All posts tagged "white house"

'A Trump statue?' Senator fears Lincoln Memorial could be target after White House rebuild

WASHINGTON — Some Democrats don’t think it’s a coincidence that President Donald Trump ordered the razing of the East Wing of the White House in the midst of the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

“How do you make sure he doesn’t do this to other monuments?” Raw Story asked.

“I think this is the point for what's happening right now,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said.

“This is why the erosion of the checks and balances is so dangerous and why having Republicans who are willing to bend over backwards to do whatever he wants is really undermining what our framers intended.

“They did not want a president to be able to do whatever he wants.”

Booker’s not alone.

“The man has no respect for institutions, for democracy, for anything,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) told Raw Story. “So it would not surprise me if he did go after some of our most beautiful historic sites in this country.”

“How do you combat that?” Raw Story pressed.

As elevator doors shut on him, Gallego shrugged.

Other Democrats are also shrugging, even as most all are also braced for more to come.

‘Where the hell are my Republican colleagues?’

Democrats are feeling powerless on Capitol Hill, and not just because Trump has refused to negotiate since the government shut down 29 days ago.

“With what Trump did to the East Wing,” Raw Story asked, “are you worried he might start doing a facelift on other monuments?”

“You think he might…take down the president's statue at the Lincoln Memorial and replace it with a Donald Trump statue? I guess everything's possible,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said.

“This is why you used to have laws and a certain ability to review things. I think it's a very real possibility. Only thing I'd ask is, where the hell are my Republican colleagues?”

For their part, Republicans are shrugging off the controversy. Once again with Trump, they just don’t see the problem.

"I don't,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) told Raw Story. “And I've tried to understand the faux outrage over it. So I dug into it, studied it.”

Like others in the GOP, Banks argues Trump’s blueprint for a massive new ballroom where the East Wing once stood “seems like a significant improvement to the White House.”

“The fake outrage over it makes it sound like they're tearing down like the historic West Wing rooms," Banks said. "The White House is going to be more beautiful than it's ever been when they're done with it.

“Whether you love President Trump, like I do, or you hate him, I mean, nobody can deny that this guy has a talent for construction and development and creating beautiful buildings and places.”

It’s not just Republicans. Some Democrats aren’t paying attention to the destruction of the East Wing.

“I would worry about it, but my list of things I'm worrying about, that's not in the top five,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Raw Story.

This week, Kaine’s been busy leading the charge against the Trump administration’s tariff battles with Canada and Brazil.

The Virginian is also advancing efforts to end the shutdown and get paychecks flowing again to the federal workers and contractors across his state, which is home to thousands of government workers.

Kaine’s also once again been one of the loudest voices in Congress demanding lawmakers vote on whether or not to authorize the use of military force — known as an AUMF — against alleged drug cartel activity in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Compared to the unilateral killing of suspected drug smugglers, Kaine says the razing of the East Room just hasn’t made his plate.

“It's an embarrassment,” Kaine said. “And yet, you know, the ballroom, at least, is not killing people.”

‘One of those moments’

With the GOP holding all the levers of power in Washington, other Democrats are leaning in on their Republican colleagues, trying to pressure them to conduct basic oversight of the Trump administration.

“They control the House and the Senate,” Booker said. “Until they are willing to speak up, we're going to see erosions and attacks on our history, on our heritage, on the way we do things that have been constructive for years in protecting a lot of our common values and virtues.”

That has Democrats like Booker gearing up for next year’s midterm elections.

“It's going to be the biggest time for Americans to say what the polls reflect, as they do not support what the president is doing,” Booker said.

“This is one of those moments where we're still a democracy, the power of the people is still greater than the people in power.

“We all, as Americans, have a right to speak up, and hopefully, especially Republicans — who have the power to do something, to hold hearings, to provide checks and balances — will start taking their jobs seriously.”

White House historian laments Trump just made her 'worst fear come to fruition'

A White House historian on Tuesday lamented that President Donald Trump just made her "worst fear come to fruition."

