No. The backlash to Obama’s win may have made the Norwegian Nobel Committee even more hesitant to make a controversial pick. The Committee’s former secretary Geir Lundestad later said that the decision to award Obama “didn’t achieve what [the committee] had hoped for.”
It’s widely believed that Nobel voters will be turned off by Trump’s open campaigning. And three of the five voting members have publicly criticized him for other reasons, as the Washington Postreported in August:
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, in December decried “the erosion of freedom of expression even in democratic nations,” calling out Trump by name.
“Trump launched more than 100 verbal attacks on the media during his election campaign,” said Frydnes, 40, who has also served as the head of PEN Norway, a group that promotes freedom of expression.
… “After just over 100 days as president, [Trump] is well underway in dismantling American democracy, and he is doing everything he can to tear down the liberal and rules-based world order,” wrote Kristin Clemet, a former center-right Norwegian education minister and another of the five committee members, in May.
A third member of the committee — and thus potentially the lock on a Trump-skeptic majority — posted several messages critical of the president during his first term. In a photo on Facebook posted the day before the 2020 election, the committee member, Gry Larsen, was wearing a red “Make Human Rights Great Again” baseball hat.
Larsen, a former center-left politician, also wrote in a 2017 Twitter post that “Trump is putting millions of lives at risk,” criticizing a decision to reduce U.S. foreign aid.
The other two committee members don’t have a clear history of criticizing Trump. One of them, academic Asle Toje, wrote sympathetically about Trump’s legal travails during the Biden administration.
The two other committee members have not publicly criticized Trump, and “One of them, academic Asle Toje, wrote sympathetically about Trump’s legal travails during the Biden administration.”
When asked about Trump’s pressure campaign hours after the 2025 prize went to Machado, Norweigen Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes essentially said Trump didn’t get the prize because he lacks “courage and integrity”:
Leo probably doesn’t envision Jesus in a MAGA hat. Photo: Maria Grazia Picciarella/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump and his team are currently working overtime to convince Americans that anyone who opposes his agenda represents a “radical left” full of “terrorists” who hate America, and for that matter, Christianity. The MAGA movement can’t be happy that one of the world’s oldest and most conservative institutions, the Roman Catholic Church, remains hostile to his mass-deportation program, his efforts to cut government assistance to poor people, and his militant opposition to climate-change initiatives.
During the tenure of the late Pope Francis, Trump allies and many traditionalist Catholics viewed the pontiff as fundamentally misguided (in all but his hard-line position opposing abortion). They hoped his American-born successor would be more “reasonable,” from their point of view. Indeed, as the Washington Postreports, Leo IV “has comforted traditionalists by embracing formal vestments and other reverent trappings of his office more than Francis did.” But in the last week he’s sent a series of signals that he shares Francis’s position on many of the issues that grated on MAGA Republicans, as the Post notes:
At an Oct. 1 Vatican summit, Leo condemned deniers of global warming and issued a blunt call to climate action. And last Sunday, in St. Peter’s Square, he declared a new “missionary age” against the “coldness of indifference” to migrants.
On Wednesday, he met privately with Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, a critic of the Trump administration’s migrant crackdown, along with other U.S. pro-migrant activists, to receive letters and testimonies from those living in “fear” of detention and deportation in the United States.
Leo “was very clear that what is happening to migrants in the United States right now is an injustice,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Texas-based Hope Border Institute, who attended the meeting. “He said the church cannot remain silent.”
In the middle of this drumbeat of events, the pontiff intervened in an American church dispute over the proposed presentation of an award to pro-choice Catholic Senator Dick Durbin, with these words:
“Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” he said Tuesday. “Someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Then today, the pontiff released his first major teaching document, an “apostolic exhortation,” as the National Catholic Reporterexplains:
“In a world where the poor are increasingly numerous, we paradoxically see the growth of a wealthy elite, living in a bubble of comfort and luxury, almost in another world compared to ordinary people,” the pope wrote. “We must not let our guard down when it comes to poverty.” …
While the document’s pastoral tone urges a renewed spiritual concern for the marginalized, it also carries sharp edges. For example, it denounces people who internalize indifference by placing their faith in the free market instead of allowing themselves to be consumed by compassion for their neighbor.
[The papal document] calls out Christians who “find it easier to turn a blind eye to the poor,” justifying their inaction by reducing faith to prayer and teaching “sound doctrine,” or by invoking “pseudo-scientific data” to claim that “a free market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty.”
Sounds “radical left” to me, or perhaps even communist.
The Vatican acknowledged that preparation of this document began under Francis, and those who didn’t like its tone and scope probably hope it was more of a tribute to Leo’s predecessor rather than a statement of his own views. But as the Postnoted, there’s another possibility:
Leo holds Peruvian nationality from his years as a missionary there in addition to U.S. citizenship. His critique of market capitalism in particular suggests that in key ways, those who thought they were getting the first American pope are actually getting the second Latin American, one whose stances, like Francis, echo perceptions common in the Global South.
Vatican hostility to Trump could have a limited effect on American Catholics, who, after all, widely disregard church teachings on contraception and other matters. But one of the under-discussed success stories of the president’s 2024 campaign is that he carried self-described Catholics by a 12-point margin over Kamala Harris after splitting this vote right down the middle with Joe Biden four years earlier. Regular criticism from a pontiff who is (so far) wildly popular in the U.S. won’t help Trump’s own flagging popularity. And it’s particularly noteworthy that for the most part America’s conservative-leaning Catholic bishops are in lockstep with the Vatican on the duty owed to immigrants even if they disagree on other issues. Vice-President J.D. Vance was very isolated in his effort to provide a Catholic doctrinal defense of his administration’s mass-deportation effort. And Francis, near the end of his earthly journey, pretty much handed Vance’s ass to him in an exchange on the subject.
As Trump’s armed and masked agents begin assaulting Pope Leo’s home town of Chicago in search of brown people to terrorize or deport, they might want to keep in mind the Vatican is watching and isn’t particularly afraid of MAGA.
There are two big things going on in California politics right now. We are in the opening phase of what could be the most unpredictable gubernatorial election in ages, with a huge and changing field of candidates eager to succeed term-limited Gavin Newsom. Meanwhile, the governor is spearheading a loud and expensive ballot-initiative campaign to shift the state’s congressional map crucially toward Democrats, in an explicit response to Donald Trump’s efforts to grab midterm wins for Republicans via redistricting measures in states his party controls (most notably Texas).
Unsurprisingly, when CBS News reporter Julie Watts decided to interview gubernatorial candidates, she wanted very clear answers on how they felt about the ballot fight. And for the Democratic candidates, she also wanted to know if the intense anti-Trump messaging of the “Yes on 50” campaign would make it hard for them to appeal to Trump voters in 2026. It’s not a particularly rich line of inquiry, but it’s entirely legitimate.
So it got a lot of attention when Watts’s interview with former Democratic representative Katie Porter, who is leading the field in most of the early gubernatorial polling, went way off the rails:
Porter objected to a question that included the premise that she might need Trump voters to win the governorship. After wrinkling her brow, Porter asked, “How would I need them to win, ma’am?” Watts responded, “You think everybody who did not vote for Trump will vote for you?” Porter affirmed, “In a general election, yes … If it’s me against a Republican, I think that I will win the people who did not vote for Trump.”
Watts then asked, “What if it is you against another Democrat?” And Porter replied, “I do not intend that to be the case.”
At this point, non-Californians may be confused. In a 2010 ballot initiative, Golden State voters abolished party primaries and inaugurated a so-called top-two system in which all candidates compete in an open primary, with the top two candidates — regardless of party — advancing to the general election. So it’s entirely possible that two Democrats (or in an alternative universe, two Republicans) could compete for the ultimate prize. It happened in the U.S. Senate elections of 2016 (in which Kamala Harris defeated Democratic representative Loretta Sanchez) and 2018 (when Dianne Feinstein defeated Democratic state-senate leader Kevin DeLeon). How Republican voters would deal with an all-Democratic general-election choice was of great interest in both races, though many Republicans chose to give the race a pass. In the most recent competitive statewide race, the Senate contest of 2024, Democrat Adam Schiff spent a lot of money attacking Republican Steve Garvey during the primary campaign. The goal was to herd angry Republicans into his column and make him Schiff’s general-election opponent, in the accurate expectation that Schiff would win that contest handily. And who was the third-place Democrat who was pushed out of the general election by the Schiff-Garvey squeeze play? Katie Porter. So she’s very familiar with this sort of scenario.
