The East Wing of the White House is gone. Here's a look at some of the history made there

WASHINGTON (AP) — Betty Ford reportedly said that if the White House West Wing is the “mind” of the nation, then the East Wing — the traditional power center for first ladies — is the “heart.”

That “heart” beat for more than 100 years as first ladies and their teams worked from their East Wing offices on everything from stopping drug abuse and boosting literacy to beautifying and preserving the White House itself. It's where they planned White House state dinners and brainstormed the elaborate themes that are a feature of the U.S. holiday season.

That history came to an end after wrecking crews tore down the wing's two stories of offices and reception rooms last week. Gone is an in-house movie theater, and a covered walkway to the White House captured in so many photos over the years. An East Wing garden that was dedicated to Jacqueline Kennedy was also uprooted, photographs show.

Republican President Donald Trump ordered the demolition as part of his still-to-be approved plan to build a $300 million ballroom.

The former real estate developer has long been fixated on building a big White House ballroom. In 2010, he called a top adviser to Democratic President Barack Obama and offered to build one. Trump made no secret of his distaste for the practice of hosting elegant White House state dinners underneath tents on the South Lawn. The offer was not followed up on.

Now Trump, in his second term, is moving quickly to see his wish for what he calls a “great legacy project” become reality. He has tried to justify the East Wing tear-down and his ballroom plans by noting that some of his predecessors also added to the White House over the years.

First ladies and their staffs witnessed history in the East Wing, a “place of purpose and service,” said Anita McBride, who worked there as chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush.

“Tearing down those walls doesn’t diminish the significance of the work we accomplished there,” McBride told The Associated Press.

McBride said she supports a ballroom addition because the “large and expensive tent option” that has been used when guest lists stretched longer than could be comfortably accommodated inside the White House “was not sustainable.” Tents damage the lawn and require additional infrastructure to be brought in, such as outdoor bathrooms and trolleys to move people around, especially in bad weather, she said.

Others feel differently.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, who was policy director for first lady Michelle Obama, said the demolition was a “symbolic blow” to the East Wing's legacy as a place where women made history.

“The East Wing was this physical space that had seen the role of the first lady evolve from a social hostess into a powerful advocate on a range of issues,” she said in an interview.

Here's a look at some of the history that came out of the East Wing and the first ladies who spent time there:

She was the first first lady to have her own office in the East Wing. Most first ladies before Carter had worked out of the private living quarters on the second or third floor of the residence. Carter wanted a place where she could separate work and home.

“I always need a place to go that is private, where I don't have to dress and don't have to put on makeup,” she wrote in her memoir. “The offices of the staff of the first lady were always in the East Wing, and it seemed a perfect place for my office too.”

In her memoir, Carter wrote about her favorite route to her office in winter months. She walked through the basement, past laundry rooms and workshops and the bomb shelter kept for the president and his staff. The thermostats in the residence above had been turned down low because of President Jimmy Carter's energy conservation program, making the East Wing so cold that she was forced to wear long underwear.

The subterranean passageway shown to her by a residence staffer provided some relief. “With Jimmy's energy conservation program, it was the only really warm place in the White House, with large steam pipes running overhead,” the first lady wrote.

Photos from the East Wing in the early 1980s show the first lady meeting with staff, including her press secretary, Sheila Tate. For a generation of Americans, Nancy Reagan was most closely associated with a single phrase, “Just Say No," for the anti-drug abuse program she made a hallmark of her White House tenure.

As Reagan once recalled, the idea for the campaign emerged during a 1982 visit with schoolchildren in Oakland, California. “A little girl raised her hand and said, ‘Mrs. Reagan, what do you do if somebody offers you drugs?’ And I said, ‘Well, you just say no.’ And there it was born.”

Clinton bucked history by becoming the first first lady to insist that her office be in the West Wing, not the East Wing. In her memoir, Clinton wrote that wanted her staff to be “integrated physically” with the president's team. The first lady's office relocated to what is now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building while Clinton was assigned an office on the second floor of the West Wing.

“This was another unprecedented event in White House history and quickly became fodder for late night comedians and political pundits,” Clinton later wrote.