Katherine Jellison, an Ohio University historian and scholar of first ladies, told Politico Magazine that the East Wing destruction will lead to lasting consequences.

“Those of us who do oral histories — interviewing former first ladies, their children, their staff members — a place like the East Wing is a physical structure that can spark those kinds of memories,” Jellison said.

The East Wing has been home to the first lady's office since the 1940s, and its demolition has sparked outrage from Americans at the administration. Now, first lady Melania Trump's office is based in the main building of the White House.

The minute she heard about the president's plans to add the ballroom, it raised concerns for the historian.

“It was my living nightmare last week when I saw those first visual images,” Jellison said.

The area was formerly a terrace that covered an underground bunker during World War II. It was expanded by "the person who still arguably was our most active and activist first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a dynamo, in part because her husband was paralyzed and in a wheelchair, and things were certainly not accessible. So she needed to be someone who was very active and went places that her husband couldn’t go and would report back to him. But also she was motivated by her own desire to change American society."

The erasure of the space, and what could happen to the artifacts and historical items — although the White House says it will work to preserve them — has raised questions.

"I’m very concerned, and everyone I know who studies first ladies and studies architectural history, people who study the history of the presidency, everyone in my orbit, is very concerned that all of this was done so quickly, without consulting with organizations like the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts," she said.

Jellison also called the "secretive nature of this project" troubling, with a bulldozer appearing and a sudden teardown happening as a "dark visual that bothers people."

It also seems to upset people across the political spectrum, she explained.

"I think that is why maybe some people on the political right have been upset, because they just see that as a continuation of the deep state. On the political left, it’s a strong metaphor for the way they’ve always characterized both of Trump’s terms: This guy is tearing down all the norms. We now have a visual metaphor for that," Jellison said.

"Before we were even warned, professional historians and others, we saw bulldozers bringing the place down. Was due diligence done to preserve important records, important artifacts, important objects? We really don’t know. It is my worst fear coming to fruition," she added.

As Melania Trump maintains a low profile, nearly disappearing through the destruction, she has sent a message. It also raises questions about what the future first ladies will do in their roles.

"If we’re talking about metaphors, the fact that there’s not a first lady’s office in the now-absent East Wing sort of speaks to Melania Trump’s current role as first lady, which is largely unseen and unheard," Jellison said.

All these corrupt schemes and payments point to something deeply alarming about our future

When corruption becomes endemic, democracy dies from the inside out. The Trump family’s grift is teaching America’s elites that power can be bought, just as it is in Putin’s Russia and Orbán’s Hungary, and it’s already distorting our economy.

When I was working for an international relief agency in the early 1980s, I went to Uganda during the war and famine that began when Tanzanian troops invaded to throw out Idi Amin. To get there, I had to pay a $50 bribe to the Ugandan official at their embassy in Nairobi to get my visa.

When I was leaving through the half-destroyed Entebbe airport, three soldiers pointed their automatic weapons at my face and demanded “half” of whatever money I had left before letting me through to the boarding area.

In Haiti, a cabinet-level official tried to solicit a $15,000 bribe from me in exchange for our agency getting permission to operate there (I turned it down). In a remote part of Mexico on a business trip, a police officer drove me off the road to demand $100 or else I’d “spend the night in jail.”

They were all quick, unforgettable lessons in how corruption works: when it becomes the default operating system of a country, it drains not only cash and makes it tough for honest businesspeople to earn a living, but — far more importantly — destroys democracy itself.

That same poison is now spreading here.

The corruption of Donald Trump and his children — the open solicitation of bribes disguised as “investments,” the jet plane, the crypto windfalls, the foreign hotel projects and “licensing fees,” the “donations” and “gifts” that appear tied to pardons, tariffs or regulatory relief — have begun to teach America’s morbidly rich and business leaders that access to our government is now a purchasable commodity.

