Saturday night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has raised questions about security at such events involving the president, stoked another round of discussion about the tone and tenor of political debate in the United States and sparked renewed concern about the rise of political violence in the country. It may also have some fiscal fallout: The alleged assassination attempt has prompted several Republican lawmakers — and at least one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman — to push for federal funding to build President Trump’s planned $400 million White House ballroom. It has also brought new calls to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down for 73 days.
Republican Sens. Katie Britt, Lindsey Graham and Eric Schmitt announced plans Monday for legislation to fund the White House ballroom. “By funding these necessary upgrades to the ballroom and the White House’s security infrastructure, President Trump and future presidents will be able to host large events without having to leave the White House grounds,” read a notice sent to the press. The announcement also said that the senators will call for fully funding the Department of Homeland Security, including the Secret Service.
Trump himself has used the shooting to push for his 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which has faced a storm of criticism both for its design and the process used to build it. Trump pushed ahead on the project without congressional authorization and has already torn down the East Wing of the White House to start construction, drawing the ire of preservationists and inviting legal challenges.
A federal judge late last month ordered a halt on construction of the ballroom “until Congress authorizes its completion,” ruling that the president exceeded his authority by moving ahead without congressional approval.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon wrote that it was not too late for Congress to step in. “The President may at any time go to Congress to obtain express authority to construct a ballroom and to do so with private funds,” he wrote. “Indeed, Congress may even choose to appropriate funds for the ballroom, or at least decide that some other funding scheme is acceptable. Either way, Congress will thereby retain its authority over the nation's property and its oversight over the Government's spending.”
An appeals court later allowed construction to continue while the legal challenge plays out.
After Saturday’s shooting, Trump argued that his ballroom would be far more secure. “This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!” Trump wrote in a social media post Sunday morning. He called for the lawsuit blocking construction of the ballroom to be dropped.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP lawmakers are backing the president’s effort, with some pushing to include ballroom funding in a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
“The ballroom will be a solution for this, because it will be on the most secure compound in the world,” Johnson told Fox News. “It won’t have hotel rooms above it, and it will have seven-inch thick glass, for example, on the windows. So it’ll be a very safe environment to do events like this. We need a place, we have needed a place like that, and the president keeps pointing it out.”
Critics have charged that the new push for ballroom funding is cynical opportunism, noting that presidents wouldn’t simply hole up in the White House for their time in office and that Trump’s planned ballroom would not be large enough to host the correspondents’ dinner or other major D.C. events and might not be expected to do so anyway.
National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the lawsuit challenging the ballroom, on Monday rejected a request by the Justice Department to drop its case, saying that the suit does not endanger Trump or anyone else and simply seeks to have the administration follow the law. “We have always acknowledged the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House,” Carol Quillen, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Building it lawfully requires the approval of Congress, which the Administration could seek at any time.”