WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators emerged from a private briefing with U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran on Tuesday pressing for a clearer accounting of the agency’s $1 billion security plan for the White House, a request that includes $220 million to harden President Donald Trump’s new East Wing ballroom with bulletproof glass, drone defenses and chemical threat detection systems.
The handout Curran circulated, obtained by The Associated Press, also outlines $180 million for a “long overdue” White House visitors screening facility, $175 million for training agents in the “modern threat environment,” $150 million for evolving threats and counter-drone technology, and $100 million for security at high-profile national events. But the categories were too broad for many GOP senators.
“I want more information,” said Florida Sen. Rick Scott, a close ally of Trump. “I ran companies, okay? If somebody came to me and said they were going to spend a billion dollars on something, I’d get more detail.”
Indiana Sen. Todd Young said he could be supportive of “a certain measure of ballroom funding, which I think is defensible, but they need to go back and get us more detail about how exactly they arrived at the figures.” He described the presentation as providing only “broad categories.”
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, flagged another gap: the security improvements were absent from Trump’s official budget proposal earlier this year. She asked for “a lot more data” during the closed-door session.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said he still believes private funds should cover the ballroom’s fortification. “That’s still my preference,” Paul said, noting that Congress had already boosted the Secret Service’s budget following the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. “Was it spent wisely? Do they really need more at this time?”
The security request has been folded into a partisan spending bill that would restore funding for immigration enforcement agencies — money Democrats have blocked since February. Republican leaders are trying to pass the bill without Democratic votes, but the internal dissent over the White House’s asks threatens to unravel that strategy.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats will ask the Senate parliamentarian to strike the $1 billion from the bill under budget reconciliation rules. “Americans want lower costs, not a gold-plated ballroom for our billionaire president,” Schumer said.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, plans to offer amendments to redirect the money to a criminal justice program or law enforcement officers’ benefits.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declined to say whether the security funding would pass muster with his members. “We’re waiting on the Senate product,” Johnson told reporters. “They’re working through all that, and then we’ll see what bill we get.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., suggested Senate Republicans could pare down the request and punt portions to future annual spending bills, but he predicted that as more details surface, members would grow comfortable with the full package. “I think as more of the information begins to come out, I think people are going to feel a lot more comfortable with what they are requesting,” Rounds said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has backed the overall legislation and urged swift passage, “given the obstruction that the Democrats have posed and their unwillingness to fund law enforcement.”
The White House has said in court documents that the East Wing project would be “heavily fortified,” with bomb shelters, military installations and a medical facility beneath the ballroom. Trump has repeatedly stated that the ballroom construction itself would be paid for with $400 million in private funds, but the administration had not previously disclosed the associated security costs.