Remember:

Once that expectation of corruption takes hold, it reshapes an entire economy. It tells corporations, billionaires, and foreign governments alike that the fastest way to win contracts or avoid tariffs and other regulations isn’t through innovation or competition but through flattery, payment, or tribute to Donald, his wife, or his children.

This is exactly what happened in Trump’s role models of Russia and Hungary.

In Russia, researchers estimate roughly 15 to 20 percent of the nation’s entire GDP vanishes each year into the pockets of Vladimir Putin, his oligarchs, and loyal politicians; some analysts put it even higher, approaching a quarter of the economy when you include the broader shadow sector.

In Hungary, corruption is smaller in absolute size but just as corrosive: public contracts are routinely overpriced by 20 percent or more, and a fifth of companies operate not on market principles but on loyalty to Viktor Orbán. The result is predictable: stagnant productivity, collapsing services, and a hollowed-out middle class as the Orbán family becomes fabulously rich.

Corruption functions like a tax, but one that never funds schools or bridges. It rewards obedience and punishes competence. Once leaders and their families start selling favors, the smart business move isn’t to innovate but to curry favor; the fastest path to profit is proximity to power.

Small businesses get crushed because they can’t afford the “entry fee.” Big ones stagnate because every decision runs through political connections. Ordinary people watch their roads crumble, their wages flatten, and their faith in fairness evaporate. The economy quietly re-optimizes itself around bribery instead of merit, and everyone — except the oligarchs — pays.

That’s where America is today. Trump has already normalized the spectacle of CEOs and foreign leaders making pilgrimages to the White House or Mar-a-Lago with million-dollar checks or lavish gifts. His family’s private ventures, from crypto to foreign hotels to golf resorts, are magnets for anyone seeking goodwill from the man with the power to sign their contracts or reduce their tariffs.

And with five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court having legalized unlimited political bribery of themselves and politicians through Buckley v. Valeo, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, and Citizens United v. FEC, there’s barely a law left to stop it.

We’ve seen this movie before. In every kleptocracy, every dictatorship throughout history, the leader’s personal enrichment becomes national policy. Regulators are neutered, watchdogs are fired, and the press is bullied into silence through lawsuits, regulation, and oligarchic purchase.

Then come the strong-arm tactics: the intimidation of lawyers, journalists, and opponents under the guise of “law and order.” It’s what Putin did when Alexei Navalny exposed Gazprom’s graft and paid with his life; it’s what Orbán did when he had critics of his corruption prosecuted and bankrupted.

And now, here, attorneys defending protesters are being detained at airports while Trump suspends enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act so he, his billionaire buddies, and his family members can profit from foreign deals.

Corruption doesn’t just rot morality; it wrecks economies. When a nation’s leadership is for sale, domestic and foreign corporations start bidding instead of building.

Economists call it “state capture”: private interests rewriting the rules for their own benefit. Studies from the IMF and World Bank show that captured states lose growth, investment, and trust, while inequality soars. In Russia’s case, that loss adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars every year. In Hungary’s, GDP per capita has fallen far behind its once-equal neighbors.

The same dynamic is taking shape here as tax breaks, tariffs, and deregulation are auctioned off to the highest bidders.

For most Americans, this translates into worse schools, fewer jobs, and higher prices. Every time a corporation pays a bribe to secure a contract, it folds that “cost of doing business” into what you and I pay at the store or in taxes. Every time a billionaire buys a loophole or a pardon, the rest of us pick up the tab.

Meanwhile, the honest business owner who refuses to play along loses bids, the worker loses bargaining power, and democracy itself loses credibility. The economy becomes a closed club, guarded by money, loyalty, and fear.

Recovering from this kind of rot isn’t easy, but history shows it can be done.

Countries that have clawed their way back from systemic corruption did it by prosecuting openly corrupt leaders while making the sale of influence difficult and dangerous: forcing transparency in contracts, requiring officials to divest from private holdings, empowering independent prosecutors, protecting whistleblowers, and putting every government transaction online where citizens can see it.

The sunlight approach works because it raises the cost of corruption higher than its payoff.