With that as background, maybe that’s why Porter bristled when Watts asked, “How do you intend this (a Democrat-on-Democrat general election) not to be the case? Are you going to ask them not to run?” After a brief digression in which Porter touted her ability to win in a “purple” House district earlier in her career, she challenged Watts to restate her question, which she did, and then soon thereafter Porter announced, “I’m not doing this anymore; I’m going to call it.”
To put it mildly, this did not go over well. Multiple Democratic rivals soon scolded Porter for losing her cool, as The Hill noted:
Former California State Controller Betty Yee (D), who is also running for governor, said in a post on X that it is clear Porter does not have the temperament to be governor.
“As a candidate, I welcome the hard questions — the next governor must be accessible and transparent,” Yee wrote on X. “No place for temper tantrums. No place for dodging the public’s right to know.”
There were plenty of safe answers Porter could have given to Watts’s hypothetical about needing Trump voters in a Democrat-on-Democrat general election. She could have pointed out that a goodly number of 2024 Trump voters were experiencing buyer’s remorse. She could have suggested that some Trump voters might appreciate the need for a counterbalance in Congress to the president’s power. And, of course, she could have said Republican voters choosing between two Democrats might appreciate her personal qualities, her drive and independence, and her determination to represent everyone. The reality is that nobody really knows what the dynamics will be surrounding a general election that’s 13 months away, so she could have answered with the equivalent of “I’ll cross that bridge when I reach it” and maybe even laughed.
The bottom line is that this was a predictable question Porter should have been able to answer or deflect, instead of giving the impression she’s writing off 40 percent of her state’s electorate and rejecting media questions that don’t simply invite her to repeat her message.
A once-happy Virginia Democratic ticket. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Until very recently, the much-watched off-year elections in Virginia were looking pretty bad for Republicans. Their gubernatorial candidate, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, has been struggling to compete financially and politically with Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a centrist congresswoman. Specific candidacies aside, Virginia has a long history of rejecting gubernatorial candidates from the party controlling the White House (which helped outgoing Republican governor Glenn Youngkin defeat Terry McAuliffe in 2021). Add in the Commonwealth’s recent blue-leaning tendencies and the terrible treatment its many federal employees have received from the second Trump administration, and you can understand why national Republicans have been more interested in the other big off-year gubernatorial contest in New Jersey.
But now the Virginia GOP may have caught a break via some oppo research on the Democratic candidate for attorney general by National Review:
On August 8, 2022, a Republican state legislator received a disturbing string of early-morning text messages from a former colleague, Jay Jones, this year’s Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general …
Jones, who at the time had recently resigned from the state house after a brief stint representing Norfolk, had strong feelings about how the political class was eulogizing recently deceased former state legislator Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat with a long tenure in Virginia politics …
“If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson’s memory, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.”
Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time.”
Apparently the texts were intended for a different recipient, but Jones’s words shouldn’t have been said to anybody about anybody. He reportedly compounded the offense in a follow-up phone call to the accidental recipient of the text suggesting that “he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views.”
This was years ago, and Jones hasn’t displayed any offline violent tendencies, but as you can imagine, Republicans see a huge opportunity: not just to potentially defeat Jones (who was favored to win before all this controversy) but to divide and defeat the entire Democratic statewide ticket, as Axios explains:
Leading Virginia Democrats, including the statewide ticket, have condemned the comments Jones made in 2022 suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which he would shoot the then-Republican House speaker and wished harm on his children.
But none have called for Jones to step aside …
Gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears and lieutenant governor nominee John Reid are pressuring their opponents on social media to call on Jones to drop out.
Jones, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger and lieutenant governor nominee Ghazala Hashmi’s campaigns didn’t immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
Unsurprisingly, those great advocates for civility in political discourse, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, have jumped into the fray with the latter quickly using the texts to defend himself and his boss for their own recent lapses in taste:
Conservative media is all over this story, and Jones’s abject apologies for the texts have cut no ice in those circles. He’s not the real target anyway; it’s Spanberger, and as Axios put it, “pushing Jones off the ticket could fracture Democrats’ chances in a pivotal statewide race seen as a bellwether for next year.” To be clear, in Virginia statewide candidates run independently, so there’s not really a “ticket” the gubernatorial nominee can control. For another, Jones is the sole Black statewide Democratic nominee, in a state where Democrats rely heavily on robust Black turnout.
I’m sure there’s back-channel talk about Jones “doing the right thing” and relieving his colleagues of his problems, along with pushback against the cynical manipulation of the “crisis” by Republicans. White House policy director Stephen Miller commented that Jones’s texts showed how “dangerously radicalized the Democrat Party has become.” But then Miller very clearly believes the “Democrat Party” should be outlawed, since, as he recently said, it is “an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists.” Pleasing the likes of Miller would be galling for Virginia Democrats. Perhaps Jones and his party can tough it all out, but MAGA folk will incessantly use his example to buttress their absurd argument that the main source of violent political talk is left of center and will perhaps even pull off an electoral shocker in a time and place in which the Boss and his agenda aren’t very popular.
Hey, if you were president, would you pardon a person convicted of child sex trafficking? Most people would say “no.” And they’d probably answer even faster if their friendship with said sex trafficker was at the center of one of the biggest scandals of their presidency.
Donald Trump went with a different tactic on Monday. During an Oval Office press conference, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president if he’d consider pardoning Ghislane Maxwell, now that the Supreme Court has declined to review the 2021 conviction of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice.
“I haven’t heard the name in so long,” he said. “I can say this: I’d have to take a look at it.”
Trump suggested he was totally ignorant of Maxwell’s appeal, asking Collins for details. “Well, I’ll take a look at it,” he repeated. “I will speak to the DOJ. I wouldn’t consider it or not consider it. I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll speak to the DOJ.”
Then Trump tried to deflect by noting that Sean Combs — another old pal recently convicted of sex-related offenses — had already asked him for a pardon.
“I have a lot of people that have asked me for pardons. Uh, I call him ‘Puff Daddy.’ He’s asked me for a pardon,” he said.
Trump was trying to merely play dumb, but he’s actually an idiot if he thought this strategy would work.
He said he hadn’t heard Maxwell’s name “in so long” like he was struggling to remember someone he’d crossed paths with a few times in the ’90s. There are plenty of photos of Trump partying with Maxwell, but we don’t even have to go back that far. Shortly after Maxwell was arrested in 2020 for her role in helping Epstein abuse girls, Trump said, “I just wish her well, frankly.” Now Maxwell is at the center of a major scandal hanging over Trump’s second term. It’s been only one month since the House Oversight Committee released the image of the poem attributed to Trump in the Epstein birthday book put together by Maxwell, prompting a new round of denials from the White House.
And we know Trump isn’t totally ignorant of what became of Maxwell after her arrest. During a July 25 press conference, he said he was aware that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was meeting with her in prison. Trump even addressed a question about pardoning Maxwell, saying, “It’s something I haven’t thought about. I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.”
Even Trump’s allies did not buy him pleading ignorance on Maxwell. Hours after the president gave his noncommittal answer in the Oval Office, right-wing activist Laura Loomer — who has criticized his handling of the Epstein scandal — warned there would be “no coming back” from pardoning Maxwell.
So Trump’s “I don’t know her” act just annoyed MAGA types who are still waiting for his administration to release the Epstein files and reminded everyone of all the suspicious things he’s said about his former pal Ghislane.
Here’s the real battleground. Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images
As congressional Democrats sort through their strategic options for managing the current government shutdown, they should keep in mind the unavailability of some prize they might otherwise seek and the variable rewards associated with others. In the real world, Donald Trump isn’t going to reverse the Medicaid cuts enacted in the Republican megabill or permanently eschew Russ Vought’s claims of executive-branch power over spending authority. Now that he’s hailed Vought as the Grim Reaper and labeled Democrats as “the party of Satan,” about the most the opposition can realistically expect is a suspension of mass federal-employee layoffs if the government reopens, and even that’s a stretch. Yes, the most realizable goal is some sort of extension (probably partial) of Obamacare premium subsidies, and that’s a pretty big deal. But that would mean giving up a portion of the Democratic case that Trump is ravaging health-care coverage, so the prize would be shared.
