BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
07 May 2026
G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project
NOT MY pres drumpf / trump is a compulsive liar...I am so tired of his greed, his corruption, his lies, narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, his repulsive family, his ignorance, hate, bigotry, misogyny, advocacy of violence and his apostasy of Christianity and I believe most Americans are too along with the rest of the world. He is a deranged neo-nazi fascist warmonger rivaling hitler in evil. He said his ballroom would be paid for with donations from his rich friends, now he wants to take at least $1 billion from Americans to pay for it and his corrupt ass licking gop / greed over people-republicans in congress are ready to give it to him. From the New York Times.....
G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Senate Republicans have inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.
The leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees on Monday released plans for the roughly $70 billion package, which would significantly bolster spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of Mr. Trump’s term using a party-line legislative process that can skirt a filibuster.
A surprise addition to the measure was the $1 billion proposed by the Judiciary Committee for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.
While the president has previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through private donations, a spokesman on Tuesday said the White House applauded the proposed security funding for a “long overdue” project.
Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have escalated their efforts to defend the project after the attempted assault late last month at a journalism gala in Washington attended by the president.
The bill says the public money would be directed to “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” It also bars any of the funding being spent on “non-security elements.”
But Democrats pounced on the proposal, signaling that they intended to make the ballroom a centerpiece of their opposition to the measure and their election-year message that the president and his party were not meeting voters’ needs.
“Republicans are on a different planet than American families,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a post on social media. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Top Democrats also noted that consideration of the bill would put all senators on the record on a White House construction project that polls have shown to be unpopular.
“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said on social media.
Should the provision survive and be enacted into law, it could clear away legal obstacles to construction of the ballroom, which a federal judge has ruled requires congressional approval.
Republicans are advancing the legislation outside of normal congressional spending channels because Senate Democrats had blocked money for ICE and the border control in a dispute over the tactics and conduct of federal immigration officers. That fight shut down parts of the Department of Homeland Security for almost 80 days.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”
After the attack at the journalism dinner last month, some congressional Republicans proposed that the ballroom be paid for with $400 million in federal money, with private donations to be used for extras such as china. Democrats quickly made clear that they would not support that effort, leaving the potential funding uncertain.
On Tuesday, Davis Ingle, the White House spokesman, cited the recent incident in praising the security funding in the bill.
“As President Trump has repeatedly said, the White House must be a safe and secure complex that generations of future presidents and visitors to the people’s house can enjoy,” he said.
Republicans had pushed for the bill to be kept free of any proposals not directly tied to the immigration crackdown to make it easier to push through rapidly to meet the president’s June 1 deadline, but evidently chose to make an exception in the case of the White House project.
The Judiciary Committee measure would provide about $39 billion and the homeland security measure another $32.5 billion for hiring, training and equipping new immigration enforcement officers and purchasing and employing new border control technology, including artificial intelligence. The homeland security secretary would receive $5 billion in a flexible fund and the legislation includes $1.4 billion for the Justice Department. None of the spending would be offset with cuts elsewhere.
Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who leads the Homeland Security Committee, has been resistant to surges in new spending but said he is backing the funding push because of Democratic recalcitrance.
“Senate Democrats refuse to vote for a single dollar to secure our borders or enforce our immigration laws, even against the most violent illegal aliens,” Mr. Paul said in a statement. “To make sure those vital functions are funded, my committee will vote later this month to give the funding needed.”
Republicans can ultimately pass the spending if they hold together, but Democrats are expected to try to make it as difficult as they can by subjecting Republicans to politically tough votes six months out from the midterm elections.
“Republicans are in danger of losing control of Congress in November, so they are going outside the usual bipartisan appropriations process to fund these unpopular policies through the end of the Trump administration,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.
VIDEO & ARTICLE: What Happened When the Pope Had to Call Customer Service 5MAI26
Pope Leo XIV has a palace, the Swiss Guard and the popemobile. But he also has hassles, just like everyone else. Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press
THIS is hysterical! Having worked for decades in customer service I probably wouldn't have hung up on the customer for telling me he was the pope. I checked for an update on the employee, there is no record of her being fired. This from the New York Times.....
AND THEN THEY TOLD POPE LEO......16APR26
What Happened When the Pope Had to Call Customer Service
Spoiler alert: There was no miracle.
Reporting from Chicago
Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.
About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.
The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.
The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.
Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”
The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.
“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.
She hung up.
Even while leading more than one billion Catholics around the world and living in gilded splendor amid priceless works of art, popes can sometimes be entangled in the mundane, both accidentally and with purpose. In the first 24 hours of Pope Francis’ papacy in 2013, he insisted on paying his own hotel bill and collecting his own luggage, a gesture of humility to Catholic clergy.
Pope Leo rose from modest roots in Dolton, Ill., a small suburb just outside Chicago, before serving as a bishop in Peru and in an influential post at the Vatican when he was elected pope nearly one year ago.
Father McCarthy confirmed in an email that the story about the bank hassle was true. He had been telling a group of Catholics about his friendship with Pope Leo at an educational meeting geared toward men and boys at a Naperville church.
The priest is a well-known figure among Catholics on the South Side, an Augustinian and leader at St. Rita of Cascia High School. He first met Pope Leo in the 1980s in Chicago, where they grew up in similar working-class neighborhoods in the city and its close suburbs, and has visited the pope at the Vatican.
A spokesman for the Vatican did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the bank episode.
The matter was sorted out thanks to the intervention of another priest who had a connection to the bank president, Father McCarthy said.
There was no word on the customer service representative who had cut off her call with the bank’s most famous customer.
“Could you imagine being known as the woman who hung up on the pope?” Father McCarthy said.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Did You Hear the One About the Pope Calling Customer Service?.
06 May 2026
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 5MAI26
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