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Federal appeals court orders Trump to halt his $400 million White House ballroomA federal appeals court just dealt Donald Trump a major legal blow, ordering his administration to immediately stop construction on the $400 million ballroom being built on the site of the demolished East Wing.In a divided 2-1 ruling on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued after Trump tore down the historic East Wing and began construction on a sprawling 90,000-square-foot ballroom without ever asking Congress for authorization.The court gave the administration 14 days to appeal to the Supreme Court, but for now, the message from the bench is clear: the president doesn't get to bulldoze American history and rewrite the White House on a whim, without any oversight from the people's representatives.This isn't the first time a judge has told Trump no on this project. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, already ruled that no federal law comes close to giving Trump the authority he claims to have. Leon allowed underground work to continue but blocked any further above-ground construction, a decision the administration immediately fought to overturn.Trump's lawyers tried everything to keep the bulldozers running, even claiming that pausing construction posed a national security threat to the president and his family. Justice Department attorneys called the halt "unprecedented" and pointed to plans for bulletproof glass, bomb shelters and missile-resistant steel as reasons the work needed to continue right away.The courts weren't buying it. Leon had already written that the giant hole next to the White House is a problem entirely of Trump's own making.This ruling adds to a growing pattern of accountability catching up with Trump this year, from the courts stripping his name off the Kennedy Center to now blocking his personal $400 million vanity project at the White House. Piece by piece, the checks and balances this administration tried to steamroll are holding.