Republicans could abandon $1bn proposal for Trump’s ballroom – US politics live

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On Capitol Hill today we are expecting votes in the House and in the Senate.

Lawmakers in the lower chamber could vote for legislation that would hold Trump back from continuing the war with Iran.

In the upper chamber, a “vote-a-rama”, in which lawmakers were able to offer amendments to the bill, about the reconciliation bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, is expected. Democrats are expected to offer amendments regarding the proposed ballroom budget and the Trump administration’s “Anti Weaponization Fund.”

Also on the agenda are House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer holding a news conference to talk about the tensions regarding the Republican budget proposal at 10am.

Tom Perkins

Student sues University of Michigan over alleged surveillance tied to Gaza protests

A University of Michigan student is suing the school, accusing it of violating his constitutional rights when it waged a vast undercover surveillance operation against him in response to his protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The lawsuit, which will be filed on Thursday in federal court by Cair-MI and U-M student Josiah Walker, claims the university and individual private investigators conspired to intimidate, terrorize and retaliate against Walker in 2024 and 2025.

According to the suit, the university and private investigators falsified police reports, manipulated police documents, illegally stalked and assaulted Walker, illegally seized his property and executed “malicious prosecutions” against him. The “targeted and relentless” campaign caused Walker “psychological trauma”, says the suit, which was shared in advance with the Guardian.

Walker is a leader with Students Allied For Freedom and Equality (Safe), a group affiliated with Student for Justice in Palestine, and a volunteer with the campus Muslim chaplaincy.

The Guardian in June 2025 revealed that U-M had hired dozens of undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian students, trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations. The investigators sometimes threatened students, and one drove a car at Walker who had to jump out of the way, video Walker captured shows.

In addition to the indictment of former Cuban leader Raul Castro and Trump’s comments about Cuba being a “failed nation,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio delivered a direct video address to the Cuban people in Spanish Wednesday.

“The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people,” he said.

Rubio spoke about GAESA, the Cuban military business conglomerate founded by Castro.

“Cuba is not controlled by any ‘revolution.’ Cuba is controlled by GAESA,” he said. “The only role played by the so-called ‘government’ is to demand that you continue making ‘sacrifices’ and repressing anyone who dares to complain.”

Video shows ICE violently arresting Oregon farm workers and using facial recognition

Body-cam footage shared with the Guardian shows US immigration officers forced farm workers out of a van, in what a judge has called ‘unlawful’ arrest, in Oregon, smashing their windows and using facial recognition software to try to identify one of them.

Videos from a 30 October 2025 operation were disclosed in court as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest tactics and racial profiling by agents. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian.

The officers did not have warrants to detain the workers, and a federal judge later said the arrests appeared to be unlawful and unjustified.

The footage shows an agent using his phone to capture the face of one of the detained workers, and agents later admitted in court that they used a facial recognition app during the operation. The case provides a window into ICE’s expanding use of this surveillance technology across the US, which has raised significant privacy and civil liberties concerns, particularly since the app can yield inaccurate results.

Melody Schreiber

A previously undetected outbreak of Ebola is coursing through parts of central Africa, and the US appears to be doing little to help stop it, after massive cuts to global and domestic public health efforts.

There is no cure and no vaccine for the rare Bundibugyo variant of Ebola, which has caused two outbreaks in recent decades. Health leaders and scientists are now racing to understand where the virus is spreading and attempting to stop it – but the US is notably absent in these efforts.

In the past year, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been dismantled, thousands of staff at US health agencies were laid off, communications stalled and key scientific research canceled.

There are 482 suspected cases and about 116 deaths reported since April in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with two cases and one death in Uganda and potential spread to neighboring South Sudan. The outbreak “might have been going on for a few months”, said Kristian Andersen, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research.

The outbreak was immediately declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), before even convening the committee that usually makes that determination. Officials say it may last for months.

“The DRC is one of the most vulnerable health systems in the world, and was the second-biggest recipient of USAID funding,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Center for Global Health Policy and Politics at Georgetown University. The US withdrawal of funding with “zero notice” has been “disruptive to the country’s basic activities”, he said.

US foreign assistance to the DRC dropped from $1.4bn in 2024 to $431m in 2025 and only $21m so far this year. Assistance to Uganda dropped from $674m to $377m in 2025 and a negative $1.2m so far in 2026.

