Homeland Security, Secret Service say $1B for White House ballroom would also fund ‘other critical missions’
Construction cranes are seen the White House on April 16, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Amid intensifying scrutiny of the Senate Republican proposal to spend up to $1 billion on security for the new White House ballroom, top Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Secret Service officials say the money would also be spent on “other critical missions.”
Those missions, they said, would include securing “frequently visited venues” outside of the White House.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by ABC News, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Secret Service Director Sean Curran described the proposed billion-dollar package as “critical funding to address urgent needs in response to the unprecedented increase in threats against the President and other public officials.”
The letter said the security upgrades to the “East Wing Modernization Project” will “afford needed protection for the President, his family, and visitors, along with the below-ground security functions.”
The officials noted that, per the text of the Senate reconciliation bill, “none of these funds will be used to support non-security improvements at the White House.”
The Senate proposal, released earlier this week, would provide $1 billion for the Secret Service “for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project.”
Without spelling out how much of the billion dollars would be spent on the ballroom construction project specifically, the officials said the funding would also be directed toward other locations, including “frequently visited venues facing heightened risk due to their public visibility and static nature.”
The text of the Senate’s bill makes no reference to “frequently visited venues” outside of the White House that Mullin and Curran mentioned in their letter.
Also, Mullin and Curran said the additional money would also go toward training USSS agents, USSS training facilities, the Secret Service’s Special Operations Division’s work on drones and biological and “other emerging threats,” as well as securing “high profile national events that require significant planning.”
Overall, the $1 billion package is described in the letter as a “critical infusion to ensure the safety of the current President and future Presidents.”
By comparison, to fund all of its operations, USSS receives more than $3 billion a year from Congress via the regular appropriations process.
Janet Mills, governor of Maine and Democratic US Senate candidate, during a roundtable discussion with community leaders in Westbrook, Maine, US, on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Photographer: Sofia Aldinio/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday morning that she is suspending her U.S. Senate campaign, leaving Graham Platner as the likely Democratic nominee to face off against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Mills cited financial resources as a reason for suspending her campaign.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a prepared statement. “That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”
The latest Federal Election Commission filings from Q1 show Planter raised roughly $1.4 million more than Mills and has roughly $1.7 million more cash on hand.
Platner, an oyster farmer and military veteran, also regularly polled significantly higher than Mills.
Mills’ announcement came just one day before the Maine Democratic Convention was scheduled to begin — and more than five weeks before the state’s June 9 primary.
Mills and Platner were scheduled to participate in their first televised debates of the campaign in May alongside David Costello.
Sen. Bernie Sanders supported Platner, while Sen. Chuck Schumer had previously announced his endorsement of Mills.
In a statement issued Thursday morning by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said in part, “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her.”
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi answers questions from the media at the United States Capitol on March 18, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Matt McClain/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is not expected to sit for a closed-door deposition next week, after the Department of Justice informed the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that its subpoena is essentially moot because it sought Bondi’s testimony in an “official capacity as Attorney General” — and President Donald Trump removed her from office last week.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
U.S. Supreme Court building on March 31, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — As President Donald Trump looked on during an unprecedented visit to the Supreme Court, a majority of justices appeared skeptical of his administration’s bid to end birthright citizenship during arguments in the landmark case Wednesday.
Most of the court’s conservatives and all three liberal members raised doubts about the constitutionality of Trump’s Day 1 executive order that would limit American citizenship at birth only to those born to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
It would also impose sweeping changes for all new parents and current American citizens going forward, requiring a new system to verify a person’s citizenship beyond a simple birth certificate.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, says all “persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. Congress later codified the same language in federal citizenship law in 1940 and again in 1952.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” applies only to children whose parents have “allegiance” to the U.S., which he said is determined by being “domiciled” in the country.
The meaning of ‘domiciled’
The 1898 landmark Supreme Court decision in U.S. v Wong Kim Ark, widely considered to be the precedent affirming birthright citizenship, concluded, “The [14th] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.”
Sauer said “domiciled” means living in the U.S. lawfully with “intent to stay.”
But many of the court’s conservatives questioned how that definition was derived and whether it aligned with the views of the framers of the 14th Amendment and members of Congress who codified the citizenship clause.
Trump — the first sitting president to attend the high court’s arguments — was seated in the front row of the public gallery alongside White House Counsel David Warrington, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
As Sauer parried with the justices, Trump sat attentive and expressionless. His presence in the chamber was not publicly announced or acknowledged by any of the justices on the bench. While Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Brett Kavanaugh, and Elena Kagan were most immediately in his line of sight, it was not clear whether any justice on the bench made eye contact with him. Trump also did not engage with anyone seated beside him or in the chamber.
Trump departed the chamber as ACLU Legal Director Cecilia Wang was in the middle of delivering her opening statement, in which she argued that the principle of birthright citizenship was enshrined in the Constitution to prevent government officials from stripping citizenship away.
