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Trump Administration Finally Discloses White House Ballroom Funding Contract in Response to Public Citizen’s FOIA Lawsuit
The agreement opens a first door into knowing more about the project’s funding scheme
The Trump Administration today disclosed the funding agreement for Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project. The administration disclosed the 14-page “Philanthropic Support Agreement” between the White House, the National Park Service and the non-profit Trust for the National Mall in response to Public Citizen’s FOIA request and a subsequent lawsuit.
In October, Public Citizen submitted a FOIA request to the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior seeking the White House Ballroom contract. In December, when the agencies had failed to respond, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit asking the court to compel the agencies to comply with FOIA.
“The Trump Administration’s failure to disclose this contract was flatly unlawful,” said Wendy Liu, Public Citizen attorney and lead counsel on the lawsuit. “The American people are entitled to transparency over this multi-million-dollar project, and this win gets us a bit closer to knowing the truth.”
“This is the first time we don’t have to take the word of the White House; we can see details of this scheme in black and white,” said Public Citizen Democracy Advocate Jon Golinger. “This document reveals that anonymous donations are the heart of this agreement. The questions this raises are, of the hundreds of millions being funneled in secret, who are these anonymous donors, and what are they hiding? The American people deserve answers, and we’ll keep fighting until they get them.”
While many questions remain unanswered surrounding the ballroom’s funding scheme, Public Citizen exposed a myriad of conflicts of interest concerns about pay-to-play government contracts and dropped enforcement actions benefiting ballroom donors in the report, Banquet of Greed.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'Call Your Senator': New Iran War Powers Resolution Set for US Senate Vote
“This war has simply been a disaster, and there is absolutely no reason we should go full steam ahead back into it," says Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Apr 22, 2026
Opponents of the US-Israeli assault on Iran are urging like-minded Americans to call their senators ahead of Wednesday afternoon's expected vote on yet another bid to curb President Donald Trump's power to continue waging his war.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said she will force a vote Wednesday on a war powers resolution "to end Trump’s illegal war of choice in Iran."
“The ceasefire, which is being broken left and right, expires in less than two days, and Congress now must do its job," Baldwin said in a Monday statement referring to Trump's extended truce. "This war has simply been a disaster, and there is absolutely no reason we should go full steam ahead back into it."
TODAY Senate Democrats will force a vote on a War Powers Resolution to assert Congressional authority over Donald Trump’s reckless war in Iran for the FIFTH timeWill Senate Republicans finally step and exercise their constitutional responsibility?Via @warren.senate.gov
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— Senate Democrats (@democrats.senate.gov) April 22, 2026 at 10:16 AM
Baldwin noted Tuesday that 13 US service members "are dead and hundreds more are injured, gas and fertilizer prices are tthrough the roof, and we have already spent an untold amount of taxpayer money—but it certainly is in the tens of billions of dollars."
US-Israeli bombing has also killed or wounded more than 30,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, including hundreds of children, according to officials in Tehran and international organizations.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) urged Americans to "call your senator" ahead of Wednesday's vote.
NIAC said that "lawmakers who have defended Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran without congressional approval argue the president can legally wage the conflict for 60 days before needing authorization" under the War Powers Act of 1973, which was enacted during the Nixon administration toward the end of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
"That 60-day clock is now almost up, just one week remains," the group added. "As that clock winds down, last week’s House and Senate votes make one thing clear: Support for reining in the war is growing, but not yet enough to force action. That leaves members, especially Republicans who have largely resisted these efforts, facing increasing pressure as the legal deadline comes into view."
Baldwin argued Monday that "diplomacy is the only way out of this mess—and that is where every ounce of attention of this administration should be, not threatening to commit war crimes."
Trump's threats have ranged from destroying Iranian power plants and bridges to genocidal destruction of Iran's entire civilization. Threatening to commit genocide and war crimes is a crime.
Baldwin said Monday that "the only question will be whether my Republican colleagues want to own the consequences" of Trump's war "raging on, or they will step up for the American people and put an end to this life-taking, cost-raising chaos.”
Every Republican senator with the exception of libertarian Rand Paul of Kentucky has voted against previous Iran war powers resolutions, the last of which was defeated in a 47-52 vote on April 15, with right-wing Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman the only Democrat to vote against the measure.
There have been four failed attempts in the House and Senate to pass Iran war powers resolutions. On Tuesday, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said they will try to force a vote next week on yet another such measure.
In addition to Iran, members of Congress have tried—and failed—to pass multiple war powers resolutions limiting Trump’s attacks on Venezuela, whose president was kidnapped during a brief US invasion in January.
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Israel Condemned for Bombing Rescue Workers Trying to Reach Journalist Buried Under Rubble
"Israel treats journalism as a crime," said one Beirut-based editor.
Apr 22, 2026
The Israel Defense Forces were condemned on Wednesday following reports that the IDF dropped a grenade on Red Cross workers as they attempted to rescue a Lebanese journalist believed trapped beneath rubble in southern Lebanon.
Two journalists from the local media outlet al-Akhbar, Amal Khalil and Zeinab Faraj, were attacked by the IDF after arriving to report at the scene of a previous strike that had killed two civilians in a car in the village of Al-Tiri, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Heidi Pett.
