Pieces of President Donald Trump's wide-ranging Washington makeover made their next step toward approval Thursday, but not without substantial critiques of plans for permanent fencing and gates around Lafayette Square in front of the White House.
The plan pits the Secret Service and administration's concerns about presidential security against the park's historical status as an open gathering spot directly in front of the Executive Mansion, where citizens
come for everything from tourist selfies to war protests or spontaneous celebrations of election results.
“People came there because they knew this was our country’s town square, where they could come to express their feelings about the direction of our nation,” Pam Fessler, a former federal employee and retired journalist, told the National Capital Planning Commission.
But the body, which this spring approved Trump's White House ballroom proposal after he razed the Executive Mansion's East Wing without authorization, accepted several versions of the proposal despite the criticisms. That sets it up for a final vote in coming months. The panel separately approved the concept for a new White House visitors security screening center on the grounds south of the Treasury Department.
The Secret Service and Trump administration, besides their security arguments, also pitched the fencing as an aesthetic necessity to replace the temporary fencing and barricades that have been erected since 2020 protests over systemic racism and police violence in America. But historic preservationists, legal advocates and residents of Washington, D.C., pushed back Thursday, saying the real solution is simply to reopen the square.
“The proposed modifications claim that a fence will preserve day-to-day openness,” said ACLU attorney Laura Follansbee. But “even when the gates are open, the very presence of a fence will send a message to the public that the park is only open by permission.”
Those planning the designs said it would be too tempting for a president or the Secret Service to simply close the gates even when there is no legitimate security threat.
“It will undoubtedly become routine to shut down the park whenever a protest or mass gathering is expected, on the grounds that it might be disruptive,” Fessler predicted.
Commission Chairman Mark Paoletta, a Trump appointee, rejected concerns about public access to the park.
“I don't think the Secret Service has any intention of shutting this park when there's peaceful protests,” Paoletta insisted. “So this idea that if there's a fence up we're losing our First Amendment rights, I don't accept. OK — time, place, manner. People can come to the park.”
It was Paoletta's first meeting as chairman. White House Counsel Will Scharf previously held the role.
The visitor screening facility drew far less controversy, with commissioners broadly agreeing that it is needed to streamline entry to the complex.
The hearing Thursday was the first time the commission took up the two ideas. Despite the critiques of the fencing proposal, the commission and the separate U.S. Commission of Fine Arts have thus far not been obstacles to Trump’s plans for the capital. The fine arts panel, which is controlled by Trump appointees, approved the visitors’ center plans at its July meeting. It heard a presentation on the Lafayette Square fencing but took no action.
Planning Commissioner Evan Cash, who is not a Trump appointee, expressed frustration Thursday that the Secret Service was pushing the Lafayette Square project only a decade after winning approval for a 13-foot security fence around the White House perimeter.
“I swallowed a lot of stuff then that I never would have swallowed if I knew that we were going to be coming back and pushing people another block away from the White House,” he said.
Paoletta countered by alluding to the multiple assassination attempts against Trump, including two during the 2024 campaign and a third this past April as he attended a Washington dinner with White House journalists. Those concerns were heightened in May after U.S. Secret Service officers fatally shot a man who opened fire near a White House security checkpoint.
But Lafayette Square fencing still would be a marked permanent change to the usual access and appearance of the grounds in front of the White House. The square last had permanent fencing in the late 1800s.
The administration’s 79-page proposal for the 8-acre (3-hectare) park calls for fencing all the way around with larger gates at the north and south entrances. Options call for either including or excluding monuments located at each of the park’s four corners.
The White House Visitor Screening Facility, meanwhile, has been viewed as a noncontroversial part of the administration's call for increased security measures.
The administration says the permanent facility, which it wants open by July 2028, would replace a series of temporary tents that have been used for years, in a bid to improve security on the White House complex and enhance the experience for visitors. The original design had it being built underground near the southern end of Sherman Park, just southeast of the White House. But consultations with other entities led to it being moved to the western edge, away from utility infrastructure.