“Ask any American what our citizenship rule is, and they’ll tell you, everyone born here is a citizen alike,” Wang said. “That rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to put it out of the reach of any government official to destroy.”
“If you credit the government’s theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans past, present and future could be called into question,” Wang said.
‘Very quirky arguments’
Sauer got a somewhat frosty reception from at least two key Supreme Court Justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch — during his arguments, in which he contended that the longstanding understanding of the 14th Amendment is incorrect.
“The citizenship clause was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile. Here, it did not grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens who have no such allegiance,” Sauer said.
Roberts noted that the Trump administration is relying on “very quirky” arguments, saying they are using “narrow exceptions” to claim that a much broader class of people should be ineligible for birthright citizenship.
“You know, children of ambassadors, children of enemies during a hostile invasion, children on warships, and then you expand it to the whole class of illegal aliens here in the country — I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples,” said Roberts.
Gorsuch also remarked that the Trump administration seems to be relying on outdated “Roman law sources” and court precedents that do not work in their favor.
“I’m not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark,” Gorsuch remarked about the landmark 1898 case that enshrined birthright citizenship.
Justice Elena Kagan similarly voiced concerns about the sources cited by the Trump administration.
“You’re using some pretty obscure sources to get to this concept,” she said.
‘Illegal immigration’
Justice Samuel Alito initiated a discussion on “illegal immigration” by noting that it was “something that was basically unknown” at the time when the 14th amendment was adopted in the 1860s.
“What we’re dealing with here is something that was basically unknown at the time when the 14th Amendment was adopted, which is illegal immigration,” Alito said. “So how do we deal with that situation when we have a general rule?”
Sauer responded by agreeing with Alito, saying that “illegal immigration did not exist [then],” and “the problem of temporary visitors didn’t exist.”
Sauer pointed to “commentators” from 1881 to 1922 who, he claimed, were “uniformly saying the children of temporary visitors are not included.” He argued that this logic “naturally extends” to those who enter the country illegally.
Justice Kagan challenged Sauer’s argument on immigration, saying his arguments in his brief did not focus on “illegal immigration.”
“Most of your brief is about people who are just temporarily in the country where there was quite clearly an experience of an understanding that there were going to be temporary inhabitants,” Kagan said. “And your whole theory of the case is built on that group.”
“You don’t get to talking about undocumented persons until quite later, and at much lesser … I think it’s like 10 pages to three pages or something like that,” she said.
When asked about how the Trump administration would apply their birthright citizenship executive order, pointed to a guidance document from the Social Security Administration issued last year.
“How does this work? Are you suggesting that when a baby is born, people have to have documents present in the delivery room?” Justice Jackson asked.
“I think that’s directly addressing the SSA guidance that cited in our brief, what SSA says,” Sauer responded.
Justice Jackson appeared skeptical of that response, pressing Sauer about the steps of the process and whether a parent could challenge a final decision.
“We’ll give you a social security number, provided that there’s the system [that] automatically checks the immigration status of the parents — which there are robust databases for — and then it appears no different to the vast majority of birthing parents,” Sauer said.
Birth tourism
In his opening statements, Sauer laid out one of the Trump administration’s key arguments about why birthright citizenship should not be extended to the children of undocumented immigrants, claiming that if it remains “unrestricted” it will continue to be a “pull factor for illegal immigration” and would “reward” immigrants who violate immigration laws.
“It has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism as uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States,” Sauer said.
The Trump administration has often claimed that birth tourism — the idea that foreign nationals travel to the U.S. with the sole purpose of having a child here — poses a national security risk and undermines birthright citizenship.
Justice Roberts pressed Sauer to explain how common the problem is, but Sauer was unable to give a clear answer.
“No one knows for sure. There’s a March 9 letter from a number of members of Congress to DHS saying, ‘Do we have any information about this?’ The media reports indicate estimates could be over one million, or 1.5 million from the People’s Republic of China alone. The congressional report that we cite in our brief talks about certain hotspots, like Russian elites coming to Miami through these birth tourism companies,” Sauer said.
Sauer went on to claim that media reports indicate there are 500 “birth tourism companies” in China, prompting Justice Roberts to interject to ask if Sauer agreed that had “no impact on the legal analysis before us.”
“We’re in a new world now as Justice Alito pointed out, to where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who is a U.S. citizen,” Sauer added later.
In a statement Wednesday morning, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero addressed Trump’s attendance at the proceedings, saying Trump would “watch the ACLU school him in the meaning of the Constitution and birthright citizenship.”
“Any effort to distract from the gravity and importance of this case will not succeed. The Supreme Court is up to the task of interpreting and defending the Constitution even under the glare of a sitting president a couple dozen feet away from them,” he said.
Wednesday’s arguments concluded after about two hours. A ruling in the case isn’t expected until the end of June.