That’s the crossroads we face now. We can follow Russia and Hungary down the path where 15 to 20 percent of national wealth disappears into private hands each year, or we can defend the idea that government exists to serve the public, not enrich the Trump dynasty.

If we fail, America will cease to be a democracy in any meaningful sense. We’ll become a market; one where laws, tariffs, and justice are just products to be bought and sold by those with the closest access to Trump or his family members.

I’ve seen what that world looks like up close, staring down the barrel of a soldier’s rifle at Entebbe Airport. The stakes aren’t abstract. Corruption is the moment when fear replaces fairness, when power replaces principle, and when Americans become “customers” of their own government instead of citizens.

If we let Trump and his circle finish that transformation, America won’t just resemble Putin’s Russia, it will have become just another tinpot dictatorship with a fabulously rich “royal” entourage and a vast class of the struggling, working poor who can’t afford to spiff the First Family.

Trump draws 'MAGA Saddam' mockery over gaudy pet project: 'It's a running joke'

An analyst on Monday ripped President Donald Trump, calling him "MAGA Saddam" and "Donald Antoinette" as he blasted Trump's recent moves to fund his ballroom as "legalized bribery."

In a conversation between Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan and Aswin Soobsang, senior political correspondent, the two discussed whether Americans actually care about the construction of the White House ballroom and the destruction of the East Wing, as well as how taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill.

"I think this story is breaking through, and it's not that it's a ballroom being built or not being built. Like you said earlier, what the f--- do we care if the White House has a ballroom? Right now. It's like it's the White House. It's the American presidential palace. Maybe it should have a ballroom. Maybe it shouldn't," Soobsang said.

A Trump official once even said that "Trump wanted a Saddam-style, what would look like a Saddam-style ballroom," Hasan said.

And although the look is something to laugh at, the two point out that there's something more revealing to consider.

"It's a running joke inside the Trump West Wing right now that he is erecting the palace of quote unquote 'MAGA Saddam'," Soobsang said. "If you look at how garish and gold it looks right now. But the bigger story here is that he is devoting a ton of energy, manpower, resources, like everybody in the government who is working on this right now and fixated on it for weeks and soon to be many weeks going forward is doing it on the taxpayer dime."

Trump and his administration claim it's paid for by donors, but that's not the full picture.

"...The broader governmental effort is a taxpayer-funded one. Karoline Levitt claiming it's his big priority last week is what he's focused on. And of course, even if it's donor-funded, how corrupt is that? You can now apparently — you can anonymously donate to the ballroom fund," Hasan said.

"I mean, this man has worked out how to milk people in every possible way," Hasan said. "We now have a presidency where legalized bribery is available to not just domestic donors, but foreign donors, whether it's giving money to Trump's crypto company, whether it's giving money to Trump's presidential library that he's already getting lawsuits to pay out to. Good luck... It's all just a way of shaking people down."

While Americans are suffering amid the government shutdown, a volatile economy, and rising prices for cost of living and health care — Trump is focused on construction, he added.

"And this is all happening against the background that if you're a John Q or Jane Q citizen watching this or hearing about it, and you're because of, largely speaking, the way the federal government and Donald Trump's government is approaching these issues, you might have your health care premium spiking dramatically soon," Soobsang said.

"You might be about to lose your food stamps. The economy is still slowly, ever presently imploding in on itself. And the president of the United States is party planning. Yeah, that's what he's doing. This isn't a nothing issue for any other leader of the free world. This would be how out of touch this guy is when inflation and everything else that's wrong about the economy is putting the screws to you," Soobsang added.

"You should have more Donald Antoinette headlines at this moment," Hasan joked.

CNN and Washington Post Roll Over for ‘Donald Antoinette’s’ Ridiculous Ballroom by Mehdi Hasan

On ‘Ask the Editor’, Mehdi and Swin dissect the mainstream media’s Trump-pandering, from the Epstein files to his MAGA-Saddam ballroom. Plus: ICE arresting Sami Hamdi, war with Venezuela, and Mamdani.

