Trump's White House ballroom architect has 'totally baffled' colleagues by taking on the project, report says

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Yahoo! News/The Independent

Sat, March 21, 2026 at 5:45 PM EDT


Shalom Baranes, the architect who agreed to see through President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom addition, has baffled colleagues in Washington, D.C. by taking on the controversial project late in his career.

Baranes, 75, is a longtime, well-respected architect in D.C. who has worked on dozens of contemporary additions to federal buildings. He also has a history of being critical of the Trump administration’s harsh anti-immigration policies, as the son of Jewish Libyan refugees who came to the United States at 6 years old.

“Why would he do this?” and “Wonder if the firm needs the business?” were among the questions posed by the reports and editors at Washington Biz Journal in December when they announced that the architect they had been covering for nearly 20 years had agreed to take over the 90,000 square-foot ballroom project.

“I am totally baffled why he would take this on,” Nancy MacWood, a preservationist familiar with Baranes' work, told the New York Times. In an interview with the New York Times last week, Baranes repeated his criticisms of the Trump administration, saying: “What’s happening now is heartbreaking.”

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-white-house-ballroom-architect-214516907.html

[FSogol]

1. Isn't it obviuos? He's being blackmailed by President Crime Boss.

[mopinko]

2. kompromat?

i just assume every 1 of these baffling actions has an ugly explanation.

[Talitha]

3. He's 75, I'm guessing he has a family.

"It'd be a shame if anything happened to them."

Yeah, this might be a far-fetched thought.
But I wouldn't put anything past this (mis)administration.

[louis-t]

4. He probably thinks he's going to get paid, too.

He's in for a surprise.

[Prairie Gates]

5. The comments above seem right: if somebody suddenly seems to be working on Trump's behalf

to everybody's great surprise and in a way that is totally out of character...

they are probably being blackmailed with information of a, well, sensitive nature.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. White House ballroom architect speaks out against Trump immigration policies

trump was wrong to tear down the East Wing and our country does not need a ball room. I hope that any such ball room is demolished after trump is dead or out of office

Shalom Baranes, a Libyan refugee and chief architect for President Donald Trump's White House ballroom project, described the president's immigration policies as "heartbreaking" in a recent interview, The New York Times reported Saturday.

— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-03-21T22:00:13Z

https://www.rawstory.com/white-house-ballroom-2676524073

Shalom Baranes, a Libyan refugee and chief architect for President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, described the president’s immigration policies as “heartbreaking” in a recent interview, The New York Times reported Saturday.

“What’s happening now is heartbreaking,” Baranes said of the Trump administration’s immigration policy in an interview last week, his first since accepting the role to head Trump’s ballroom project last year, the Times reported. “I do hope there’s a realization at some point that this country depends on immigration. We have to normalize our policies.”....

At $400 million, Trump’s ballroom project is a proposed 90,000 square-foot addition to the White House that required the demolition of the East Wing. The project began behind schedule and was reportedly designed in a “hurried process,” with the East Wing’s demolition so controversial that the Treasury Department instructed staff not to share photos of its destruction.

The Times noted that Baranes – who arrived in the United States from Libya at 6 years old as a refugee – “would likely not be admitted into the United States under the Trump administration restrictions of today,” perhaps giving reason for his blunt remarks on the administration’s immigration policy.

An overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to Trump’s White House ballroom, with just 28% in a recent Economist/YouGov poll