monday’s lunar flyby. Here’s what you need to know

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NASA’s Artemis II crew readies for Monday’s lunar flyby. Here’s what you need to know

A photo of NASA’s Orion space capsule taken by a remote camera mounted on one of its solar arrays as it sped towards the moon. The four astronauts will loop around the moon on Monday and also venture farther into space than any humans before.

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The crew of NASA’s Artemis II will make its closest approach to the moon Monday afternoon after launching from Kennedy Space Center last week.

It marks a critical milestone of the agency’s Orion space capsule, sending humans on a mission to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. As the capsule loops around the moon, the astronauts will reach farther into space than humans have ever ventured.

The Orion spacecraft is now in the lunar sphere of influence, meaning the moon’s gravity has more pull on the vehicle than the Earth. At 1:46 p.m. ET, the crew will surpass the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth by humans, which was set by the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 statute miles from Earth. At 2:45 p.m., the crew will begin making observations of the surface of the moon during the flyby.

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As the vehicle circles the far side of the moon, communication back to Earth is expected to be blocked for about 40 minutes. At 7:02 p.m., the crew is expected to have reached the mission’s maximum distance from Earth at 252,760 statute miles.

The flyby is scheduled to conclude at 9:20 p.m. and then the crew will be on its way home, with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, Calif. on Friday at 8:07 p.m.

During the Artemis II flyby, the crew will pass over two previous human lunar landing sites — Apollo 12 and 14.

Lunar science observations

During the lunar flyby, the closest Orion will come to the surface of the moon is 4,070 miles. From that distance the crew will have a unique vantage point of the moon as a full disc — and the ability to take observations never before seen by human eyes.

NASA scientists have identified about 35 geological features for the crew to observe. Working in pairs, they will take photos of the sites and describe them in real time to scientists at Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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“They’re going to be absolutely buzzing,” said Artemis II lunar science lead Kelsey Young on Sunday. The team will be monitoring the observations and providing guidance to the crew.

“The science team will get to work right away, kind of synthesizing those [observations], and then we’ll actually downlink the rest of the descriptions overnight, in advance of a crew conference we’ll have the following morning to continue the science discussion.”

Artemis II has ten science objectives for the flyby. One is to observe color variations on the lunar surface. Changes in color can indicate the composition of the minerals on the surface. These changes are hard to detect with satellite images.

“This is something that human eyes are just incredibly good at teasing out nuances about,” said Young.

Satellites like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2009, have given scientists a better understanding of the lunar surface. The Artemis II crew’s observations will build on that knowledge.

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“We understand, you know, what it’s made out of. We understand the topography, but we don’t know what the crew are going to see in these specific illumination conditions from a scientific perspective,” said Young. “And that’s exciting.”

NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew traveled towards the Moon on Sunday.

NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin windows, looking back at Earth on Saturday, as the crew traveled towards the Moon.

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NASA via Getty Images/Getty Images North America

The observations will help future landing missions. One target site is a potential future landing area for an uncrewed payload mission. The crew will also get a small glimpse of the lunar south pole — where humans might land as early as 2028.

The mission so far

Artemis II is more than halfway through its slingshot mission around the moon and back. This is a test flight of the Orion space capsule, carrying a human crew for the first time.

“Our mission continues to go incredibly well,” said Lori Glaze, who leads NASA’s Artemis program.

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Tests include manual control of the Orion spacecraft. Mission pilot Victor Glover practiced the maneuverability of the capsule for future rendezvous with lunar landing vehicles.

The crew tested the spacecraft’s life support systems, like the carbon dioxide scrubbers, and donned their space suits midflight — which future astronauts might have to do in an emergency.

The Artemis II mission is also testing the first deep-space toilet. NASA’s Universal Waste Management System is stowed in the floor of Orion and allows the crew to use the bathroom in private. So far, the hardware has had a few hiccups (not having enough water in the bowl and, at a different point, not being able to dump the waste overboard due to a frozen line), but those seem to be resolved.

“We’re continuing to proceed with the mission and the use of the toilet nominally,” said Artemis II flight director Rick Henfling, meaning the crew is allowed to use the onboard lavatory.

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