Read on Substack

Dictators and kings build monumental architecture to buttress their egos. Sound familiar?

By R. Grant Gilmore III, Director, Historic Preservation and Community Planning Program, College of Charleston

From ancient Egypt to Washington, D.C., rulers have long used architecture and associated stories to project power, control memory and shape national identity. As 17th-century French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert observed:

“In the absence of brilliant deeds of war, nothing proclaims the greatness and spirit of princes more than building works.”

Today, the Trump administration is mobilizing heritage and architecture as tools of ideology and control. In U.S. historic preservation, “heritage” is the shared, living inheritance of places, objects, practices and stories — often plural and contested — that communities value and preserve. America’s architectural heritage is as diverse as the people who created, inhabited and continue to care for it.

As an archaeologist with three decades of practice, I read environments designed by humans. Enduring modifications to these places, especially to buildings and monuments, carry power and speak across generations.

In his first term as president, and even more so today, Donald Trump has pushed to an extreme legacy-building through architecture and heritage policy. He is remaking the White House physically and metaphorically in his image, consistent with his long record of putting his name on buildings as a developer.

In December 2020, Trump issued an executive order declaring classical and traditional architectural styles the “preferred” design for new federal buildings. The order derided Brutalist and modernist structures as inconsistent with national values.

Now, Trump is seeking to roll back inclusive historical narratives at U.S. parks and monuments. And he is reviving sanitized myths about America’s history of slavery, misogyny and Manifest Destiny, for use in museums, textbooks and public schools.

Yet artifacts don’t lie. And it is the archaeologist’s task to recover these legacies as truthfully as possible, since how the past is remembered shapes the choices a nation makes about its future.

Architecture as political power and legacy

Dictators, tyrants and kings build monumental architecture to buttress their own egos, which is called authoritarian monumentalism. They also seek to build the national ego — another word for nationalism.

Social psychologists have found that the awe we experience when we encounter something vast diminishes the “individual self,” making viewers feel respect and attachment to creators of awesome architecture. Authoritarian monumentalism often exploits this phenomenon. For example, in France, King Louis XIV expanded the Palace of Versailles and renovated its gardens in the mid-1600s to evoke perceptions of royal grandeur and territorial power in visitors.

Many leaders throughout history have built “temples to power” while erasing or overshadowing the memory of their predecessors — a practice known as damnatio memoriae, or condemnation to oblivion.

In the ancient world, the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, Chinese dynasties, Mayans and Incas all left behind architecture that still commands awe in the form of monuments to gods, rulers and communities. These monuments conveyed power and often served as instruments of physical and psychological control.

In the 19th century, Napoleon fused conquest with heritage. Expeditions to Egypt and Rome, and the building of Parisian monuments — the Arc de Triomphe and the Vendôme Column, both modeled on Roman precedents — reinforced his legitimacy.

Albert Speer’s and Hermann Giesler’s monumental neoclassical designs in Nazi Germany, such as the party rally grounds in Nuremberg, were intended to overwhelm the individual and glorify the regime. And Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union suppressed avant-garde experimentation in favor of monumental “socialist realist” architecture, projecting permanence and centralized power.

Now, Trump has proposed building his own triumphal arch in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, as a symbol to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

An American alternative

Born of Enlightenment ideals of John Locke, Voltaire and Adam Smith, the American Revolution rejected the European idea of monarchs as semi-divine rulers. Instead, leaders were expected to serve the citizenry.

That philosophy took architectural form in the Federal style, which was dominant from about 1785 to 1830. This clear, democratic architectural language was distinct from Europe’s ornate traditions, and recognizably American.

Its key features were Palladian proportions — measurements rooted in classical Roman architecture — and an emphasis on balance, simplicity and patriotic motifs.

James Hoban’s White House and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello embodied this style. Interiors featured lighter construction, symmetrical lines, and motifs such as eagles, urns and bellflowers. They rejected the opulent rococo styles associated with monarchy.

