May. 17, 2026, 5:33 PM EDT

President Donald Trump faces a serious new hurdle to secure taxpayer funding for his exceedingly controversial proposed White House ballroom after the Senate parliamentarian ruled against a $1 billion provision in a bill to fund his pet project.

The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said over the weekend that Republicans cannot include the ballroom funding provision in a larger partisan bill because it is a technical violation of Senate rules, according to the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee who released the parliamentarian’s findings.

“A project as complex and large in scale as Trump’s proposed ballroom necessarily involves the coordination of many government agencies which span the jurisdiction of many Senate committees,” MacDonough concluded, according to Sen. Jeff Merkley.

The administration has estimated that $220 million of the $1 billion would go toward building the new ballroom in the East Wing, which was demolished last October to make way for the new structure Trump has envisioned.

The parliamentarian in her ruling said the provision violated the Byrd rule, which is meant to curb extraneous spending in proposed budget reconciliation bills. A violation of the Byrd rule also means the provision would be subject to a 60-vote filibuster threshold, effectively killing it since Democrats are in opposition.

“The president started talking about this thing with $100 billion, then $200 billion, and he was going to pay for it,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said. “And now it’s a billion — or $100 million, $200 million — and now a billion dollars, and he wants the American people to pay for a gilded ballroom when they cannot afford to drive their kids to a soccer game.”

Some Republicans disagreed with the parliamentarian’s interpretation of Senate rules. Ryan Wrasse, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, pushed back against the ruling.

“Redraft. Refine. Resubmit. None of this is abnormal during a Byrd process,” Wrasse wrote on X on Saturday.

It was not immediately clear whether Republicans would be allowed under Senate rules to resubmit the provision — the budget resolution only allows language to originate from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“As drafted, the provision inappropriately funds activities outside the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee,” the ruling reads.

Trump previously said that the ballroom would be privately funded and cost around $400 million. The ballooning cost has provoked open criticism from Republicans, from vulnerable moderates to hardline conservatives, in what could become a potential revolt.

Mychael Schnell and Syedah Asghar

Peggy Helman is a desk associate at MS NOW.

May. 17, 2026, 4:31 PM EDT

Ahead of an all-day prayer event backed by the White House on Washington’s National Mall Sunday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson doubled down on Christianity as a core part of the American identity — over the objections of religious freedom advocates.

“The naysayers who have created this new term ‘Christian Nationalism’ as a pejorative, a derogatory term, are trying to silence the influence and voices of Christians,” Johnson said in an interview with Fox News before the event commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary. “And I think that’s wildly inappropriate.”

In addition to the speaker, the evangelical-style festival — dubbed the “National Jubilee of Prayer” — featured Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several conservative Christian leaders and right-leaning pop-culture figures. They included Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, Jonathan Falwell, son of the late Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell, and Sadie Carroway Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame.

The White House, in a statement posted to social media Sunday, said “thousands of Americans are gathering on the National Mall TODAY for a powerful day of prayer, praise, and patriotism as we chart the course for America’s next 250 years and rededicate ourselves to ONE NATION UNDER GOD.”

In between returning from his official trip to China and issuing fresh threats to IranPresident Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I HOPE EVERYBODY AT REDEDICATE 250 IS HAVING A GOOD TIME. IF THERE IS ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP, JUST HAVE OUR BEAUTIFUL, BOTH INSIDE AND OUT, RACHAEL C.D., GIVE ME A CALL. I’M BACK FROM CHINA!!!,” an apparent reference to Rachel Campos-Duffy, Fox and Friends co-host and wife to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Hegseth, who has led Christian prayer servicesat the Pentagon during his tenure, recounted a story of President George Washington at Valley Forge in a video message.

“Amid all the bleak nights, the loss and despair, the lack of proper support, George Washington performed a profound act: he prayed,” Hegseth said. “And on this day of ‘Rededicate 250,’ let us follow George Washington’s example. Let us pray as he did. Let us pray without ceasing. Let us pray for our nation on bended knee. And let us ask our lord and savior Jesus Christ as Washington did on that momentous day.”

