Rand Paul introduced a Senate bill that would authorize Trump's planned 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom using private donations only, with no taxpayer money, after a gunman breached security at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton. Paul's proposal sets up an expedited approval process for the ballroom and similar future White House projects without providing federal funding, and Trump has publicly backed it over a competing $400 million Graham-Britt-Schmitt bill. The 'threats keep growing' framing is grounded in real events — DOJ called Saturday's incident the third assassination attempt on Trump since 2024 — but Paul leaves out that the East Wing was already demolished and that critics, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, are suing to halt the project. Worth knowing: roughly 40 firms have donated, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir, and Coinbase, raising transparency questions Paul's bill addresses only partially through committee review.