The East Wing of the White House has been demolished to construct President Donald Trump's massive ballroom.
As the Daily Beast reported, these demolitions, which have not yet been reviewed by the National Capital Planning Committee, included the removal of at least six historic trees planted in honor of past United States presidents.
Satellite images of the White House, taken almost a month apart on Sept. 26 and Oct. 23, shared on the Daily Beast article and by several other media outlets, show the drastic changes made to Washington's executive headquarters.
The entire East Wing, which included a family theater, the East Colonnade, the East Garden Room, and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, has been bulldozed over, leaving behind only muddy remnants of the former site.
The satellite images also show the clearing of at least six trees from the South Lawn, including two massive magnolia trees dedicated to former presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
These trees have been a part of the White House landscape as early as 1922, when Harding's wife, former First Lady Florence Harding, planted a magnolia in honor of her husband.
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Another tree noticeably missing from the satellite images was the Yoshino cherry tree that former First Lady Jill Biden and the former First Lady of Japan, Kishida Yuko, planted in 2023, which symbolized decades of friendship between the United States and Japan.
USA Today reported that the removal of the building and these trees was done through a loophole and not by following the traditional approval process. While it is only a handful of trees and other plants affected and thus the total environmental concerns are not major, apart from concerns about asbestos contamination and the general pollution associated with demolition and building, many have argued that the historical significance of the buildings and trees warranted a more democratic process to be followed for deciding how to proceed with the desire to reshape the property.
"You don't have the image of a wrecking ball hitting the president's house, one of the most important buildings in our country, by surprise to everyone except a small handful of people," Bryan Green, a former member of the National Capital Planning Commission, told Reuters.
The flattening of the East Wing and the landscaping alterations are all part of President Trump's plan to construct a 90,000 square-foot ballroom that will supposedly be able to host 999 celebrated guests.
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The current administration is facing major backlash from the public for not only making such extreme changes to such a historically important structure, but also for proceeding with demolition without first consulting the National Capital Planning Committee. Reporting so far has indicated few provisions were considered for preserving elements of the building or relocating the trees, as well, in the fairly accelerated demolition process.
The NCPC is the central planning and development agency for federal lands and facilities in the National Capital Region.
The Trump administration has made several environmental headlines this year. At the start of his second term, Trump declared a national energy production emergency among dozens of executive orders, facilitating dirty energy projects and halting renewable energy initiatives.
The administration did agree to a "Make America Beautiful Again" connection sparked by Nature Is Nonpartisan, eventually stepping back some of its push to privatize public parks land. However, its oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency has led to several dozen rollbacks that administrator Lee Zeldin said were "driving a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion," and earlier this month, Politico's E&E News reported that the White House had pressured the EPA to weaken tailpipe pollution regulations.
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