Americans also recognized preservation’s political force. In 1816, the city of Philadelphia bought Independence Hall, which was constructed in 1753 and was where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and signed, to keep it from being demolished. Today the building is a U.S. National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Early preservationists saved George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, Jefferson’s Monticello, and other landmarks, tying democracy’s endurance to the built environment.

Architecture, memory and Trump

In remaking the White House and prescribing the style and content of many federal sites, Trump is targeting not just buildings but the stories they tell.

By challenging narratives that depart from white, Anglo-Saxon origin myths, Trump is using his power to roll back decades of work toward creating a more inclusive national history.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

These actions ignore the fact that America’s strength lies in its identity as a nation of immigrants. The Trump administration has singled out the Smithsonian Institution — the world’s largest museum, founded “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge — for ideological reshaping. Trump also is pushing to restore recently removed Confederate monuments, helping to revive "Lost Cause” mythology about the Civil War.

Trump’s 2020 order declaring classical and traditional architectural styles the preferred design for government buildings echoed authoritarian leaders like Adolf Hitler and Stalin, whose governments sought to dictate aesthetics as expressions of ideology. The American Institute of Architects publicly opposed the order, warning that it imposed ideological restrictions on design.

Trump’s second administration has advanced this agenda by adopting many recommendations in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint. Notably, Project 2025 calls for repealing the 1906 Antiquities Act — which empowers presidents to quickly designate national monuments on federal land — and for shrinking many existing monuments. Such rollbacks would undercut the framework that has safeguarded places like Devils Tower in Wyoming and Muir Woods in California for over a century.

Trump’s new ballroom is a distinct departure from the core values embodied in the White House’s Federal style. Although many commentators have described it as rococo, it is more aligned with the overwrought and opulent styles of the Gilded Age — a time in American history, from about 1875 through 1895, with many parallels to the present.

In ordering its construction, Trump has ignored long-standing consultation and review procedures that are central to historic preservation. The demolition of the East Wing may have ignored processes required by law at one of the most important U.S. historic sites. It’s the latest illustration of his unilateral and unaccountable methods for getting what he wants.

Instruments of memory and identity

When leaders push selective histories and undercut inclusive ones, they turn heritage into a tool for controlling public memory. This collective understanding and interpretation of the past underpins a healthy democracy. It sustains a shared civic identity, ensures accountability for past wrongs and supports rights and participation.

Heritage politics in the Trump era seeks to redefine America’s story and determine who gets to speak. Attacks on so-called “woke” history seek to erase complex truths about slavery, inequality and exclusion that are essential to democratic accountability.

Architecture and heritage are never just bricks and mortar. They are instruments of memory, identity and power.

'Sit this one out': MAGA melts down over big-name Dem's op-ed blasting Trump

MAGA fans melted down Friday at Chelsea Clinton after she blasted President Donald Trump in an op-ed, telling her to "sit this one out."

Clinton, the former first daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, wrote a personal piece for USA Today and described spending her "formative years living in the White House, I always knew it wasn’t my house. It was my home, absolutely, but not my house."

She ripped Trump's most recent demolition of the historic building and called out the significance amid the current political turmoil, referring to the moment as "embarrassing," adding that the "disregard for history is a defining trait of President Trump’s second administration."

"The erasure of the East Wing isn't just about marble or plaster — it's about President Trump again taking a wrecking ball to our heritage, while targeting our democracy, and the rule-of-law," she wrote.

MAGA reactions rolled in on social media:

"Lol, your parents tried stealing furniture and silverware from the White House… and let’s not talk about the intern. Sit this one out," Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X.

"You might want to sit this one out, Chelsea. Your dad had sex in the 'people’s' Oval Office and your mom ripped off the furniture and fine china when she left," retired Air Force pilot and MAGA personality Buzz Patterson wrote on X.