The limited public concessions Democrats can claim have led some observers to suggest they focus on issues that the public may not perceive as vital but that really would restrict Trump’s ability to act like a dictator while providing relief to his victims. Jonathan V. Last suggests a few at the Bulwark:
Ending qualified immunity for federal law enforcement officers.
Mandating that federal law enforcement officers cannot wear masks and must display identifying badges/markings at all times.
Closing the “emergency” loopholes that the administration has claimed for everything from tariffs to acts of war.
Removing the secretary of state’s discretionary power to revoke visas.
If, as is entirely possible, it’s exactly these sort of obscure but crucial legal and institutional issues where the White House will be most obstinate, then different calculations might come into play. Ultimately, if Congress or the courts won’t do their part to restrain Trump’s power grabs, the only recourse is a decision by voters to take away his governing trifecta in November 2026, most likely by flipping the House to Democratic control.
Democrats understand that unique opportunity, which is why they are putting so much emphasis on health-care policy, an area of historic weakness for Republicans and a particular vulnerability for Trump. In focusing their demands for reopening the government on health care, they are in effect rehearsing their midterm message. But there is perhaps one other thing they can do to boost their chances of winning in 2026 that could become a key demand in negotiations to end the shutdown: limiting the administration’s assault on the election system. It’s far too late for Democrats to do much (other than retaliate, as California is doing) about Trump’s unprecedented campaign to convince red states to redraw their congressional maps to shake loose a few more Republican-leaning districts, reducing the number of seats they’d need in order to hang onto the House. But there are other election-rigging measures they should try to prevent.
Specifically, Democrats could demand a hold on any steps to implement Trump’s dangerous and probably unconstitutional executive order of March 26, which aimed at instituting a national voter-ID system, restricting or even banning voting by mail, and getting rid of voting machines. As election-law wizard Rick Hasen noted immediately: “The aim here is voter suppression pure and simple.” Because of the legal obstacles Trump’s “reforms” face, and since the administration hasn’t done much to put them in place, quietly shelving them might be doable, and would prevent a lot of havoc next year. While they are at it, Democrats should definitely secure a personal pledge from Speaker Mike Johnson that he will not refuse to seat Democratic House candidates whose elections are state-certified on specious grounds that “voter fraud” occurred or that the results are too close to implement. This is the 2027 version of the attempted 2021 Trump election coup I fear most.
The bigger point here is that all the great messaging and tactical victories Democrats can devise won’t amount to a hill of beans if Trump once again denies the adverse result of an election and this time manages to hang onto total power. Nothing matters more than keeping that from happening.
This 2016 Trump supporter was ahead of his time in recognizing Hillary Clinton’s infernal nature. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In the annals of American politics, Donald Trump is without question among the most polarizing presidents ever. But today he laid his claim to absolute peerlessness by quite literally demonizing the opposition party on Truth Social. Gaze in awe:
Now just to deal with the most practical matters, this doesn’t sound like a man inclined to enter into bipartisan negotiations to end the current government shutdown, does it? I suppose he could call up Chuck Schumer and tell him it was just a joke, and maybe make a peace offering of vastly increased security for Democratic officeholders who have now been labeled by the most powerful figure in the world as the personification of absolute, ineradicable evil.
But other than pouring high-octane gasoline on a fire already reaching the rafters after Russell Vought’s threats of mass layoffs of furloughed federal employees (at least in “Democrat Agencies,” as Trump put it), the president’s weird little post will be greeted as gospel truth and a not-so-secret shout-out by two significant elements of the MAGA fringe.
The first is the QAnon cult, the shockingly large group of subscribers to an elaborate conspiracy theory whereby Trump is secretly battling and will eventually vanquish a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who control world events (not to mention America’s deep state) and are, among other things, hoarding cures for all major diseases. According to QAnon devotees, Trump is constrained for obscure reasons from going public with this cosmic war he is waging on America’s and God’s behalf, but he drops hints from time to time that are greeted with jubilation in QAnon circles. The new tweet acknowledging Satan’s sponsorship of the Democrats will help keep QAnon alive for years;it’s arguably morepowerful than Trump’s pardon for the January 6 “patriots,” among whom QAnon folk were very much overrepresented.
But there’s another and even larger group of MAGA folk overrepresented in the Capitol riot who will tingle just as much as the Q followers at Trump’s identification of Democratic pols as servants of Old Scratch: the “spiritual warriors” of the New Apostolic Reformation. This rapidly strengthening strain of conservative pentecostal theology and worship involves a loose global network of “prophets” and “apostles” whose American leaders are deeply invested in the MAGA movement as an instrument for redemption of a world captured by such evils as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and “wokeness.” While nearly all NAR leaders believe in active demonic powers that must be combatted by aggressive prayer and religio-political activism, some dance around the line that separates “spiritual warfare” from physical violence. Trump is pushing them across that line. Somebody, or maybe a lot of people, are going to get hurt.
The good news, if there is any, is that Trump has now hit bottom in his insults aimed at the opposition party. If there’s anything he can do to make the atmosphere more toxic, I will pray to a beneficent God that we are spared it.
Russ Vought’s coming for you! Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
There are a lot of developments that can be cited to illuminate the crucial differences between the first and second Trump administrations, ranging from the simple idea that “practice makes perfect” to the observation that the president has carefully ensured no one around him will exercise a restraining influence over his darker impulses. But the government shutdown has brought to light one very specific change that is especially ominous, as Toluse Olorunnipa and Jonathan Lemire explain at The Atlantic:
Thirty-four days into the previous government shutdown, in 2019, reporters asked President Donald Trump if he had a message for the thousands of federal employees who were about to miss another paycheck. “I love them. I respect them. I really appreciate the great job they’re doing,” he said at the time. The following day, caving after weeks of punishing cable-news coverage, he signed legislation to reopen the government, lauding furloughed employees as “incredible patriots,” pledging to quickly restore their back pay, and calling the moment “an opportunity for all parties to work together for the benefit of our whole beautiful, wonderful nation.”
Doesn’t really sound like the same guy, does it?
It sure doesn’t. Trump has greeted the 2025 shutdown as a heaven-sent opportunity to fire hundreds of thousands of employees at what he calls “Democrat Agencies” at the behest of his budget director, Russell Vought, the government-hating religious zealot whose nihilistic suggestions in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 were considered so politically radioactive that Trump claimed to know nothing about the initiative. Now he’s posting AI video of Vought as the Grim Reaper come to life to get rid of bureaucrats who aren’t engaged in the holy MAGA trinity of killing, jailing, or deporting people.
Yes, the president loves trolling people, and Vought swears by the value of “traumatizing” the denizens of the “deep state” who resist or simply get in the way of the administration’s agenda. But this is by no means an isolated incident of the vastly expanded list of Americans Trump now considers his current enemies and future victims. If you want to understand the most crucial difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, look to the targets of his wrath.
Coming out of the 2024 election, there were many justifiable fears that Trump would act on his frequent threats of vengeance against highly placed “enemies” ranging from Republican “traitors” such as Liz Cheney, to the federal prosecutors who tried and failed to hold him accountable, to “fake news” media executives, to conspiracy-theory suspects like vaccine scientists. Likely targets included whole institutions thought to have betrayed him (like the FBI) and “radical left” policies like DEI and climate change that were campaign-trail hobgoblins.
True to his malicious word, Trump has urged prosecutors and investigators and his social-media bullies to “go after” all these prominent symbols of the hated opposition. But now the ranks of “enemies of the people” has expanded far beyond the liberal elites and Never Trumpers who were objects of so much presidential ire in the past. Enemies now include whole categories of Americans deemed guilty by association with institutions and causes deemed inimical to the mission of “saving America.” Trump has signaled that entire cities will become “training grounds” for the U.S. military, denied self-governance and basic civil liberties because of their inherently perfidious nature as “the enemy within.” Major sectors of civil society, most obviously higher education, have been declared presumptively hostile and subject to shakedowns and forced takeovers. Anyone voicing opposition to the administration’s mass-deportation program is being treated as consciously treasonous and the ally of “invaders.” And most recently, in the wake of the assassination of MAGA and Christian-nationalist icon Charlie Kirk, the president, the vice-president, the top White House policy adviser, and the attorney general have all suggested that any strongly worded criticism of the administration might be treated as illegal incitement to violence or “terrorism.”
