Senate Republicans are including funding for Secret Service security upgrades related to President Donald Trump’s ballroom project as part of a nearly $72 billion package that would shovel cash to immigration enforcement agencies.

The package includes $1 billion in Secret Service funding for “security adjustments and upgrades” including at the White House. This is on top of the almost $3.3 billion the agency received already under the fiscal 2026 DHS funding bill signed into law Thursday.

The White House touted the security funding’s inclusion Tuesday, which it views as Congress approving a project that is currently mired in litigation. A federal judge ruled last month legislators had not properly authorized the project.

“The White House applauds Congress’s latest proposal in its reconciliation package which includes additional funding for security infrastructure upgrades in relation to the long overdue East Wing Modernization Project,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. “Congress has rightly recognized the need for these funds.”

The fund could be used for Secret Service “enhancements” related to the East Wing project, “including above-ground and below-ground security features.” The bill released by the Senate Judiciary Committee stipulates the funds cannot be used for nonsecurity aspects of the project.

All of the funds doled out in the package would remain available through Sept. 30, 2029 — past the end of Trump’s term.

Clare Slattery, a spokesperson for Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said that the bill “does not fund ballroom construction” but “provides funds for Secret Service enhancements that will ensure all presidents, their families and their staffs are adequately protected.”

Two other congressional aides, granted anonymity to speak candidly, also said the legislation does not provide congressional authorization for the larger ballroom construction because the funds are limited to Secret Service security upgrades.

But the Trump administration and its political allies have argued in the wake of the shooting late last month at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that the East Wing renovation is necessary for security. Trump has personally pointed to the security features the ballroom would have, including thick bulletproof glass, and administration lawyers argued in court that security concerns justified continuing with the project.

“I’m building a safe ballroom, and one of the reasons I’m building it is exactly what happened last night,” he said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” the day after the shooting.

Ingle, in his statement Tuesday, said the “the proposal would provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS.”

The $1 billion fund is part of a party-line package Republicans are aiming to clear for Trump’s signature by month’s end. It is more than double the $400 million Trump has estimated for the ballroom project, which he has said will be privately financed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has offered a separate bill to fund the project, told reporters late last month that he envisioned a bunker underneath the ballroom for Secret Service and other national security needs.

Democrats quickly seized on the Secret Service provision and hinted they will force a vote on the Senate floor later this month when Republicans try to pass the overall package.

“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom!” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on X.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added that “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”

The bill from the Senate Judiciary Committee would total nearly $40 billion, including more than $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with smaller amounts for Customs and Border Protection, the Homeland Security secretary’s office and the Justice Department.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel also released a bill outlining more than $32.5 billion in spending for immigration enforcement — most of it for CBP agencies, including Border Patrol.

Republicans want to bring the immigration enforcement funding package to the floor the week of May 18. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in a statement he planned to hold a vote on the panel’s bill later in May.

In addition to trying to squeeze Republicans over the East Wing project, Democrats are planning to comb through the legislation for any procedural defects they can exploit. To skirt the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster, a reconciliation bill has to comply with strict guidelines known as the Byrd rule.

“Senate Democrats are prepared to review this bill line by line and vigorously challenge any provision that violates the Byrd Rule,” said Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.

“At a time when gas prices are rising every day due to Trump’s war of choice with Iran and families continue to struggle to buy groceries, Republicans are ignoring the needs of middle-class America and instead funneling money into Trump’s ballroom and throwing billions at two lawless agencies — agencies that are already sitting on over $100 billion in unspent funds,” he added.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

The federal government paid out more than $338,000 to settle allegations of sexual harassment on behalf of House members or their offices since 2004 — far more than had been previously known — according to Rep. Nancy Mace and a person granted anonymity to describe data provided to the House Oversight Committee.

The panel subpoenaed the information detailing the government payouts after a March committee vote, seeking a full accounting of secret payouts made before the settlements were ended in 2018. Some of the payments have been previously reported, but not all.

Mace (R-S.C.) released a list of offices that had been implicated in the settlements, including former Reps. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) and Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) — all of whom have been previously publicly implicated in misconduct.

Mace also listed a settlement of $8,000 for the office of the late Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) as well as a $15,000 payout associated with former Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.).

