Senate Republicans drop plans for $1bn to fund security at Trump’s ballroom

Senate Republicans on Wednesday formally dropped their attempt to spend $1bn on security improvements for Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, as it became clear the president’s demand for the money could jeopardize long-term funding for immigration enforcement.

The Senate judiciary committee had last month included the spending on security for the new ballroom in a broader measure that would authorize $70bn in spending for agencies involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign through the duration of his term. On Wednesday the committee released a revised text that no longer mentioned the money.

The proposal sparked a major congressional standoff, with the Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, saying his party would fight the funding “with every tool we have”. That included proposing amendments to the bill that could force vulnerable Republicans into tough votes ahead of November’s midterm elections, when the GOP will defend its control of Congress.

The funding’s prospects of passage grew complicated when the Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that the money for the ballroom did not comply with the rules of budget reconciliation, the procedure Republicans were relying on to get around the Democrats’ filibuster in the Senate. Trump’s announcement of a nearly $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate his allies drew objections from congressional Republicans and sparked talk of restraining the fund in the reconciliation bill.

Both developments slowed the bill’s progress, and Republicans failed to reach a 1 June deadline set by Trump to have the measure on his desk.

On Tuesday, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government was dropping that proposal, and in a sign that party leaders believe they have overcome those obstacles, Republicans are on Thursday expected to begin the process of voting on the measure, which would allocate $13bn to Customs and Border Protection $31bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and $2.5bn to the Department of Homeland Security, all of which is intended to be used for immigration enforcement.

On the Senate floor on Wednesday, Schumer gave Democrats the credit for forcing the GOP to revise the bill.

“Even without Trump’s billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded ballroom – which Democrats successfully killed despite Republicans’ best efforts – this bill is rotten through and through,” the minority leader said.