Looking at all these phenomena, it should be clear that we are witnessing not just a rhetorical escalation of MAGA attacks on Trump enemies now that a supine Republican Party controls the federal government. The battleground is widening dramatically even as Trump wins more and more turf. Perhaps the president’s threats to lay waste to his own executive branch reflect a hitherto-unknown fidelity to old-school small-government conservatism of the sort that Vought and his friends in the House Freedom Caucus have fused with MAGA culture-war preoccupations into a radical ideology of maximum destruction. But more likely he understands that he has just three years left to consummate his lifelong war against those who opposed or underestimated him, and wants to leave as high a body count as possible. The “enemy within” could grow to encompass half the nation.
During previous government shutdowns, both Democratic and Republican leaders have tried to demonstrate that they are taking the situation very seriously. Even if leaders aren’t genuinely concerned about the furloughed federal employees and the stalled work of Washington, they at least want to ensure the other side takes the blame.
President Trump is trying a somewhat different approach: repeatedly posting racist AI-generated videos featuring Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
Trump posted the first video on Monday night, hours after meeting with the Democrats to negotiate a way to avoid the impending shutdown. In the video, Fake Jeffries wears a sombrero and a giant mustache. Meanwhile, Fake Schumer says over mariachi music:
There’s no way to sugarcoat it — nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of our woke, trans bullshit. Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore; even Latinos hate us. So we need new votes. And if we give all these illegal aliens free health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can’t even speak English, so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of shit; you know, at least for a while, until they learn English and realize they hate us too.
For those not fluent in false and idiotic MAGA memes, the Mexican theme is meant to highlight their bogus claim that Democrats are demanding free health care for “illegal aliens.” While Trump’s Truth Social feed is always filled with nasty insults and AI slop, this wasn’t something he just casually reposted. He clearly wanted everyone to see it, as he also shared the video on X.
Jeffries called the post “disgusting” in an appearance on MSNBC, adding, “We’re going to continue to make clear bigotry will get you nowhere.” The following day, cameras caught Democratic representative Madeleine Dean confronting House Speaker Mike Johnson about the video, begging him to speak out against it. The strongest condemnation the Speaker could muster was telling her, “I think it wasn’t my style.”
If Johnson said anything privately to Trump, which seems doubtful, he didn’t listen. A little over an hour before the shutdown went into effect at midnight on Wednesday, Trump shared a second racist deepfake video. It showed the clip of Jeffries condemning the first video on MSNBC but added in a sombrero, mustache, and all-Trump mariachi band.
Trump also posted some photos from his negotiations with Democratic leaders in the Oval Office, which prominently featured “Trump 2028” hats.
Jeffries confirmed on CNN that the hats weren’t an AI invention: They actually “just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting on the desk.” He said he asked the vice-president if he had an issue with Trump suggesting he’ll seek an unconstitutional third term.
“I just looked at the hat, looked at J.D. Vance, who was seated to my left, and said, ‘Don’t you got a problem with this?’ and he said, ‘No comment,’” Jeffries said. “And that was the end of it.”
So it seems like Trump is more interested in trolling Democrats than negotiating with them — almost like he wants this shutdown to drag on for some reason. But surely other administration officials are upset by Trump’s offensive and unserious negotiation tactics?
Nah! When asked about Trump’s trolling social-media posts on Wednesday afternoon, Vance suggested we all need to lighten up.
“Oh, I think it’s funny!” the vice-president said. “The president is joking, and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also poking a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions and even poking some fun at the absurdities of the Democrats themselves.”
Vance added, “I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now: I make this solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.”
So if you aren’t “having a good time” with this shutdown, that’s really on you. Have you tried experiencing it as an extremely powerful white guy who doesn’t have to worry about losing a few paychecks?
In his long, even-more-rambling-than-usual address to Pete Hegseth’s peculiar assemblage of military brass this morning, President Donald Trump talked about a lot of non-germane things, as the New York Timesreported:
There does not seem to be a clear point or purpose in President Trump’s address to military generals today. It’s a garden variety tear; he’s talking about tariffs, Joe Biden and the autopen, the southern border, CNN, his personal feelings about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his anxieties that he won’t be given a Nobel Peace Prize he feels he deserves. These are things he talks about almost every day regardless of audience or setting. Every so often he throws in a statistic or observation he has about the military.
“I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships by the way,” he said at one point, pausing a riff about tariffs to bring up a 1950s documentary series about naval warfare. “I used to watch ‘Victory at Sea.’ I love ‘Victory at Sea.’”
But there is one highly germane instruction to the vast crowd of warriors that can be discerned by piecing together several passages in his remarks: Get ready to spend a lot of time fighting right here in America, as Jonathan V. Last observes:
President Trump did not have many bad things to say about America’s foreign adversaries. He spoke about Vladimir Putin in largely neutral terms (only saying he was “disappointed” in him) and barely mentioned China.
He did, however, speak with great moral clarity about certain classes of Americans whom he views as a grave threat….
The most consequential parts of the commander-in-chief’s speech were the sections in which he attempted to prepare flag officers for increased deployment of the military in American cities….
He called “inner cities” “a big part of war.”
He said America is “under invasion from within.”
That cities “that are run by the radical left Democrats” are dangerous places and “we’re going to straighten them out one at a time” and that “the people in this room are going to help with that.”
“They need the military desperately,” he said of cities with Democratic mayors.
Trump spoke of these enemy-occupied cities as a “training ground” for American war fighters, claiming that other great presidents had used the military to maintain peace and order on the home front.
The key thing to note here is that Trump is seeking to make military deployments at home routine. George Washington was dealing with a military uprising when he deployed troops during the Whiskey Rebellion. Abraham Lincoln was fighting a massive civil war. Occasionally other presidents have called up National Guard units to deal with sporadic emergencies ranging from riots to state defiance of federal laws. But these were rare exceptions to a very important bedrock American principle (and one of the grievances that led to our founding as a country) that a free society doesn’t use military force against its own population. It’s an exception that Trump wants to turn into the rule by labeling his political opponents as the “enemy within” and American cities as enemy territory.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s listeners today perceived his remarks as signaling a fundamental change in their core mission, given the largely incoherent nature of the rest of the speech. But in combination with Hegseth’s clear message that Trump’s “Department of War” would do everything differently than its “woke” predecessors, it put them on notice to gird up their loins for a different kind of war:
In this profession, you feel comfortable inside the violence so that our citizens can live peacefully. Lethality is our calling card and victory our only acceptable end state.
And if “the enemy” happens to live in the midst of “our citizens” or, worse yet, if “our citizens” treasonously work for “the enemy within,” collateral damage is just an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of all that righteous lethality.
As Last notes: “The generals understand that Trump sees their fellow Americans as his enemies. And they must now realize that at some point, they are likely to be forced to choose between Trump and their oaths to defend the Constitution.”
“Every day is like a dog year. It’s exhausting,” Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California Democrat, told NOTUS. “And I’m sure the American people are as exhausted as I am with theater and disingenuousness.”
“I think the level of acrimony and the violence has made people more wary of this work,” she added.
When NOTUS asked dozens of lawmakers returning to Congress on Monday how they were feeling, the most common response was a deep, weary sigh. Multiple senators, including Democrat Amy Klobuchar, laughed at the premise of the question. After all, it’s become almost a given on Capitol Hill that the vast majority of lawmakers are utterly miserable.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, had a single word to describe her mood: “Crappy.”
“I used to say that public service, when I was in the state senate, was a joy most days,” Rep. Emily Randall, a Washington state Democrat, told NOTUS. “I definitely don’t say that anymore. There are highs and lows, and the lows are really low.”
“I’m not 40 yet, but I feel very old,” she added.
The impending government shutdown has been a particularly trying affair. Republicans are attempting to extend current funding levels through Nov. 21. Democrats — seizing on a rare moment of leverage in the minority — are demanding that Republicans attach an extension for expiring Affordable Care Act tax subsidies, as well as language that would restrict Republicans from turning around and rescinding the congressionally approved funding. Neither side has budged for weeks. The conversations on Capitol Hill have turned from whether a government shutdown will happen to how long it might last.
The criminal indictment against former FBI director James Comey will be parsed on the law, the facts, and the question of whether the Trump administration’s decision to indict a person on Donald Trump’s enemies’ list in the first place amounted to a vindictive and selective prosecution. All of those analyses have their place, and Comey has already indicated that he has “great confidence in the federal judicial system” such that he is willing to proceed with a public trial to clear his name.