The journalists, who were wounded, found that their own car was stuck under rubble from the second strike and that they were unable to leave.
Red Cross workers then spent hours attempting to reach the reporters. But according to the National News Agency (NNA), other Israeli attacks targeted a major road leading to the village "to prevent ambulance teams from reaching the two journalists.”
Faraj was rescued and brought to the hospital, where she is being treated for severe injuries that require surgery. The NNA and other Lebanese outlets reported that as she was transported to the hospital, the Red Cross vehicle came under Israeli fire, leaving visible bullet holes.
While Faraj was evacuated, however, Khalil remained trapped. According to Reuters, the Lebanese army asked the Israeli military to allow rescuers to retrieve her.
Lebanon's president, Joseph Aoun, also urged the Lebanese Red Cross to cooperate with the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers to "carry out the rescue operation in the shortest possible time.”
But as the rescue workers lifted Khalil from the rubble, an Israeli drone dropped a stun grenade on them, believed to be a warning, which forced the workers to withdraw from the town, according to the Lebanese outlet LBCI. The Red Cross is expected to return later to continue the search for Khalil.
A recent profile of Khalil in the Beirut-based Public Source magazine celebrated her more than two-decade career, which began shortly before Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006. Though she resisted the label of "war correspondent," much of her work since 2023 has again focused on covering what she's described as "resistance" to Israeli aggression.
"I always highlight the steadfastness of ordinary people in their border villages, like the farmers who continued tending their land while the Israeli settlements across from them in northern Palestine were empty," Khalil said. "I debunk the enemy’s narrative of targeting only military sites by showing evidence of them bombing homes, farms, and killing children. After the [2024] ceasefire, I also started documenting how the destruction that followed was many times greater than what had occurred during the war itself."
According to Reporters Without Borders, Khalil previously received death threats from an Israeli phone number in September 2024, while she was reporting on the war that broke out between Israel and Lebanon earlier that year.
She received a message reading, "We know where you are, and we will reach you when the time comes." The message concluded, "I suggest you flee to Qatar or somewhere else if you want to keep your head connected to your shoulders."
The deliberate killing of journalists who are civilians constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law.
The IDF said it was aware of reports that journalists were injured in Wednesday's attacks, but did not confirm them to The Associated Press. The IDF denied that it was preventing rescue teams from reaching the area. The military also said it “does not target journalists and acts to mitigate harm to them.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that last year was the deadliest year for journalists in the more than three decades since they began collecting data. An unprecedented 129 journalists and media workers were killed on duty last year. Israel was responsible for two-thirds of the press killings in 2024 and 2025, most of whom were Palestinians in Gaza.
Lara Bitar, editor of Public Source magazine, wrote on social media Wednesday that Khalil and her rescuers had come under attack “because Israel treats journalism as a crime.”
Bitar said, "Amal has been tirelessly and lovingly covering communities impacted by war, occupation, and displacement for decades."
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'They Don't Seem to Give a Shit': Trump and GOP Push Food Aid Cuts as Iran War Costs Soar
"It’s disgusting," said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. "We ought to be able to end hunger in this country. It's a political condition. We have the money."
Apr 22, 2026
Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern on Wednesday said it is "disgusting" that President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are pursuing more cuts to federal nutrition assistance for low-income Americans while simultaneously backing a war of choice in Iran that has cost US taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
"We have 46 million people in this country who are hungry, and they don’t seem to give a shit," McGovern (Mass.) told reporters, warning that Republicans are bent on enacting additional cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in their forthcoming budget reconciliation package. "We ought to be able to end hunger in this country. It’s a political condition. We have the money."
McGovern: SNAP provides about $2 per person per meal. We’re told there are more cuts to SNAP coming in reconciliation. We have 46 million people in this country who are hungry, and they don’t seem to give a shit, and it’s disgusting.
We ought to be able to end hunger in this… pic.twitter.com/Aq1o8L0ZQa
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 22, 2026
McGovern noted that the Trump administration has "spent $60 billion on the war in Iran"—a rough estimate based on analyses indicating that the US is spending around $1 billion per day on the conflict. The Trump administration is also pushing Congress to approve up to $100 billion in new funding for the Iran war.
More broadly, Trump has requested that lawmakers pass a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a nearly 50% increase compared to current levels—while pushing for more cuts to healthcare, housing, nutrition, and education programs.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are demanding additional food aid cuts as part of the annual appropriations process, as the unprecedented $200 billion in SNAP cuts they enacted last summer continue to wreak havoc nationwide.
On Wednesday, the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee released its funding bill for the Agriculture Department and other agencies. The proposal would significantly underfund the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC), taking food benefits from around 5.4 million toddlers, preschoolers, and pregnant and postpartum WIC participants, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the Republican funding bill "cuts grocery vouchers specifically for women, infants, and children" and "pares back assistance for rural communities, slashing water and waste grants and cutting resources to help provide broadband service in rural areas."
"Republicans are willing to increase funding by hundreds of billions of dollars to fight foreign wars," said DeLauro. "But when it comes to supporting American farmers and hungry families, all they can do is cut, cut, cut. The American people deserve better."
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