Bush wrote in her memoir about what it was like at the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks. Most of her staff members, then in their 20s, “kicked off their high heels and fled from the East Wing” after they were told to “run for their lives” when reports suggested the White House was a target.

“Now they were being asked to come back to work in a building that everyone considered a target and for a presidency and a country that would be at war,” she wrote.

Obama was the first Black woman to serve as first lady, becoming a global role model and style icon who advocated for improved child nutrition through her “Let's Move” initiative. She and her staff in the East Wing also worked to support military families and promote higher education for girls in developing countries.

Photos from the time show Obama typing on a laptop during an online chat about school nutrition and the White House garden she created.

Trump pushed the boundaries of serving as first lady by not living at the White House during the opening months of Donald Trump's first term. She stayed in New York with their then-school-age son, Barron, so he wouldn't have to switch schools midyear. When she eventually moved to the White House, she and her East Wing aides launched an initiative named, “Be Best,” to focus on child well-being, opioid abuse and online safety.

Biden was the first first lady to continue a career outside the White House. The longtime community college English professor taught twice a week while serving as first lady. But in her East Wing work, she was an advocate for military families; her late father and her late son Beau served in the military. Biden also advocated for research into a cure for cancer and secured millions of dollars in federal funding for research into women's health.

Debris cleanup from the East Wing of the White House and construction of the new ballroom continues, as photographed through an airplane window, Friday, Oct. 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Invited guests play at the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden as part of a one year anniversary event for first lady Melania Trump's Be Best initiative, May 7, 2019, at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

FILE - Anita McBride, left, Chief of Staff to first lady Laura Bush, right, looks on as Bush makes opening remarks during a video teleconference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Dec. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE - President Bill Clinton, flanked by Governors Ann Richards of Texas, left, and Mario Cuomo of New York, watches the Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills play in the Super Bowl with his daughter Chelsea and their cat, Socks, in the White House, Jan. 31, 1993, in the family theater. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Construction workers, bottom right, atop the U.S. Treasury, watch watch as demolition continues on the East Wing of the White House to make room for a new ballroom, in Washington, Oct. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

FILE - A large ribbon is displayed outside the East Wing of the White House during a preview of the 2016 holiday decor, Nov. 29, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Democratic incumbents are facing spirited challenges Tuesday in at least two of New York's congressional primaries, the latest proving ground in the high-stakes fight between the progressive left and the party establishment over the Democratic Party's future.

U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman and U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat are both seeking to stave off candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist who's testing the limits of his growing political muscle in the state's first batch of elections since he took office in January.

Mamdani and his slate are promising to push the Democratic Party further left on key issues, the war in Gaza chief among them, even as establishment Democrats in Washington worry that their policies could alienate swing voters in midterm elections across the country this fall.

Goldman faces former city Comptroller Brad Lander while Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, faces another Mamdani pick, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who once helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Mamdani is also backing his democratic socialist ally, state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, who along with the rest of the mayor's candidates has vowed to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It’s not just a question of electing more Democrats. It’s a question of electing better Democrats, ” Mamdani said Tuesday. “When I look at these candidacies, I see in them a willingness to also put working people back at the heart of our politics.”

In Washington, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries downplayed the influence of the Mamdani-backed candidates should they prevail Tuesday, which would make them the overwhelming favorites to win congressional seats in November given New York City's strong Democratic makeup.

“We have agreed to strongly disagree,” Jeffries said of Mamdani on Capitol Hill. “There are 215 members of the House Democratic caucus. A handful of primaries that go in one direction or the other, in a given state or two, aren’t going to reshape who we are as House Democrats.”

Meanwhile, Democrat Jack Schlossberg, the 33-year-old grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, is hoping to write his own chapter in Camelot lore as he competes in a crowded field for a seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler. Mamdani has made no endorsement in that race.

The Kennedy scion is running in one of the country's wealthiest congressional districts — covering much of the center of Manhattan — but faces questions about his lack of work experience against more seasoned opponents.