Yet the reason he finds himself in the president’s crosshairs, apart from the subservience of a newly appointed U.S. attorney in Virginia with no experience in criminal law, and an attorney general who can’t even bring herself to refer to Comey by name on the day of his indictment, can be traced to the federal judicial system itself. It is the Supreme Court of the United States, led by a chief justice who has done more than most to empower a presidency unbound by law, that is responsible for giving Trump the unlimited freedom to lean on the Justice Department to prosecute anyone he wants, even when the only evidence to predicate those investigations and prosecutions is the president’s feelings and not much else.
Yesterday was James Comey’s turn. Tomorrow may be Letitia James. Kilmar Ábrego García, though not formally a public enemy of the president, is now the subject of a political prosecution where the White House, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security are all acting in concert to demonize, criminalize, and ultimately deport him to a country not his own.
In all of these cases, sooner or later, the Trump administration can be expected to seek refuge in the work of Chief Justice John Roberts, whose maximalist language in Trump v. United Statesnot only granted Trump a shield from criminal investigation and prosecution, but also handed him a sword to order criminal investigations and prosecutions—even sham ones. The so-called immunity decision, in which Roberts led his conservative supermajority to endow Trump with broad immunity over his official acts leading up to the insurrection at the Capitol, is about far more than presidential impunity over a failed plot to remain in power. The ruling, in ways that are irrelevant to its bottom line, contains breathtaking language that categorically places the president in direct control of the attorney general, her Justice Department, and any other federal prosecutor down the chain of command.
Re-reading the decision, which was supposed to be fashioned as “a rule for the ages,” shows how ill-considered the rule was to start. In the part of the decree where Roberts analyzes special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment accusing Trump of subverting “the Justice Department’s power and authority to convince certain States” to engage in a fake electors scheme—by all accounts, an illegitimate use of the department’s functions—the chief justice spends little time in the scheme itself. (As a result, Smith was forced to drop these allegations from his case.) Instead, he offers a rose-colored view of a president’s authority over the Executive branch, how he “may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials,” and how even threatening to fire an acting attorney general for disobeying unlawful orders falls within the “conclusive and preclusive” authority of the nation’s chief executive. That is, neither courts nor Congress may second guess any of these actions with proceedings or laws authorizing a criminal prosecution.
Not even investigations that are considered a “sham,” Roberts writes, “divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials.” As a result, he adds, “the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority.”
Absolute immunity over that course of conduct is bad enough. Yet the Trump administration, at this very moment, is running with this and related language in Roberts’ opinion to justify other presidential overreach in the lower courts and before the Supreme Court itself. The highest-profile example is ripe for a decision: Any moment now, the justices are expected to rule on an emergency request from the Justice Department to green-light the president’s chaotic and pretextual attempt to fire Lisa Cook from the board of governors of the Federal Reserve—the first such attempt to fire a sitting governor in the board’s 111-year history. A who’s who of former Federal Reserve members, Treasury secretaries, economic advisers, and other high-ranking Republican appointees have warned the Supreme Court not to play ball—unless the justices want to invite chaos and destabilize the nation’s economy and people’s retirement portfolios.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer—as it happens, the former personal lawyer who argued and won the immunity case last year—leans hard on the ruling he helped generate, and he does so in a way that would shut the door to any judge ever scrutinizing a president’s firing decision. According to Trump v. United States, he writes, Article II of the Constitution “creates ‘an energetic, independent Executive’”—not a president who is “subservient” or who “must follow judicially invented procedures even when exercising core executive power.” Again quoting from the Roberts opinion, Sauer adds that a “president’s removal power is ‘conclusive and preclusive,’ meaning that exercises of that power ‘may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts.’”
Then comes this kicker, entirely lifted from the immunity decision: “Any inquiry ‘into the President’s motives’ ‘would risk exposing’ the President’s actions ‘to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose’—an outcome that would ‘seriously cripple the proper and effective administration of public affairs.’”
Which is Sauer’s lawyerly way of saying: Thank you, John Roberts. Your own lofty vision of presidential authority prevents the judicial branch from even second-guessing a president ordering the Justice Department to prosecute a former FBI director, simply because he can. Under this vision, judges cannot assess the legality of firing a high-ranking official whom the law insulates from being dismissed on a whim, or as a result of a questionable criminal referral from a loyalist. And there’s no judicial recourse against the president if the Justice Department decides, as reported on Thursday, to deputize more than a half dozen U.S. attorney’s offices to investigate and possibly charge the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. And other than fighting the charges in court, the same goes for the as-yet-uncharged Letitia James.
The list of culprits for destroying the Justice Department and the politically driven prosecutions of the second Trump administration must include John Roberts, their chief enabler. And unless and until the Supreme Court reverses the damage done, the judiciary that Comey believes in will have to work hard to abide by the law as it stands—going through the motions of an arraignment, a trial, appeals, and other proceedings that should’ve never been set in motion. Worse still, judges will have to pretend this abuse of official power, which we’re told the Constitution doesn’t allow them to question, is nothing more than a president taking care that the laws are being faithfully executed.
One of the reasons congressional Democrats are unwilling to accept a “clean” stopgap spending bill that would avert a government shutdown until November 21 is the pattern of lawless power grabs by the Trump administration, and particularly by OMB director and Project 2025 co-architect Russell Vought. Indeed, the Democratic counterproposal to the GOP’s “clean” continuing resolution includes a demand that spending clawbacks by Vought be reversed and forsworn. But as the two parties drift toward a government shutdown in five days, with no negotiations in sight, Vought has now thumbed his nose at the Democrats, all precedents, and congressional authority over the federal government by announcing that agencies disfavored by the administration will have massive “reductions in force” if funding runs out on September 30. These RIFs would have the effect of turning the temporary furloughs of “nonessential” federal employees that typically accompany a shutdown into permanent layoffs, with the precise targets and levels of firings dependent on OMB’s judgment about what’s necessary to promote the “president’s priorities.”
This legally shaky directive builds on earlier OMB instructions to federal agencies to prepare RIF plans to terminate as many as 30 percent of their employees, and in some cases, on DOGE assessments of unnecessary programs and personnel. For the most part, the RIFs haven’t materialized, and in some cases, agencies have even hired back employees chased off by the kiddie software warriors of DOGE, which has itself largely given way to Trump-appointed agency heads and OMB. These zombie slash-and-burn efforts are now roaring back to life.
The RIFs would only apply to programs that are funded through annual appropriations, so they would exclude “mandatory” entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. OMB has also indicated politically sensitive programs like veterans benefits and Trump pet issues like ICE and border control will be exempt. There are a lot of questions left unclear by Vought’s big move, reflecting his characteristic strategy of using fear and uncertainty to keep the federal workforce under his thumb. And there is nothing much murkier than the law governing RIFs, particularly during a government shutdown.
Whatever its actual effects, it’s clear the administration’s mass-layoff threats are intended to ratchet up the pressure on Democrats to change their position and vote to keep the government open. What Vought is signaling is that he will take exactly those destructive steps Chuck Schumer feared he might take had a shutdown occurred in March, a major factor in the Democratic Senate leader’s controversial decision to abandon the filibuster against the last stopgap spending bill. The key issue isn’t just which side gets blamed for a shutdown, but how bad a shutdown would be for programs and constituencies important to Democrats.
Having said all that, the immediate Democratic reaction to Vought’s announcement has been fist-shaking defiance, as the Hill reported:
“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today,” Schumer said in a statement late Wednesday.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries was blunter:
“Listen, Russ, you are a malignant political hack,” Jeffries said. “We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings.
“Get lost.”
Jeffries, of course, has nothing beyond an advisory role in the Senate Democrats’ decision to filibuster the CR or surrender again. The latter decision would undoubtedly enrage Democratic activists and divide the party at a moment when it needs unity more than ever. The idea of giving a victory to Vought and a gloating Donald Trump is for the moment more painful than the shutdown with long-term consequences that may be just over the horizon. A variable yet to be measured is whether congressional Republicans chafe at the mass layoffs and encourage a deal that cancels them. So far this year, their willingness to buck the White House and its agents has been as small as the hope that a government shutdown can be avoided altogether.
Mr. Tough Guy. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images
Donald Trump’s job-approval ratings have been essentially stable for the last couple of months. According to the Silver Bulletin’s polling averages, his net approval rating was at minus-8 percent on July 25 and is at minus-8.4 percent on September 22. Trump’s second-term job-approval averages started at plus-11.7 percent on January 21, went underwater in March, bottomed out in mid-July at minus-10.3 percent, then increased a bit and stayed put. That means Trump is less popular than any post–World War II president at this stage in their presidency, other than himself during his first term. (For comparison, Joe Biden was at minus-2.6 percent at this point.)
