President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress want to allow the White House Ballroom to be completed quickly after the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday. But it will not be easy.
Trump’s ambitious ballroom project was halted earlier this year when a federal judge said Congress needed to explicitly approve it. MPs’ reactions were relatively muted","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/02/congress-trump-ballroom-structure-00855048","_Identification": :"0000019d-d1da-d930-a7fd-ffdbd3fc0002","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d1da-d930-a7fd-ffdbd3fc0003","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>were relatively silent That time. Then over the weekend, Trump and several members of the presidential succession were sitting eating salads at a Washington hotel when a gunman tried to storm a security checkpoint.
Now, what many lawmakers once considered a nice-to-have is being seen as a necessary venue for future events and gatherings. Multiple Hill Republicans have made public promises this week to try to approve construction of the ballroom as soon as possible, although there is no clear path to quickly getting the bill to Trump’s desk.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he is hearing directly from Trump about the ballroom and wants Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “expeditiously” consider his new bill with GOP Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Eric Schmidt of Missouri who will provide up to $400 million for the project.
Schmidt told reporters that although the ongoing legal battle is not over and that he believes Trump has the right to build the ballroom on his own, Saturday’s shooting “sharpened the focus” on finding ways to complete the project without delays or complications.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is expected to try to pass his own bill on Tuesday that would authorize the construction of the ballroom. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) is also expected to try to pass his bill in the Senate this week.
Yet Republicans face several obstacles, the most serious of which is that senators do not have the support to overcome the filibuster. Democrats are angry that the ballroom is being built on the debris of the East Wing that Trump bulldozed without consulting lawmakers or planning and preservation review boards.
That’s giving way to talk among some Republicans about trying to include it in a party-line immigration enforcement bill that Trump wants to have on his desk by June 1 — a maneuver that may not work or, at least, could complicate the GOP’s ability to meet its deadline as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown drags on.
Trump himself urged the House to approve the budget blueprint, similar to the one put forward by the Senate last week, that would introduce a bill through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol activities — part of a two-step plan to reopen DHS after bipartisan talks failed.
Even House Budget Chairman Jody Arrington, who has called for extending the pending reconciliation bill, is cautioning against making changes.
He said Monday that the package would be “solely focused on ICE and Border Patrol funding.” And he warned that if Republicans start adding things now, it will open the door to adding items from a much larger conservative wish list.
“Listen, if we were going to add stuff to this, I’ve got a list and it’s going to start with fiscal reforms to prevent more fraud, and then you’ll find a lot of other reforms on health care and housing affordability,” Arrington said.
Three Senate aides said Monday that the ballroom-related provision, anyway, would not follow the chamber’s rules for inclusion in the measure under the budget reconciliation process. Further complicating matters is that Republicans are not united behind a specific ballroom proposal, with Paul saying he would support imposing a nominal amount of money, but not the hundreds of millions of dollars that Graham envisions.
Thune kept his options open Monday and told reporters his conference would look at what is “achievable.” But he acknowledged that the budget template his chamber prepared did not assign the task of drafting a reconciliation bill to all the relevant committees overseeing the ballroom project.
When pressed on whether it could be included in an immigration enforcement package, Thune said, “I don’t know.”
Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) also urged his colleagues to proceed with caution on the reconciliation plan.
“If we change it, we put it at risk. So I would prefer not to put it at risk,” he told reporters on Monday evening. “I understand there’s a desire to move some construction forward, but let’s get a win.”
Graham, who chairs the Budget Committee, hasn’t closed the door to trying to deal with the ballroom through a party-line process, but seemed frustrated by the possibility that it could come to that.
“I would like to do this as a freestanding bill with offsets,” Graham said at a news conference Monday. “Let’s give it a chance, and if we fail, we’ll have to go to Plan B.”
Yet, so far, no Senate Democrats are opposed, except for Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
“If Republicans really want to improve security, they should join with Democrats in funding the Secret Service, not Donald Trump’s luxury ballroom,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Monday.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
