Senate Republicans have opened a new fight over the White House’s East Wing makeover by slipping $1 billion into a roughly $70 billion immigration enforcement bill for security work tied to the project. The measure is now headed to the Senate floor this week, with the broader package set to be Congress’s first order of business after lawmakers return.
The money is not for the ballroom, Republicans said. A GOP spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee said the bill “explicitly prohibits” funds from going to non-security ballroom elements, even as the administration has embraced the provision as a tacit approval of President Donald Trump’s overhaul. That distinction matters because a judge recently halted construction of the ballroom until Congress authorizes the project.
For Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the language leaves too much room for interpretation. He said the authorization may be limited to $1 billion for security, but it could still be read as ratifying the entire structure, both architecturally and legally. That concern lands at a moment when the politics around the East Wing have become a proxy fight over how much Congress is willing to bless after the fact.
The dispute sits inside the GOP’s broader $72 billion Homeland Security funding measure, where Republicans on the Judiciary Committee added the $1 billion line last week as part of the reconciliation proposal to fund immigration enforcement. The White House has argued the security spending amounts to recognition of Trump’s East Wing modernization, which includes his long-promised new ballroom. But Trump tore down the East Wing without proper approval from Congress, the National Trust for Historic Preservation or the National Capital Planning Commission, a fact that now hangs over every attempt to regularize the project.
Republicans themselves are not fully aligned. Rep. Marlin Stutzman said putting a billion dollars into the measure “kind of seems upside down” when the whole ballroom project costs $400 million, and he said he hoped someone had done the math before the number was added. A spokesperson for Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said he does not support any language in the DHS funding bill pertaining to the ballroom and will vote accordingly.
Sen. Rick Scott, by contrast, said he is open to hearing the case if the White House and Secret Service believe they need money beyond the private donations already raised for the ballroom. Sen. Lindsey Graham has already offered a bill to provide $400 million for the project, including an underground component, underscoring how quickly the issue has moved from construction dispute to legislative test. For now, chuck schumer and Senate Democrats are likely to argue that the GOP’s security line is less a clarification than a workaround, and the first real question on Capitol Hill is whether enough Republicans agree to stop it from becoming law.
