On May 5, 2026, HuffPost reported that Senate Republicans had unveiled a $72 billion spending package, split between bills from the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, that bundled immigration-enforcement money with $1 billion in security funding tied to Trump's White House ballroom. HuffPost's breakdown: $38.2 billion for ICE, $26.1 billion for Customs and Border Protection, $5 billion for DHS immigration enforcement, $1.5 billion for Justice Department criminal enforcement, and $1 billion for security for the ballroom, which, HuffPost reported, the package specifies is “for the Secret Service to use for security-related aspects.”
The $1 billion was not only for the ballroom. According to a one-page breakdown obtained by Fox News, the request included $220 million for “White House complex hardening,” including above- and below-ground security for the ballroom; $180 million for a White House visitor screening center; and $600 million for Secret Service training, protection for Trump and other officials, counter-drone measures and other needs. Fox News noted the project was once touted by the administration as completely privately funded.
Trump's authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval was being litigated: a district judge had rejected his claim that the project is a matter of “national security,” but an appeals court allowed construction to proceed ahead of a June review. HuffPost reported that Republicans, “apparently trying to steer clear of this legal fight,” specified that the money was for the Secret Service.
Republicans moved the package through budget reconciliation, which needs 51 votes instead of 60, under a June 1 deadline set by Trump. DHS had been partially shut down since February, when Democrats refused new ICE and CBP money without accountability measures such as a ban on agents wearing masks and a requirement for judicial warrants to search homes. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said Republicans were “gifting ICE and Border Patrol nearly $70 billion to continue propping up Trump's rogue police and wreaking havoc across American communities.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said: “Republicans have been lying to the public about the cost of this ballroom for over a year.”
Correction (September 24, 2026): an earlier version of this entry put “ballroom security-related aspects” in quotation marks as if it were the bill's wording. The phrase is HuffPost's description of the package, which the entry now quotes as HuffPost wrote it.
Update (October 2, 2026): the ballroom money did not survive. On Saturday, May 16, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled against the $1 billion Secret Service provision. According to Democrats, she found that the provision, in the Judiciary Committee's title of the bill, funded activities outside that committee's jurisdiction and so fell under the Byrd rule, which bars extraneous non-budgetary items from reconciliation; that left it subject to a 60-vote threshold, the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said. Politico reported that the administration told senators only $220 million would potentially go toward the ballroom project and otherwise hardening the complex. But the draft text explicitly named the East Wing Modernization Project and allowed part of the money for “above-ground and below-ground security features” of the ballroom, and the White House had made clear it would treat passage of that language as Congress approving the ballroom as a whole.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X: “Americans don't want a ballroom. They don't need a ballroom. And they sure as hell should not be forced to pay for one.” Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Majority Leader John Thune, wrote: “Redraft. Refine. Resubmit. None of this is abnormal during a Byrd process.” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told Fox News Digital: “It's not a billion dollars for the ballroom.”
On May 20, Senate Republicans decided to remove the request. “We were told that the ballroom money is out,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters. Politico reported that Thune told Republicans both the parliamentarian's ruling and the vote count were obstacles, and that before the decision Trump called for MacDonough's firing in a Truth Social post. A revised package released June 3 dropped the language, CBS News reported. The House passed the roughly $70 billion bill 214 to 212, and Trump signed it on June 10, 2026, without the ballroom security funding. Separately, Sens. Lindsey Graham, Katie Britt and Eric Schmitt pushed a bill to authorize the ballroom and offset its cost with national park and customs fees (see Sens. Graham, Schmitt, and Britt Introduce a Bill to Use Customs and Park Fees to Pay for Trump's $400 Million 'Privately Funded' White House Ballroom).
A second tracker entry on the parliamentarian's ruling has been merged into this one.
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version of this entry described the full $1 billion as money for the ballroom; per Fox News, only part of it ($220 million for complex hardening) was tied directly to the ballroom. It said routing the money through the Secret Service “moots the litigation” and that the deal resolved the DHS standoff by adding ballroom money; HuffPost said only that Republicans appeared to be steering clear of the legal fight, and the ballroom money was later removed. We also removed unsourced claims that cumulative second-term ICE and CBP funding was nearing $170 billion and exceeded the defense budgets of Canada, Australia and Spain combined. The update also dated the parliamentarian's ruling to about May 17; it came on Saturday, May 16.