President Donald Trump’s plan to build a triumphal arch in Washington is getting a second look from a federal agency that suggested changes before it approved the concept last month.

The proposed 250ft (76m) arch is one of several projects the Republican president is pursuing alongside a White House ballroom to leave his imprint on Washington.

He has said some of his other projects, such as adding a blue coating to the interior of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool , will beautify the city in time for 4 July celebrations of America’s 250th birthday.

The US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were appointed by Trump, approved the concept for the arch at its monthly meeting in April.

Commissioners are set to consider and possibly vote on updated plans when they meet again on Thursday.

Dharna Noor

A prominent environmental organizer calling for a nationwide moratorium on data centers as he runs for the Democratic nomination in a swing Michigan congressional district has secured an endorsement from Bernie Sanders.

Will Lawrence, co-founder of the youth-led Sunrise Movement climate justice group, was a key figure behind the campaign for a Green New Deal to battle economic and racial injustice while also fighting climate change.

Now he’s running for US Congress, in a three-way Democratic primary to represent the party in Michigan’s purple seventh district.

“I learned at Sunrise just how important it is who is in office,” Lawrence, a Lansing native, said. The group made headlines in 2018 when it stormed the office of then House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, demanding a swift end to fossil fuels and a jobs guarantee.

Voters in Michigan’s seventh district voted for Donald Trump in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 US presidential elections, and also elected Republican Tom Barrett to Congress in 2024. But the district has been labelled a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report ahead of November’s midterm elections, and is a key target for Democrats.

On Thursday morning Sanders, the influential independent US senator from Vermont, threw his support behind Lawrence.

In a statement, Sanders praised Lawrence as an “accomplished organizer” who will “demand real accountability for big tech and AI companies” as gargantuan data centers are constructed across the US.

Republicans could abandon $1bn security proposal for Trump's ballroom complex

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Senate Republicans could strip Donald Trump’s lavish White House ballroom complex from the Department of Homeland Security funding bill after members queried the timing and lack of detail in the $1bn Secret Service request.

Facing pressure from the Trump administation, Republicans have tried to add the money to a roughly $70bn bill to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.

However, the security proposal met with backlash from some GOP lawmakers who are questioning the cost and how the taxpayer dollars would be used, AP reported. While the bill’s text has yet to be released, the Senate hopes to pass it this week and send it to the House before leaving for a week-long Memorial Day recess.

The dispute comes as Senate majority leader John Thune acknowledged “ongoing vote issues” on Wednesday with leaders attempting to measure Republican support, as well as “ongoing parliamentarian issues” as they try to figure out what will be allowed in the bill under the chamber’s rules.

“There’s always a consequence with taking on United States senators,” Thune said. “[The president] obviously has his favorites and people he wants to endorse and that’s his prerogative. But what we have to deal with up here is moving the agenda, and obviously that can become slightly more complicated.”

Republican senator John Kennedy said on Wednesday that the bill would be “back to square one” without the security money because “the votes are not there.”

Meanwhile, senator Thom Tillis said the effort to add the security package to the bill was a “bad idea” because he does not think there is enough backing to pass it, even if the cost were reduced. Axios reported recently that Tillis would not support the bill if it is considered this week.

Democrats have criticized Republicans for trying to fund Trump’s ballroom when voters are concerned about basic affordability issues.

In other developments:

• The US issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, potentially paving the way for a US military raid to capture him.

• Two police officers attacked by rioters at the US Capitol during the January 6 riot sued Donald Trump over plans to create a $1.776bn “anti-weaponization” fund.

• Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican congressman from a Philadelphia-area district carried by Kamala Harris in 2024, pledged on Wednesday to “try to kill” the $1.776bn slush fund created by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice this week, which could be used to compensate rioters who tried to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election.

• Republican senator Bill Cassidy denounced two of Trump’s passion projects: $1bn in taxpayer funding for the White House ballroom the president can’t stop talking about, and the $1.776bn slush fund he plans to use to reward supporters who stormed the Capitol to try to keep him in office despite losing the 2020 election.

• A former federal prosecutor in Florida pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges that she illegally emailed herself a copy of the unreleased special counsel report on Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.