Our week of breaking news about the crumbling East Wing

The White House didn't proactively announce its tear-down. The Washington Post revealed it.

The first tip was hard to believe.

It was Monday morning. I was in our team meeting.

And Jonathan Edwards, my colleague who’s spent months covering President Trump’s planned White House ballroom, had a source telling him something so incredible, it seemed maybe … not-credible.

A wrecking crew is tearing down the White House’s East Wing, the source said. Right now. Here’s a photo to prove it.

Of course, we live in a world of hoaxes and easily faked photos. Was this real, or AI? Why hadn’t the White House said anything? And hadn’t Trump assured the public that he wouldn’t touch the East Wing to build his ballroom?

As we know now, the tip was real. I got a second source who quickly confirmed it and offered some color. We did some more reporting. We sent questions to the White House and strategized how to see around the fences that were blocking the construction from public view.

And then we pushed out our story that afternoon. Within minutes, it was national news — the image spoke for itself — as Americans across the country processed the biggest changes to the “People’s House” in generations.

A few hours later, Trump weighed in.

“I am pleased to announce that ground has been broken on the White House grounds to build the new, big, beautiful White House Ballroom,” the president wrote, adding that “the East Wing is being fully modernized as part of this process.”

The White House was still scant on details, and the Treasury Department — across the street from the East Wing — swiftly told its employees not to take or share photos of the construction. But we kept pressing.

On Tuesday, we had a follow-up story detailing the pace of demolition, with a new photo illustrating how construction crews had advanced. We also reported that the entire East Wing was set to be “modernized and rebuilt,” per the White House.

By Wednesday, we had a story seeking to answer the question: how can Trump do this? (The answer, it turns out, is through legal loopholes related to demolition on the White House grounds.) And could anyone stop him?

But by yesterday, it was moot: the East Wing was gone, we wrote, and Trump was turning to damage control.

If you’re a subscriber to The Post, you’ve probably seen these stories, all of which ran on our print front page.

I want to tell you a little bit about the people behind the bylines.

Jonathan, who did a tour of duty on the White House team while I was on paternity leave, has covered the ballroom since it was announced. My colleagues at The Post who specialize in graphics and video, like JM Rieger, produced visual explainers and captured Trump’s shifting statements about the project. Our architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, has a new piece on how construction projects can be a metaphor for power and politics.

And reporters on the local desk — like Paul Schwartzman, who tracked down worried preservationists and excited Trump fans, or Olivia George, who trailed construction vehicles to see that they were taking dirt from the White House to a nearby park — found D.C. angles that made the coverage better and broader.

This is the value of a newsroom: the deep, diverse pools of sources and skills that help round out a breaking story.

I just want to underscore something else about this week, too.

The White House didn’t proactively reveal that it was demolishing the East Wing; *The Washington Post* broke the news and shared the photo with the public.

It’s one of many scoops that you’ll find in The Post on any given day — stories that go far beyond a single building. This past week, my colleagues revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal; that Russian president Vladimir Putin demanded that Ukraine surrender key territory in a call with Trump; and that the U.S. Anglican Church archbishop had been accused of sexual misconduct, among other major stories.

And that’s notable to me because, a year ago this week, The Post went through a serious challenge that sparked questions about what kind of paper we were going to be. Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner, announced he was ending presidential endorsements. Subscribers left in droves. I heard from readers who questioned whether The Post would write critical stories about the Trump administration, and read comments from media analysts predicting doom for our paper.

I don’t know the mind of Jeff Bezos. It’s clear he wants to change the opinion pages — which has long been the right of any newspaper owner.

But in the newsroom of The Post, where I work, nothing about our mission has changed. We are still editorially independent. (To translate: Nobody tells me what to write, including this Substack post.) We are still focused on breaking news and doing accountability journalism. We are still employing top talents like Jonathan and my other colleagues who made the ballroom coverage so thorough, insightful, and scoopy.

I don’t know if we can reveal photos like the demolition of the East Wing every day. But I do know we’re working round-the-clock to reveal the inner workings of government, to spotlight vulnerable people — to inform the public about what’s happening in Washington, and why it matters.

If you left The Post in the past year, I hope you’ll consider coming back and supporting our journalism.

And if you have tips for my next story, I want to hear from you. My Signal is dan_diamond.01.