MSN

President Donald Trump is hosting corporate friends at the White House for a lavish dinner to express gratitude for their financial support in constructing his expansive ballroom. Those concerned about government ethics have questions.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that over three dozen companies and individuals will attend the White House dinner on Wednesday night, having contributed to Trump's $250 million structure. The new building is 90,000 square feet — about double that of the original. That structure was initially built without the East and West Wings.

President Donald Trump and his higher-ups were revealed in a New York Times report on Wednesday to be considering a massive overhaul of the U.S. refugee system, already stripped to the bone, to highly privileged English speakers, white people, and even supporters of far-right parties in Europe.

The report sparked immediate outrage from commenters on social media.

CBS News' new conservative editor-in-chief faced significant criticism on Wednesday over a report she published that claimed to refute news reports about Israel starving civilians in Gaza.

In August, The Free Press published a story titled, "They Became Symbols For Gazan Starvation. But All 12 Suffer from Other Health Problems," which purported to refute reporting done by The New York Times and other outlets that found the Israeli military was starving Gazans. Bari Weiss joined CBS News after Paramount purchased The Free Press.

President Donald Trump has been "naive" in his dealings with his Russian counterpart, and not only has it extended the war in Ukraine, but it has also made him look "weak and ineffective," according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

David Cay Johnson, who has won multiple Pulitzers for his reporting on the American tax code, discussed Trump's handling of the Ukraine war in a new interview with Times Radio. He said Trump, who promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, seems to have "no knowledge" of how his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin works.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) broke with Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday over whether a racist group chat leaked to Politico should be considered acceptable behavior.

On Tuesday, Politico reported on a group chat between state chapter members of the Young Republican group where they discussed rape and murdering their political opponents. The report sent shockwaves through the Republican Party. Several members denounced the chat, and many of the people included in the chat have been fired from their jobs, according to reports.

Voting rights advocate and legal crusader Marc Elias sounded the alarm about the conversation before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday about the Voting Rights Act.

Elias said the case has been heard before, but in this form, "the stakes are enormous."

Politico broke a story about a group of Young Republicans across several states making racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic comments. Many of the individuals are working for elected officials or political groups, some of whom have been fired, and the Kansas Young Republicans has been shut down altogether. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) posted photos of two of the men in the chat standing with Republican officials.

A post on X shows Mike Davis, who runs the far-right legal group the Article III Project and once worked for Sen. Chuck Grassley, calling Jeffries a "house slave" for George Soros. The post, which has not been deleted, has led to backlash.

President Donald Trump came under heavy criticism earlier this year for using the U.S. refugee resettlement program to take in white Afrikaners, based on far-right conspiracy theories of a "white genocide" in South Africa that are debunked by local police statistics and other data.

But this could be just the beginning, according to a new report by The New York Times.

President Donald Trump has made it clear that he is willing to infringe on Americans' freedom of speech when it suits his interests, and the only people who may be able to convince him otherwise are MAGA personalities like Tucker Carlson, one analyst argued in a new Substack essay.

Journalist G. Elliott Morris, who writes the data-driven political newsletter "Strength in Numbers," argued in a new essay that the new identity of Trump's Republican Party is so "factional" that it is nearly incapable of listening to criticism from people outside the party. That seems to be one reason why Trump continues to attack free speech without recourse from his base, even though 91% of Americans believe “protecting free speech is an important part of American democracy," according to a 2022 Ipsos/Knight Foundation poll Morris cited.