While Trump’s overall approval ratings have stabilized at the moment, there’s some churn beneath the surface in terms of how his performance is judged on specific issues. Again per Silver Bulletin, his net job-approval ratings on the economy have now sunk to a second-term low of minus-15.5 percent. Similarly, assessment of his handling of inflation — arguably the issue that got him elected last year — has steadily deteriorated throughout 2025 and now stands at a terrible minus-30.4 percent. Approval of his job performance on trade dropped to minus-20.2 in April, soon after his imposition of major tariffs on the so-called Liberation Day, and is at minus-18.9 percent now following much erratic conduct on tariffs.
It’s not so surprising, then, that the 47th president has shifted his emphasis from economic policy to law-and-order issues. His job-approval averages at Silver Bulletin on immigration went underwater in June and now stand at minus-3.4 percent — not great but much better than his standing on most other issues. Pollsters that break out “border control” separately from “immigration” typically find Trump doing much better in that subarea of immigration policy.
After Trump began talking about an imaginary national crime wave and then federalized law enforcement in the District of Columbia, assessments of his leadership on crime policy began popping up, and it consistently ranks as his second-strongest major issue area, trailing immigration. For example, a September 12–15 Economist/YouGov survey showed him with 42 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval on crime policy, significantly better than his overall job-approval ratio of 39 percent positive and 57 percent negative. Similarly, an September 11–15 AP/NORC survey gave him 46 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval on crime, and just 39 percent approval and 60 percent disapproval overall. Polls with higher overall Trump approval ratios showed the same pattern. A September 6–9 Fox News poll gave the president a relatively benign 50 percent–50 percent rating on “crime and public safety” (second only to border control in approval percentage) alongside a 46 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval in his overall job performance.
You could argue that the “law and order” issues of immigration and crime work better for Trump than anything related to the economy, including trade, inflation, or health care. It’s not surprising, then, that he’s leaning into such issues. There’s very limited polling on public reaction to his plans for deploying National Guard units and federal law-enforcement assets in urban areas. A September 3–5 CBS News survey shows 43 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval for Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, but it may go over well locally in red states with “blue cities.” Overall, what we have suggests that framing such initiatives as essential for fighting crime would be Trump’s best strategy.
The president’s latest threat to conduct a “crackdown” on supposed radical-left organizations deemed to have encouraged political violence could also be pitched as a law-and-order measure despite the ominous implications for civil liberties and democratic norms. Such an angle might thrill the GOP’s MAGA base without unduly alarming swing voters, but only if Trump exhibits some uncharacteristic self-control.
Donald Trump may be the only person who’s ever stood before a crowd and boasted, “I’m very good at building ballrooms.” While Trump is known for making self-aggrandizingclaims with no basis in reality, he’s actually trying to prove this one is true with a high-stakes addition to the White House.
In June 2025, Trump revealed on Truth Social that the White House would soon have a new ballroom, “compliments of a man known as Donald J. Trump.” A month later, the White House announced vague plans to build a 90,000-square-foot state ballroom off the East Wing. That’s nearly double the size of the residence, making this the biggest White House renovation in decades. While Trump has always said he would pay for the ballroom himself, it’s unclear how much he’ll actually contribute to the project. Construction began in mid-September, though the many details about the project are still a mystery.
Here’s a guide, which we’ll keep updated, to everything we know about the new White House ballroom, including artist renderings, cost estimates, and the construction timeline.
When did Trump announce his ballroom plan?
Trump started talking about building a White House ballroom before he even entered politics. It became clear that this was more than just weird Trumpian musing in June 2025, when he revealed on Truth Social that he’d selected a site for the project:
On July 31, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom would begin soon, with McCrery Architects as lead architect:
On August 5, 2025, Trump took a “little walk” on the White House roof with architect Jim McCrery to get a bird’s-eye view of where the building will go:
It seems so, though Leavitt did not highlight this in the initial announcement. Potential donors received a pledge agreement that refers to “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House,” according to CBS News.
How much will the ballroom cost?
Approximately $200 million, according to the White House.
Is Trump paying for the White House ballroom?
While ranting about a White House ballroom over the years, Trump always made it sound like he’d pay for it on his own. But Leavitt said, “President Trump, and other patriot donors, have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million structure.”
The White House has declined to give details on how much Trump will actually pay and who exactly these “other patriot donors” might be. When asked on August 1 if he’d block foreign donations, Trump said he hadn’t thought about that: “I’m not looking for that. You have very strong restrictions. And we go by the restrictions.”
The funding plan, such as it is, doesn’t sound great from an ethical standpoint. Per the New York Times:
Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said the donor funding plan was “highly unusual.”
“There is certainly a risk that donors to this project, which Donald Trump has made clear is important to him, could see it as a way to curry favor with the administration,” he said.
Who’s donated so far?
The White House has yet to name the donors. But on September 19, 2025, CBS News reported that multiple companies have already pledged to donate $5 million or more to the project:
Google, R.J. Reynolds, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and NextEra Energy have donated, and so have firms in the tech, manufacturing, banking and health industries, sources told CBS News.
Lockheed Martin is among the companies that have pledged more than $10 million, according to one of the sources. Company officials declined to confirm the amount, but Jalen Drummond, vice president of corporate affairs at Lockheed Martin said in a statement: “Lockheed Martin is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House, a powerful symbol of the American ideals we work to defend every day.”
Individuals have also pledged to contribute, but the only person identified in the CBS report was Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman.
What do donors receive?
They may get their name displayed on the building, but that hasn’t been decided yet. CBS News reported:
The pledge form, which was reviewed by CBS News, gives donors the option to pay in a lump sum or spread their contribution over three installments to be completed by 2027.
In return, donors are eligible for “recognition associated with the White House Ballroom.” What form that recognition takes is still being discussed, but several sources said the expectation is that names will be etched in the ballroom’s brick or stone.
They’ll also get a big tax write-off:
Meredith O’Rourke, a top political fundraiser for Mr. Trump, is leading the effort, paired with the Trust for the National Mall, an organization that supports the National Park Service. The trust’s nonprofit status means donations come with a federal tax write-off.
When did construction start?
Construction on the project began in mid-September with some tree removal, though the White House has not not even revealed the ballroom’s exact location.
Trump pointed out the work trucks to reporters on Thursday, September 11, noting, “They’ve just started construction of the new ballroom.” The crews were still at work cutting down trees, removing shrubs, and digging up parts of the South Lawn on September 16, as the Washington Postnoted.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Have the architectural plans been released?
No; presumably they exist, since construction work has started, but the White House has not made them public.
Are there renderings of the new ballroom?
Yes; shortly after Leavitt’s announcement, the White House released ten artist renderings of what the new event space will look like from various angles.
Photo: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White HousePhoto: White House
Where will it be located, roughly?
The structure is expected to replace much of the current East Wing. The White House press release on the project emphasized that this part of the building “has been renovated and changed many times”:
The White House Ballroom will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, it’s theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical. The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942.
What will happen to the offices in the East Wing?
They will be temporarily relocated and “the East Wing will be modernized and renovated,” according to Leavitt.
It’s unclear what this means for the people who currently work there, including the First Lady’s staff. Anita McBride, former chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush, raised concerns about how the ballroom will impact the daily functioning of the White House.
“Betty Ford always called the East Wing the ‘heart’ of the White House,” McBride told the Hill. “All the business and policy gets done in the West Wing, that’s critically important. But the heart of the White House is the East Wing. And so what, what will be the new East Wing?”
What about public White House tours?
They’ve been suspended indefinitely. The Washington Postreported on August 21:
The administration canceled tours scheduled for September and is not accepting tour requests beyond that, according to multiple congressional offices and an email sent by the White House to congressional offices. On their websites, members of Congress gave various reasons for the moratorium: “scheduled construction,” “extensive renovations” and “construction of President Trump’s new ballroom.”
It’s rare for the White House to cancel all public tours for months or even years. The administration has not responded to journalists questions about the tours.
When will it be finished?
The press release says it’s “expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s term” in January 2029.
How long has Trump been planning this ballroom?
