Preservationists and historians are voicing outrage at the White House Historical Association, the nonprofit founded by Jacqueline Kennedy to protect the executive mansion’s character.
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The Washington Post revealed the group knew about President Donald Trump’s plan to demolish the East Wing weeks before the public did — and chose not to object.
According to the Post, association leaders understood by late July 2025 that Trump intended to tear down the East Wing to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Rather than raise concerns, staff quietly photographed the historic rooms slated for destruction, including Kennedy’s own former office, saying the effort as documentation “for history” rather than resistance.
The public didn’t learn demolition was underway until wrecking equipment appeared in October.
The association has also stayed quiet as Trump has paved over the Rose Garden that Kennedy once cultivated and pursued a broader overhaul of the White House and its grounds — even as hundreds of preservation groups have publicly denounced the changes as illegal and historically damaging.
Critics say the group’s inaction is inseparable from its increasingly close relationship with Trump, who has publicly championed the association, donated his salary to it, and helped with its fundraising.
Its current chairman, Goldman Sachs executive John F.W. Rogers, advised Melania Trump during the presidential transition. The association declined to comment on its leaders’ relationships with the administration.
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“Jackie Kennedy founded the organization because she thought the White House should be treated like a museum,” said Rebecca Miller, executive director of the DC Preservation League. “The White House Historical Association’s complicity towards this administration’s actions is not in that spirit.”
Some current and former staff and donors have privately pressed the association’s leadership to take a stronger stand, according to the Post, but the group has held firm that it is not its place to resist a sitting president’s renovations, describing its mission as strictly nonpartisan.
After the Supreme Court ruled last month that the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely lacks standing to challenge the ballroom, legal experts told the Post that the Historical Association — given its explicit preservation mission — might have a stronger claim to sue than any other group. So far, it has shown no sign of doing so.
The association pushed back on characterizations of its conduct, telling the Post its work “remains aligned with the mission” Kennedy laid out and insisting it learned of the demolition plans “the same way the public did” — an account the Post’s own timeline contradicts, along with Trump’s comments the day of the announcement insisting his ballroom would not touch the existing building.
For now, the organization tasked with safeguarding Kennedy’s vision of the White House as “the People’s House” remains publicly silent as that vision is dismantled.
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