By Trevor Hunnicutt and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is remaking Washington, recasting the US capital city as a monument to his vision of American greatness with sweeping,
unilateral changes his opponents have challenged in court and called a power grab.
Here are some of the projects the real estate entrepreneur-turned-president is pursuing and the challenges they face.
BALLROOM
Trump says a planned 90,000-square-foot (8,360-square-meter) White House ballroom will be "the greatest of its kind ever built."
He initially said he and wealthy donors would pay for the estimated $400 million project, but he later unsuccessfully sought $1 billion from Congress for an underground bunker and security features to harden the facility. The White House has not released a full list of the project's donors.
Trump says the new structure will include bomb shelters, medical facilities, defenses against drones and missiles and other security features. Confronted with criticism of the project, his administration now says the facility is needed for national security, an argument the president has gone on to make about a proposed triumphal arch.
The ballroom, which Trump has said will seat 1,000 guests, has faced public backlash. Preservationists and opponents say Trump exceeded his authority by demolishing the historic East Wing, which housed the first lady's offices and the White House movie theater, to make room for the structure.
The US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling in August, allowed Trump to continue construction while he challenges a judicial order that would halt much of the development. In a dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said the project was "likely unlawful."
KENNEDY CENTER
Congress created the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to honor the Democratic president, who was assassinated in 1963. The marble-walled facility sits alongside the Potomac River and hosts concerts, plays and an annual awards gala that has presented lifetime achievement honors to celebrities like Robert Redford, Cher and Stevie Wonder.
Since taking office in 2025, Trump has purged the center's leadership, changed its programming and appointed a board that added his name to the edifice. Trump has repeatedly said his name should be on the building in exchange for his work raising money to renovate the facility.
But a US district court judge ordered in May that his name be removed. The Kennedy Center board subsequently voted on a new plan to put Trump's name back on the building. A judge rejected that plan in September, and the board decided the same day to shut down the venue for up to two years for repairs and a $257 million renovation project.
Trump later refused to say whether he would attempt to demolish the facility. Litigation continues. Meanwhile, December's Kennedy Center Honors will be held at Washington's Capital One Arena.
Other cultural centers in Washington have also been in focus, including the city's free Smithsonian museums. In July, Trump signed an executive order ordering the installation of temporary signage in front of the National Museum of American History correcting "inaccurate information presented in the Museum." The order said the museum "failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence."
REFLECTING POOL
Trump announced in April that he was remodeling Washington's historic Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, near the site where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Trump said the project would cost up to $2 million.
His administration pursued a more-than-$16 million renovation on the 2,000-foot pool. Contractors who were not selected through a competitive bidding process worked to finish the project by the July 4 Independence Day holiday.
Trump declared the renovation project complete in June, but the pool soon showed peeling paint and algae growth that turned its crystal-blue waters green. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stood by the original contractor, who was later tasked with the repairs.
Trump and other administration officials blamed the damage on vandals, without citing evidence, and authorities arrested a former US Olympic canoeist whom they charged with vandalizing the pool. The former Olympian, David Hearn, denied the charges.
In a court filing, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Assistant US Attorney Michael Spence backed away from the case and blamed "a rushed and flawed installation process" instead of Hearn or other accused vandals. Trump said in August that Pirro had "choked" under pressure and "folded like an umbrella."
A judge dismissed the charges in October and ruled that prosecutors could not bring them again.
WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS
Trump has transformed the historic Oval Office with gold accents and statuettes, portraits of famous Americans pulled from storage and a copy of the Declaration of Independence that hangs on the wall.
Outside the Oval Office, Trump replaced the Rose Garden's grass lawn with a white stone patio and umbrella-covered tables, evoking Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump also added statues of US independence heroes Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin in the garden, along with a sculpture called "Freedom’s Charge" that depicts two Revolutionary War soldiers.
Trump ripped out the flagstone walkway that had lined the West Wing colonnade adjacent to the Rose Garden for 60 years and replaced it with black granite.
Along the colonnade wall, he placed portraits of America's past presidents, with a plaque beneath each inscribed with Trump's view of that person. Trump did not include a portrait of Joe Biden, who defeated him in the 2020 election.
He also ordered that a multimillion-dollar granite helipad be built on the White House South Lawn to protect the grass from the exhaust of the latest Marine One helicopter.
The South Lawn was redesigned after Trump hosted an Ultimate Fighting Championship event there in June.
Trump has also worked to renovate Lafayette Square, a public park in front of the White House, which has been largely closed to the public in 2026.
TRIUMPHAL ARCH
Across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial lies a highway roundabout near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery where Trump wants to build a "triumphal arch."
The arch would resemble the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but dwarf the Parisian landmark. Trump has said the arch would double as a "military complex" housing drones and snipers.
The arch, with eagle statues and a Lady Liberty-type figure on top, would be about 250 feet (76 meters) tall. That is taller than the Lincoln Memorial and close to the height of the US Capitol, which, at 288 feet, can be seen across much of Washington. The site is near airplanes' final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Veterans have sued to block the arch, arguing it would destroy the historic sight line between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
EAST POTOMAC GOLF LINKS
The president is working to overhaul Washington's East Potomac Golf Links, a century-old public golf course. Trump, a frequent golfer who owns several courses, has said he hopes the renovation will allow the course to host major tournaments.
That project is also tied up in legal challenges by groups that say it violates the law that created the park. It's not clear what would remain of the park's public space under a redesign of the golf course.
Sixty-one Democratic lawmakers raised concerns in June that "over 35,000 cubic yards of toxic debris left over from the demolition of the former East Wing" were placed on the golf course.
A report prepared for the National Park Service by a Virginia engineering firm in April identified some toxic metals and other contaminants in the debris. The Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, has said the project passed all standards set by law.
GARDEN OF AMERICAN HEROES
Trump has talked about establishing a National Garden of American Heroes since his first term in office in 2017-2021. Congress in 2025 provided $40 million for the project, which Trump plans to develop at West Potomac Park along the Potomac River to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence.
Trump said the park will include statues of the country's founding fathers, members of the military, religious leaders, civil rights champions, athletes, artists and entertainers.
The project's opening has been delayed from the initial target date of July 4. Preservation groups have sued to have the project halted on legal grounds.
STREETS OF WASHINGTON
As part of a slate of moves in Washington, Trump has deployed thousands of National Guard troops to the capital city as the centerpiece of what he describes as a no-holds-barred effort to combat crime, especially in cities run by Democrats.
Every day, small groups of soldiers in camouflage and body armor patrol tourist-heavy areas of the US capital, including national monuments, subway stations and the area around its professional baseball park.
It's unclear whether the troops have done much police work. A Reuters analysis in August found that in the first year since their arrival, the National Guard troops have been mentioned in only a tiny fraction - about 1.3% - of the criminal cases filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which handles nearly all the city’s criminal prosecutions. In dozens of cases, the soldiers appear not as people making the arrests but as victims of crime.
Local police said overall crime in the city declined by 18% in 2025 and by another 15% in the year through October 2, though violent crime rose in 2026.
(Reporting By Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt, editing by Deepa Babington)