For many years, Trump has publicly claimed that he offered to build a collapsible $100 million White House ballroom and the Obama administration did not take him up on it:
Trump says he offered to build a ballroom in The White House for 100 million but never heard back from The Biden Administration. He then says he will try to make the offer to himself that he suggests he’ll pay for: We’ll see if Trump will approve it pic.twitter.com/EUazuRDm6Y
Surprisingly, this is at least partially true. In his book Believer: My Forty Years in Politics, David Axelrod confirmed that while he was working in the Obama White House in 2010, Trump called to pitch him on a ballroom. (Trump claims he offered to pay for it himself, but Axelrod did not address that detail.)
“‘I build ballrooms. Beautiful ballrooms,’” Trump said, according to Axelrod. “Not being much of a dancer, I didn’t know where he was headed. ‘I see you have these state dinners on the lawn there in these shitty little tents. Let me build you a ballroom you can assemble and take apart. Trust me. It’ll look great.’”
Axelrod said he handed the pitch off to someone else, and they didn’t follow up.
Is this project really necessary?
The White House State Ballroom is a “much-needed” addition, according to the press release. The East Room, the largest room in White House, can only seat 200 people, which is why state dinners take place in a tent on the lawn.
Back in 2011, Trump lamented that the White House is using “an old, rotten tent that frankly they probably rented, pay a guy millions of dollars for it even though it’s worth about $2?” But as Eater noted, it’s actually a pretty swanky tent:
The tent for the 2009 India dinner, which Vanity Fairdescribed as “a massive pavilion, complete with an orchestra platform, theatrical lighting, a professional sound system, full heating, satellite kitchens, and a dozen chandeliers bedecked with sustainably harvested magnolia branches and ivy,” took six days to construct and cost a reported $85,000.
And the symbolism of this new project is “monstrous,” as New York’s Chris Bonanos pointed out: “That Trump will build a ballroom — the most on-the-nose embodiment of let-them-eat-cake Versailles extravagance — just as he throws old people off Medicare and kids off food stamps is as big a trolling as has ever been trolled.”
So why is Trump really building this ballroom?
Is Trump doing this because he’s a magnanimous builder who wants to share his gift with the American people? Or is he just a narcissist looking to leave his mark on the White House by transforming it into Mar-a-Lago North? That’s a matter of interpretation. But it’s pretty clear that he really, really hates partying in a tent.
President Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One on September 18, 2025. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Nobody who has come within shouting distance of law school was surprised when Florida-based U.S. District Court judge Steven Merryday dismissed Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times. It was widely panned as meritless the moment he filed it. But the contempt of the judge for Trump’s waste of everyone’s time was remarkable, notes CBS News:
In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Merryday said the original 85-page complaint was “decidedly improper and impermissible” and went well beyond Rule 8 of federal rules of civil procedure, which requires that each allegation be “simple, concise and direct.” …
“Even under the most generous and lenient applications of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible,” Merryday wrote. “… The reader must endure an allegation of ‘the desperate need to defame with a partisan spear rather than report with an authentic looking glass’ and an allegation that ‘the false narrative about The Apprentice was just the tip of defendants’ melting iceberg of falsehoods.’”
“As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” wrote Merryday.
Merryday is decidedly not one of those “radical left judges” the White House loves to bash. He was appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush and is best known for striking down the CDC’s ban on cruise-ship operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. But he knows a frivolous lawsuit when he sees one. And he basically ordered Trump’s lawyers to cut the crap if they wanted any hearing on a defamation suit against the Times.
The timing of this angry rejection of the president’s assault on the Times’ First Amendment rights to cover his administration is interesting, to put it mildly. Trump, his vice-president, his attorney general, and many of his supporters are engaged in a systemic effort to restrict or inhibit free speech if the content of that speech displeases them or offers opportunities to smear or demonize their opponents. But the suit itself, idiotic as it was, also illustrates an important point about how Trump goes about intimidating his foes and getting his way. He understands that getting his way indirectly through public pressure and private threats is legally safer and more effective than the direct use of government power to silence pesky critics and persistent reporters. The operation to shut down Jimmy Kimmel for his comments about politicization of the Charlie Kirk assassination was textbook Trump. His FCC chairman didn’t try to directly sanction Kimmel or ABC; he complained about Kimmel on a right-wing podcast and then after an intense MAGA social-media campaign network affiliates vowed to take his show off the air, leading ABC to suspend it indefinitely. It’s a two-cushion shot providing the administration with plausible deniability.
Similarly Trump’s lawsuit against the Times was never intended to succeed in court; it didn’t even make a token effort to demonstrate the newspaper told conscious untruths with “actual malice,” the First Amendment standard for defamation suits by public figures. But by putting the broad accusation and a vast claim of damages out there, Team Trump hoped to rouse supporters to take their own actions against the Times, to put the Times on notice that worse things are to come, and perhaps to pave the way for the sort of shakedowns the president has deftly executed against CBS and ABC.
Beyond that, the Times lawsuit was a reminder that the president has for many years earned a reputation as the king of frivolous lawsuits. Back in 2016 when he was first running for president, USA Today did an inventory of lawsuits filed by Trump and his businesses and identified 4,095 of them. In a 2020 book on Trump’s incredibly long and active history of litigation, former prosecutor James D. Zirin captures his M.O. succinctly:
Trump learned how to use the law from his mentor, notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. Trump took Cohn’s scorched-earth strategy to heart.
“Trump saw litigation as being only about winning,” Zirin writes. “He sued at the drop of a hat. He sued for sport; he sued to achieve control; and he sued to make a point. He sued as a means of destroying or silencing those who crossed him. He became a plaintiff in chief.”
So the president won’t be the least bit deterred or dismayed by the dismissal of his giant suit against the Times or by the mockery it invited. This is who he is and what he does.
The lost opportunity. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Kamala Harris’s memoir about the 2024 presidential campaign, 107 Days, is being released next week. The emerging theme from the excerpts and leaks is that the former vice-president feels snakebit. The title of the book illustrates her complaint that Joe Biden’s reluctance to step aside forced her into a too-brief campaign in which the 46th president’s legacy and continuing interference were insurmountable problems.
The latest take on the book from the Washington Post suggests that to this day Harris doesn’t understand exactly why she lost, or what she might have done differently, particularly with respect to the living ghost of Joe Biden, which haunted her campaign to the very bitter end. Most interestingly, she talks about what many of us consider the great lost opportunity of her general-election campaign, an October 8 appearance on The View:
When she went on “The View” on Oct. 8, Harris was asked what, if anything, she would have done differently than Biden over the past four years. She responded, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” The former vice president describes that response as having “pulled the pin on a hand grenade.”
Still, Harris defends her actions against her critics who said she should have done more to distance herself from Biden, saying she did not “want to embrace the cruelty of my opponent.” She also argues that naming one specific policy difference would have created a “backward-looking rather than forward-looking” conversation and “would have limited the definition of the difference between us to that one thing, rather than my unique perspective on a variety of issues.”
Harris reports that her campaign staff knew her answer to the “What you would have done differently” question was a disaster. But she can’t seem to think of anything else she could have done:
In hindsight, Harris writes, she wishes she’d said that, unlike Biden, she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.
She actually did make that pledge later in her appearance of The View. It speaks volumes about her sense of imprisonment (or her timidity) that this sort of empty gesture toward bipartisanship was the best she could come up with — then or now — as a declaration of independence from her highly unpopular boss.
Harris could have — should have — shown some public awareness of the need to improve on the Biden administration’s handling of the two issues that were simply killing her campaign: inflation and immigration. Instead, she made the perpetual error that seems to be a systemic problem for Democrats, seeking to evade difficult issues and change the subject to something else. Yes, being Joe Biden’s vice-president made it difficult for Harris to clearly signal how she’d be different aside from her age and identity. But it’s been done before. In October 1968, at almost the exact same stage of his own presidential campaign, the sitting vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, broke with his all-powerful boss, Lyndon Johnson, on the top issue of the day, the Vietnam War, and it took his left-for-dead candidacy to within an eyelash of victory. Considering she was in a much better position than Humphrey was and facing an opponent even less popular than Richard Nixon, Harris could have changed history.
As my then-colleague Jonathan Chait observed even before she flubbed the key question of the campaign on The View, Harris had more control over her destiny than she seems to imagine:
The vice-president has no constitutional power. If the president wants to do something Harris doesn’t like, Harris can’t stop him. She is therefore not responsible for any policies she doesn’t wish to associate herself with.