Speaking passionately at the podium, Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress told the crowd that “these leaders who loved our country and loved our God would be called Christian Nationalists today, and it is a title they would have gladly embraced. By the way if being a Christian Nationalist means loving Jesus christ and loving America, count me in!”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious freedom advocacy organization, denounced the event as a “Jubilee of Christian Nationalism.”

“As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence on July 4 – and President Trump’s Christian Nationalist ‘jubilee’ on May 17 – I urge everyone to celebrate the fundamentally American invention of church-state separation, which promises everyone the freedom to live as themselves and believe as they choose, as long as they don’t harm others,” the organization’s CEO, Rachel Laser, said in a statement. “Church-state separation is what enables us to come together as equals and build a stronger democracy.”

Laser said in an interview with C-SPAN Sunday that the event “should alarm all Americans who are patriotic.” Hailing the separation of church and state as a pillar of American democracy, she slammed the event as a “government-sponsored national church service on the National Mall and it’s extremely problematic. It’s violating our promise.”

“And then I just want to bring us back to something that the founders were focused on that we forget about today, which is that they were avoiding violence, bloody wars, crusades,” Laser added Sunday. “They saw what happens when you don’t have church-state separation. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in America we’ve become more and more violent the more we undermine church-state separation in this country.”

The government watchdog group Public Citizen also condemned the event, saying in a statement, “This highly politicized mess is not what Congress envisioned a decade ago in passing legislation creating an official commission for the 250th anniversary.”

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

May. 17, 2026, 3:25 PM EDT

President Donald Trump signaled Sunday that the U.S. is prepared to resume fighting Iran, threatening that the country had “better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”

Trump spoke by phone Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli official told MS NOW, as the U.S.-Iran ceasefire was strained further by new strikes in the U.A.E. that sparked a fire at a nuclear power plant.

“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!,” Trump wrote in social media post.

Trump is expected to meet with his senior national security team on Tuesday in the White House Situation Room to “discuss options for military actions against Iran,” according to reporting by Axiosciting two American officials. MS NOW has not independently confirmed the reporting.

Iran did not take responsibility for the fresh strike in the U.A.E., but a senior Emirati official told MS NOW that the attack was an “unacceptable escalation” and a violation of the ceasefire. The official added that “this is an attack against a nuclear power plant during a ceasefire.”

In a statement, the U.A.E Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the strike an “unprovoked terrorist attack.”

“These attacks constitute a dangerous escalation, an unacceptable act of aggression and a direct threat to the country’s security,” the statement said. “The targeting of peaceful nuclear energy facilities is a flagrant violation of international law, the UN charter and the principles of humanitarian law.”

No increase in radiation has been detected at the plant and no injuries were reported, according to Emirati officials. Two of the three drones that attacked the plant were shot down.

One drone hit an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter of the ⁠Barakah Nuclear Power Plant, the Abu Dhabi Media Office said, CNBC reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was following the situation closely and called for “maximum military restraint” near any nuclear power plant.

The U.A.E., a primary target of Iran since the war began, has been attacking in retaliation, according to recent reporting by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Emirati officials have not confirmed that they have carried out military strikes.

The U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran has stretched into its 11th week, as domestic gas prices continue to soar amid the double naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil trade route. Tehran, already crippled by sanctions before the war, faces a worsening economic crisis. Peace talks, mediated by Pakistan, have so far failed with the U.S. remaining firm on its demand that Iran abandon its nuclear program and Iran underscoring its right to enrichment.

Contrary to statements made by Trump administration officials that Iran’s missile stockpile has been destroyed, classified U.S. intelligence assessments of Iran’s military capacity have revealed that it has regained access to key missile sites and launchers.

Julia Jester contributed to this report.