Alexander, who left Congress in 2013, said in a brief interview Monday the complaint concerned a former staffer, whom Alexander fired after learning of the accusation. A message to a former McCarthy aide seeking to learn more about the settlement was not immediately returned.

News of the settlements comes amid renewed scrutiny of how allegations of sexual misconduct against lawmakers are handled after former Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) resigned last month over claims of inappropriate behavior with staff. For the first time since the #MeToo reckoning, lawmakers have begun to meaningfully reexamine how they adjudicate such accusations.

Mace said she would release the records provided under subpoena “once we confirm that personally identifiable information of victims and witnesses has been properly redacted.”

“Accountability is not a threat,” she wrote. “It is a promise.”

The payouts she listed, which were confirmed by the person familiar with the data provided to the Oversight Committee, included some that had already been publicly disclosed.

Blue Light News reported in 2018, for instance, that Meehan promised to reimburse the government for a $39,000 severance payment to settle a sexual harassment claim. Farenthold also resigned in 2018, amid a House Ethics Committee inquiry into his conduct and in the wake of revelations about a $84,000 settlement with a former staffer. Farenthold died last year.

Others, however, appear to be new revelations, and the total scope of the payments is about double what was disclosed to lawmakers in 2017 during the last period of intense focus on lawmaker misconduct.

Public reporting linked Massa, who resigned pending an Ethics Committee probe in 2010, with an $85,000 settlement, but the payments listed by Mace include an additional $30,000. Massa could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Similarly, Conyers — who died in 2019 — had been publicly associated with a roughly $27,000 severance payment made in 2014 to an accuser. Mace lists a separate $50,000 payment made in 2010.

The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights said in a letter to Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that it had approved 80 awards or settlements for complaints against House or Senate lawmakers’ offices between 1996 and 2018, part of a total of 349 complaints made against legislative branch offices. The letter said a number of case files had been destroyed or were scheduled to be destroyed pursuant to OCWR’s retention policy.

“There is sufficient available information in the case files to confirm that 30 of the settlements involved matters where the Member was alleged to have committed the misconduct, or where the Member was specifically alleged to know about the misconduct committed by their subordinate, or both,” the letter stated. “In all 30 of these cases, the Member is a Member of the House of Representatives.”

In 2018, Congress passed a law prohibiting the federal government from paying for lawmakers’ settlements for sexual harassment claims. No payments have been made since 2017.

Two recent lawmaker resignations over sexual misconduct allegations have Congress wrestling with a familiar challenge: How can it encourage survivors of abuse to come forward in one of America’s most sensitive workplaces?

Former Reps. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) were both accused of sexual misconduct with staff, putting a fresh spotlight on Capitol Hill’s apparent culture of exploitation — nearly a decade after the #MeToo movement sparked a bipartisan push to improve the reporting process.

Now current and former members are reckoning with the shortcomings of those efforts.

“What we know is that the process is not working, because women staffers are not coming forward with the allegations, the accusations,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) said in an interview. “They’re not telling us what happened to them.”

In Swalwell’s case, four women did come forward — to the media. They spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle and BLN to accuse the then-congressman and California gubernatorial candidate of misconduct ranging from sending unsolicited explicit photos to rape.

Within days of the reports publishing, Swalwell withdrew his campaign for governor and resigned from the House. He has denied any wrongdoing, saying he stepped away from public life to fight the allegations, which have sparked a criminal investigation in New York.

The swift results Swalwell’s accusers saw from the court of public opinion stand in stark contrast to what Capitol Hill denizens have come to expect from the congressional ethics process.

There is no traditional human resources department on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers run their offices as fiefdoms with total control. And employees of the legislative branch are not covered by federal whistleblower protection laws like federal workers in the executive branch.

The House Ethics Committee can take months to issue any formal decisions or disciplinary recommendations, sowing doubt among lawmakers that it is the best means for survivors of misconduct to seek justice.

The Gonzales case helped fuel that skepticism. A wave of media reports alleged misconduct with a female staffer who later committed suicide. Facing rising social media pressure and flagging polling numbers, Gonzales publicly confessed in March to a sexual relationship with the woman and withdrew his reelection bid. He resigned in April.

