Donald Trump’s best birthday present came two days early, right before he had cage fighters and a few thousand guests over to the White House.
The present was more than a third of a billion dollars, which his budget director Russ Vought pulled out of the Secret Service and moved into a White House construction account. That was money for an agency that guards the president but also hunts financial criminals and protects children, and lawmakers in both parties say they believe it is really headed for the ballroom Congress refused to fund last month. Even Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican who has served 45 years and whose committee wrote the funding, says nobody told him it was moving.
For a year Trump claimed donors were covering a $200 million ballroom that would stand beside the East Wing. Then he bulldozed the East Wing. The project now runs $600 million, and the donors he bragged about are nowhere near covering it. The shortfall is landing on the Secret Service, and on us.
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Trump settles his $100 million lawsuit against niece Mary Trump over her leak of his tax records to the New York Times.
Today’s GovBrief News
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Source: Minnesota Public Radio
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Source: Semafor
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Source: CBS News
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Source: Euronews
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Source: The Wall Street Journal [gift link]
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Source: The Independent
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Source: The Pennsylvania Capital-Star
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Source: The Maine Morning Star
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A Missouri judge strikes down most of the state's abortion restrictions and restores medication abortion for the first time since 2018, enforcing the reproductive-rights amendment voters passed in 2024.
Source: KSHB Kansas City
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The Supreme Court bars prosecuting a Texas marijuana user under the federal law banning illegal-drug users from owning guns, calling it a Second Amendment violation.
Source: SCOTUS blog
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Source: The New York Focus
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Source: The New York Times [gift link]
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Republican Representative Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, unseen in Washington and absent from every House vote since March 5, says he will return June 30 after a 100-day medical absence.
Source: USA Today
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The White House quietly redirects more than $350 million in OBBBA Secret Service funds toward the ballroom project, days after Congress refused Trump's $1 billion request and despite his no-taxpayer-money pledge.
Source: The Associated Press
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Oregon Governor Kotek signs a law guaranteeing every child under 5 a free monthly book, codifying the Dolly Parton Imagination Library statewide as the state fights some of the nation's lowest reading scores.
Source: The Oregon Capital Chronicle
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Source: The Oregon Capital Chronicle
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