The vice-presidency is a strange office, lacking any formal authority. Its inhabitants have generally lamented the powerlessness of the job. Harris really ought to stop thinking about her position as a confining dilemma and realize that it is a liberating opportunity to define her campaign as whatever she wants it to be, unburdened by what has been.
Yes, Harris had a difficult task under extraordinary circumstances. But she played it safe when the political climate dictated some risk-taking. Learning now how trapped she felt makes me sympathize with her as a person but not as the leader of a party that needs bolder leadership than she was able to provide when the country needed it most.
Toward the end of the 2024 Academy Awards broadcast, Kimmel, who was hosting, gave an impromptu performance of his recurring “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” sketch.
“I just got a review: ‘Has there ever been a worst host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars?’” he read from his phone. “His opening was that of a less-than-average person trying too hard to be something which he is not and never can be.”
As the tirade veered off into jabs at “George Slopanopoulous” and a call to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” it became clear Kimmel wasn’t reading a comment from some rando on the internet, but the then-former president, who had posted this to Truth Social during the show:
Six weeks later, Trump was still upset about Kimmel mocking him on “Hollywood’s biggest night.” He posted this follow-up rant, which included multiple errors (the post suggests Kimmel botched the Best Picture announcement, but it was Al Pacino):
Five months later, Trump brought up the incident again on the campaign rally. “Remember I put a truth?” he asked the crowd, “I said how he’s the worst host in the history of the Academy Awards.” Then he reenacted Kimmel’s live reading of his post, concluding, “he’s one of the dumbest human being after.”
The president is known to be a huge fan of pomp and pageantry, and Britain is eager to deliver. King Charles and Queen Camilla are hosting the Trumps at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, and activities include a horse-drawn carriage procession, military flyovers, and a state banquet. On Thursday, Trump will meet Keir Starmer at the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers. Trump was hosted for a state visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019, and a second visit is an unusual honor.
British officials are looking to butter up Trump as they deal with the impact of his trade war and issues related to European security. But Trump remains very unpopular in the U.K., and protesters have already marred the visit by projecting images of Trump with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Windsor Castle.
Here’s a roundup, in reverse chronological order, of everything that happened during Trump’s second U.K. state visit.
King Charles made Trump look at his collection of U.S. memorabilia
After Trump and the royals inspected the honor guard in the quad of Windsor Castle, they had a private lunch in the State Dining Room. Then, King Charles escorted the group for a specially curated exhibition of items from the Royal Collection. CNN reports that this included:
A first edition of “The General Historie of Virginia” by John Smith, which is one of the earliest accounts of English colonies in North America …
A letter from 1774 to Lord North from King George III regarding the “state of rebellion” in the American colonies …
A tickertape message from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan in 1858. Tickertape messages were able to be transmitted after an undersea cable was laid between 1854 and 1858 through a joint venture between US and UK entrepreneurs to speed up communications.
Was Trump into it? You be the judge:
Photo: Aaron Chown/Getty Images
Trump walked in front of King Charles
No U.S. state visit to the U.K. is complete without a debate over whether it’s okay that the president walked ahead of the monarch! (CNN notes the palace said it was not a breach of protocol when Trump did the same thing back in 2019.)
Ahead of his first state visit to the U.K., Trump reportedly annoyed the Brits by demanding a carriage ride through London, which would have been a massive security undertaking.
This time, Trump’s carriage requirements were satisfied with a procession through the Windsor estate. Trump rode in the Irish State Coach with King Charles, followed by Queen Camilla and First Lady Melania Trump in the Scottish State Coach.
Melania wore an “extraordinarily large” hat
On Wednesday morning, the Trumps arrived at Windsor Castle via helicopter and were greeted by Prince William and Princess Catherine.
The Daily Mailreported that the First Lady “looked effortlessly chic” in a Christian Dior Haute Couture dark-gray skirt, which she paired with “an extraordinarily large wide-brimmed purple wool hat.”
Melania’s headwear is reminiscent of the giant Carmen Sandiego hat she wore to Trump’s second inauguration.
Photo: Ian Vogler/Getty Images
Photos of Trump and Epstein were projected onto Windsor Castle
A selection of photos related to Trump’s friendship with the late sex offender were projected onto the castle as he landed in London. Police arrested four people “on suspicion of malicious communications following a public stunt in Windsor.”
Air Force One had a close encounter with a passenger jet
A Spirit Airlines flight traveling from Fort Lauderdale to Boston got too close to the president’s plane as it was en route to London on Tuesday. CBS News reported:
“Spirit 1300 turn 20 degrees right,” an air traffic controller radioed according to recordings from liveatc.net. “Pay attention, Spirit 1300 turn 20 degrees right. Spirit 1300 turn 20 degrees right, now. Spirit wings 1300 turn 20 degrees right, immediately.”
Preliminary flight data from flightradar24.com indicates the Spirit Airbus A321 and Air Force One were flying parallel to each other eight miles apart, and were 11 miles apart when they were on the closest path where they could converge.
After the Spirit pilots responded to their warnings, the air-traffic controller chastised them, saying, “Pay attention. Get off the iPad.”
The president and First Lady landed safely at Stansted Airport and spent the night at Winfield House, the residence of the U.S. ambassador in central London.
This image from video provided by ICE shows manufacturing-plant employees waiting to have their legs shackled at the Hyundai Motor Group’s electric-vehicle plant on September 4. Photo: Corey Bullard/AP
Here’s something I sure didn’t have on my bingo card: Donald Trump expressing regret over a major immigration raid. For the most part, his administration has gloried in the many excesses of its mass-deportation program, apparently on the theory that aggressive enforcement tactics and even cruelty would help move things along as anyone not legally in the country would self-deport instead of finding themselves in a brutal ICE detention facility or an even more brutal rent-a-prison overseas.
But an immigration raid on September 4 at an EV battery plant in Georgia, which was supervised by the elite Homeland Security Investigations arm of ICE, has caused some real buyer’s remorse for the 47th president. The 475 arrests for immigration violations included 317 South Korean citizens sent to oversee the building of the plant, and their government was not at all happy with their treatment. The busts (mostly for visa overstays) disrupted U.S.–South Korean diplomatic relations, including sensitive negotiations over tariffs, and appear to have traumatized the workers involved, as the Los Angeles Timesreported:
Throughout the day, people described federal agents taking cellphones from workers and putting them in long lines … Some workers hid for hours to avoid capture in air ducts or remote areas of the sprawling property. The Department of Justice said some hid in a nearby sewage pond.
Collectively, the detained South Koreans chose to go home even after they were offered a temporary respite from deportation. Indeed, the South Korean government is investigating the possibility that the raid violated international human-rights agreements. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has “expressed deep regret” for the raid in a meeting with South Korean diplomats. And most remarkably, the president himself backtracked in a Sunday Truth Social post:
This was a very wordy way for Trump to admit that two of his biggest priorities are in conflict. The ultimate prize at the end of the rainbow for his Liberation Day tariff initiative is to push the world’s manufacturers into relocating facilities to the U.S. That isn’t going to happen if the people they send over to set up said facilities are being rounded up by ICE and put in cages. In retrospect, it’s rather surprising the administration didn’t foresee this problem and at least provide some coordination between their economic-policy folks and the zealous deporters of DHS and ICE. And you have to wonder if anyone on the immigration side of the policy table got chewed out for blowing up U.S.–South Korean relations, making other countries nervous, and forcing the president to semi-apologize. Are there limits to Stephen Miller’s power after all?
This isn’t just an embarrassment for the administration, to be clear. The EV-battery plant was very necessary for a Hyundai EV-manufacturing plant next door. Together these facilities represented the largest economic development project in Georgia history and the crown jewel of Brian Kemp’s governorship. To add insult to injury, DHS pressed Georgia state troopers into service during the battery-plant bust, presumably as part of routine state cooperation with federal immigration-enforcement efforts. Kemp, whose relationship with the president is famously fraught but recently peaceful, couldn’t have been happy. Beyond that, though, someone needs to make the Trump administration aware that attracting foreign direct investment is one of the favorite economic-development tools of virtually every Republican governor; for some, it’s all they know how to do, other than cutting taxes, to create wealth.
It will be fascinating to see if the incident puts a bit of a damper on the nativist strain of America First politics and policy and maybe keeps a few people out of ICE-detention hell.