Before he left, the independent Office of Congressional Conduct concluded in a confidential report there was “substantial reason to believe” Gonzales violated House rules, and the Ethics Committee opened an investigation. That probe was closed with Gonzales’ resignation and did not result in punishment.

Some lawmakers want to offer survivors a similar path to shaming their alleged abusers out of office.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), for instance, has asked any congressional staffers experiencing mistreatment or misconduct to bring their allegations directly to her office. Boebert has pledged to keep accusers anonymous as she uses her media platforms to publicize any credible allegations.

While Boebert said in an interview that she hasn’t written off the official channels completely, other options have to be open.

“Whatever actually holds people accountable,” she said. “I mean, that’s what it’s all about — holding creeps accountable.”

Currently, workers on Capitol Hill have multiple official avenues for reporting sexual misconduct, including filing civil claims through the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. House employees can use the “file a complaint” portal on the House Ethics Committee website and seek support from the chamber’s Office of Employee Advocacy. Senate employees can similarly file with the Senate Ethics Committee, though the guidance is complex and the panel is notorious for its inaction.

The tension between the formal ethics process, with its emphasis on due process, and Boebert’s push to simply throw back the curtains on allegations of sexual malfeasance is not new. The dynamic was central to the 2018 #MeToo debates, which resulted in an overhaul of Congress’ largely opaque workplace-harassment reporting process.

Under those changes, victims are no longer required to go through mediation for their complaints and are permitted to work remotely while the investigation process plays out. The Office of Employee Advocacy was created in the 2018 revamp to offer legal support to complainants.

But with sexual misconduct back in the headlines — and rumors of more bad behavior running rampant — some lawmakers including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) are seeing new wisdom in Boebert’s name-and-shame strategy.

The clash of philosophies about how Congress should police itself presents a challenge for reform-minded lawmakers. Some want to simply better enforce existing law, and there are bipartisan concerns about preserving some semblance of due process without letting it become a perpetual shield for workplace predators.

“We cannot let allegations and rumors and Twitter posts lead to expulsions,” said Leger Fernández.

Other changes made in 2018 under the ME TOO Congress Act included ending the longstanding practice of using taxpayer dollars to pay out harassment settlements against lawmakers, instead requiring members to pay out of pocket.

Even with those changes, survivors still fear retaliation and being “blackballed” out of a career in politics or public service if they report their bosses. And victim advocates say the official processes remain lengthy and burdensome — all of which has weighed on a key architect of the 2018 law.

“Why, after we … provided so many more protections to the victims, that these women didn’t feel they could come forward?” former Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who was victim of sexual assault during her own time as a staffer, said in an interview.

In the eight years since the last update to Capitol Hill’s sexual misconduct laws, few lawmakers have been subjected to a full Ethics inquiry regarding sexual misconduct. Multiple members who faced public allegations, however, opted to leave Congress before the panel could release a report, including Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) in 2019 and Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) in 2021.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he has empowered Leger Fernández, who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, to lead Democrats on “ensuring that we have the type of accountability and system in place that treats victims and staffers with the dignity and respect that they deserve.”

She plans to pursue bipartisan legislation this Congress that refines the 2018 reforms and identified Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chair of the House Administration Committee, as a likely partner.

But Steil has his own ideas for how to address sexual misconduct in Congress, telling Blue Light News in a statement his panel is “always looking at ways we can improve compliance with existing laws.” He referenced the Congressional Accountability Act, a 1995 law which applied some federal labor laws to Congress and was the underlying statute updated in 2018.

Speaker Mike Johnson has also signaled he wants to focus on enforcement, though he said he is eager to hear proposals to encourage more reporting. He cited his desire to protect his two daughters who work on Capitol Hill as committee aides.

“I’m a father, not just the speaker of the House,” he told reporters last month. “If there are ways to tighten the rules, if there are suggestions, we’re seeking that from all members. We’re open to that.”He also suggested party operatives need to be more discerning in whom they recruit for office: “We don’t need people running for Congress because they see this as some opportunity for their own individual endeavors. I’ll leave it at that.”

Speier offered one jesting suggestion for dealing with predatory men.

“Maybe we need to put padlocks on their zippers when they first get to Congress,” she said. “I don’t know, but it’s got to be fixed, and we’ve got to do something bold.”