The field includes state Assembly members Micah Lasher, a longtime government hand backed by Democratic leaders, and Alex Bores, whose proposals to regulate artificial intelligence have triggered tech industry blowback. Also running is George Conway, who helped start the anti-Trump group, The Lincoln Project, and has centered his candidacy on impeaching the president.

Mamdani, whose first six months in office have drawn praise from establishment Democrats and even President Donald Trump, has made a big push to promote three congressional candidates who are challenging Democrats supported by the party's leadership.

Two of Mamdani's congressional slate identify as democratic socialists, while Lander has often aligned himself with the movement. All three have repeatedly promised to “abolish ICE,” condemned the “genocide” in Israel and vowed to “tax the rich” if elected.

Mamdani's most polarizing pick is Avila Chevalier, 32, in her race against Espaillat, 71, who was the first Dominican American elected to Congress and represents a district in upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

Avila Chevalier has not held political office and casts herself as an outsider. Around an hour before polls closed, she was standing on a street corner in Harlem with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, chatting with voters in a final Election Day push.

On the next corner, a small truck displayed an ad attacking Avila Chevalier, highlighting a disparaging remark she made on social media about former Vice President Kamala Harris. Avila Chevalier had previously apologized for the post.

Espaillat’s allies have called Avila Chevalier unfit for office, pointing out a history of inflammatory and profane social media posts when she was in her 20s.

In East Harlem, 47-year-old voter Sara Hyler said she flip-flopped several times between Avila Chevalier and Espaillat in the lead up to Election Day, but eventually cast her ballot for Avila Chevalier after learning about AIPAC’s heavy support for the incumbent.

“It was the breaking point, my last straw,” she said of AIPAC’s donations to Espaillat.

Hyler said it was important to elect a new crop of progressive democrats who aren’t beholden to AIPAC and the Israeli government. “As much as I support Israel, I don’t think we should be paying for them,” Hyler said.

Lander, a fixture of the city's progressive Democrats, got the mayor's endorsement in a race against Goldman, a progressive former federal prosecutor who served as lead counsel for Trump’s first impeachment.

The war in Gaza has been a dividing line between the two candidates, both of whom are Jewish. Lander assailed Goldman for not being tough enough on Israel over its military action against Palestinians. Goldman has consistently criticized Israel's government and condemned settler violence but has stopped short of describing the conflict as a genocide, which Lander has done.

Still, Goldman has amped up his criticism of Israel's war posture in response to Landers' barbs and shifting voter sentiments, all while seeking to keep his campaign focused on the high cost of living and such issues as opposing Trump's agenda.

Mamdani has also backed Valdez over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, in the race to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez in a district covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Reynoso was Velazquez's handpicked successor, but failed to earn the mayor's backing.

Yvette Sanchez, a 30-year-old preschool teacher who voted for Espaillat, said she was put off by Mamdani's attempts to unseat the incumbent in her district and stifle Velazquez’s preferred successor, arguing that the established candidates are supported by Black and Latino communities.

“Do you just think you can insert anyone you want or do you actually want to listen to us?” Sanchez, who supported Mamdani last year, said of the mayor.

In northern New York state, a Trump acolyte with no previous political experience is facing a conservative state lawmaker in the Republican primary for a seat soon to be vacated by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Anthony Constantino, head of the custom sticker company Sticker Mule, showcased his enthusiasm for the president by putting a massive “Vote For Trump” sign atop one of his company buildings. He also released a hip-hop album titled “Thank You President Trump," and commissioned a statue of Trump and gave it to the president in Florida. Trump has endorsed him.

Constantino's opponent, conservative state Assembly Member Robert Smullen, has strong support from local Republicans and has argued that Constantino's antics, which include regular bashing of the state GOP, make him unfit to serve in the House.

Associated Press writers Jake Offenhartz and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.

A voter casts a ballot during New York’s primary election on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

A person campaigns for Democratic Congressional Candidate Jack Schlossberg during New York's primary election on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

A voter casts a ballot during New York’s primary election on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., takes part in the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, Sunday, June 14, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Democratic congressional candidates, Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier gesture on stage with Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a Get Out The Vote rally ahead of New York's primary election, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

FILE - A voter completes their ballot at a voting site, in New York, Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)