This afternoon, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., stopped work on Trump’s ballroom, saying it needs Congressional approval.

Federal Judge Richard Leon ruled against the ballroom, saying Trump’s lawyers made “brazen” claims. Among them, that completing the ballroom was a matter of national security. If completed, the ballroom will be more than double the size of the White House.

The New York Times wrote:

A federal judge ordered a halt to construction of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, ruling that Trump lacks authority to fund the estimated $400 million project through private donations.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon disagreed with the Trump administration’s argument that the president has broad authority to make changes to the White House, including on the scale of a $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon wrote in a 35-page ruling issued Tuesday afternoon. He said that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”

Leon also wrote that Trump must identify a law that allowed him to demolish the White House’s East Wing annex last year without congressional approval.

Judge Leon was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002.

In a 35-page opinion, Judge Leon wrote that Mr. Trump likely did not have the authority to act on his own, without consulting Congress, to replace entire sections of the White House — changes that could endure for generations.

He also reiterated concerns he had raised for months in court: that from the start, the administration has provided shifting and questionable accounts of who was in charge of the project and under what authority private donations could be accepted to fund it.

“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” he wrote. “But here is the good news. It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project.”

Judge Leon wrote that if the White House sought congressional approval, the legislature would “retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight over the government’s spending.”

“The National Trust’s interests in a constitutional and lawful process will be vindicated,” he added. “And the American people will benefit from the branches of Government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles.”

“Not a bad outcome, that!” he concluded.

The decision suggested that Judge Leon was satisfied that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to guard America’s historic buildings which had sued over the project, had put together a workable challenge following several misfires.

In another federal court, the Trump administration’s executive order canceling the funding for NPR and PBS were ruled unconstitutional by federal judge Randolph Moss, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014.

The New York Times reported:

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that President Trump’s executive order barring the federal funding of NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment.

Randolph Moss, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in his ruling that Mr. Trump’s order, signed last May, was unlawful because it instructed federal agencies to refrain from funding NPR and PBS because the president believed their news coverage had a liberal viewpoint.

“The message is clear: NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news,” Judge Moss wrote. But the First Amendment, he said, “does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”

The ruling will likely have minimal effect on the federal funding of public media. Two months after the executive order, Congress voted to claw back roughly $500 million in annual funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that distributes federal money to NPR and PBS. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has since shut down, and public radio and TV stations across the country have sought alternate forms of revenue…

In his opinion, Judge Moss wrote that the executive order and other public statements from the White House criticizing NPR reporting, including about Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, “targets a disfavored viewpoint.”

“It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the president does not like and seeks to squelch,” Judge Moss wrote

If I read this correctly, the money is gone. It probably was shifted to the military, where it is a drop in the bucket.

The Trump FCC has no objection to media consolidation under rightwing auspices. But it does not like media where critical thinking and debate are encouraged.