Trump says the Oval Office ‘will not be allowed to be touched by anybody’ as a national monument. But his proclamation still allows redecorating
President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday to designate the Oval Office and Cabinet Room as a national monument, according to the Associated Press. It is his first action since Tuesday’s midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress, a day after Trump appeared to deflect questions about the losses by touting his ballroom.
Trump, whose ballroom has faced legal challenges, described the order during his remarks in the Oval Office. “It will not be allowed to be touched by anybody, destroyed, ripped down by stupid people, to build something in a slightly different shape,” Trump said. “We like the Oval Office, and it’s a symbol, like the White House itself.”
Despite the grand tone of his speech, the proclamation leaves plenty of room for future presidents to make changes. It states that nothing in the order will “restrict the President’s authority to redecorate the monument, select furnishings, or make ordinary operational and security modifications that do not substantially impair the monument’s historic structure or architectural character.”
Trump’s order still leaves the door open for the next president
As the order includes this language, a future leader could still choose to restyle the Oval Office or even overturn the proclamation. Trump himself has reversed national monument designations created by his predecessors.
The document orders the Interior secretary to oversee the Oval Office and requires documentation and review before any action that would substantially alter or demolish the monument. While Trump said any major changes would need Congress’s review, the proclamation does not include this requirement.
He addressed the idea during his comments. “If they want to say, ‘Let’s not have oval anymore, let’s make it square,’ what happens is they have to go back to Congress and hopefully the Congress, the people in Congress, will be smart enough not to let that happen,” Trump said.
Since his return, Trump has filled the Oval Office with gold wall appliqués, gold-framed portraits, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. He also said he added new chandeliers to the Cabinet Room, which he said had very bad lighting.
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent letters to ballroom donors on Thursday. He is demanding information from them and warning that they could face “alternative measures to obtain compliance.”
Trump did not explain what he hoped to prevent. “If anybody ever decides to come and start knocking down walls, you call me wherever I may be, and I’ll come back here and I’ll make sure it never happens,” Trump said. However, Trump previously demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for his ballroom.
Trump’s own Justice Department says presidents can undo monuments like this one
The order relies on the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that lets presidents declare historic structures on federal land as national monuments. All but three presidents have used it, mostly to protect landscapes and cultural sites.
That protection may not be permanent. A 2025 Justice Department legal opinion concluded that a president can revoke a predecessor’s monument, disavowing a 1938 opinion that said only Congress could. However, a future president could likely use that reasoning against Trump’s own designation.
The order also keeps the White House exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act. As Section 107 of that law covers the White House and its grounds, the National Capital Planning Commission found the East Wing project exempt from the review most historic buildings face.
The new Democratic majority is set to be sworn in on January 3, and the proclamation states that it does not diminish Congress’s authority over federal property.
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