"All the East Wing meltdowns are funny but the Chelsea Clinton take is almost too much. We don't deserve their unabashed idiocy and lack of self-awareness. Feeling grateful," MAGA influencer Grace Curley wrote on X.

"I’m 'unsettled' that the news media think Chelsea Clinton’s opinion on *anything* is newsworthy. Chelsea Clinton is 'unsettled' by Trump renovations," Ohio Attorney General David Yost wrote on X.

White House warns inflation data won't be released after report shows costs rising

This month's inflation report arrived 10 days late due to the government shutdown showing the Consumer Price Index rose slightly, but next month the data may not be released at all.

The CPI rose 3 percent in September compared to the same time last year, the fastest annual pace all year, but a White House official said the report may not be released next month if the government doesn't reopen soon, according to Fox Business correspondent Edward Lawrence.

"White House Official tells me the October CPI Inflation report will likely not come out for first time in history because the government shutdown," Lawrence reported. "The September report was worked on only because by law COLA increases must be posted by Nov 1st based on the latest inflation report."

The shutdown has entered its fourth week with little sign that Congress will be able to agree on a funding measure by the end of this month, and the lapse has already forced the Bureau of Labor Statistics to suspend all operations, including the release of its monthly jobs report and all future data collection.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed October’s inflation report would likely not be released due to the shutdown, “which will leave businesses, markets, families and the Federal Reserve in disarray.”

Fed officials refer to official government statistics as the “gold standard” for economic data, saying that alternative sources for data on jobs, inflation and other economic indicators are not as consistent or comprehensive.

'Angriest group of criminal incompetents': Analyst blasts Karoline Leavitt's media 'stunt'

An analyst blasted President Donald Trump's inner circle as the "angriest group of criminal incompetents" and criticized Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's recent "stunt."

As Trump and his administration work to dismantle the free press — from removing media organizations at the Pentagon with "right-wing fluffers" to attacks on reporters and denying press credentials — it's unclear when it will stop, Salon's White House columnist Brian Karem writes Friday.

"This is no secret told out of school. This isn’t speculation. This is American journalism, which is growing more inept and less able to do its job thanks to the government," Karem writes.

As press crumbles, the Trump administration is pushing to watch it fall — much like the demolition of the East Wing, he adds.

"These days it offers a child who wallows in puerile salaciousness while being totally empty of experience, knowledge or professionalism. We get Presidential Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt," Karem writes.

"She is Donald Trump’s White House mouth piece. Thankfully she doesn’t get much airtime, because it’s often a pre-pubescent, darkly comic, rage-induced tragedy when she does. She, and every other high-ranking member of Trump’s current regime, are destined to go down in history as the most feckless, angriest group of criminal incompetents ever gathered under one roof," Karem writes.

What makes Leavitt most problematic, he argues, is not just her inexperience, but her "complete lack of self-awareness," which he likens to how it felt hearing one of his own children talking about something they don't know about.

Last week, she claimed that the Democrats' base is comprised of “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

"If it sounded like something Trump would say, then you get the point. Leavitt is perfect: Exuberant, eager and engaged, with the mental acumen of an abandoned sock puppet," he writes.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) fired back, referring to her as “sick,” “demented” and a “stone cold liar.”

And this week, she publicly shared a text exchange between herself and HuffPost senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte, launching personal attacks on the reporter after he asked a question.

"Her loyalty is not to the United States. Her loyalty is to Trump and to whatever he says. Even if he contradicts himself or is caught in a lie or is shown to be the buffoon that he is, she will always hum his political tune. She often lies, and either smiles or yells at the press as she does so," Karem writes.

"Leavitt’s staunch devotion to the president apparently justifies treating people rudely and with contempt. She obviously doesn’t understand that the president leads a nation instead of a cadre of cultists, whether it be MAGA or Christian Nationalists."

Trump's billionaires' ballroom is a signpost to something very dark for us all

In the first Gilded Age, which ran from the 1890s through the 1920s, captains of American industry were dubbed “robber barons” for using their baronial wealth to bribe lawmakers, monopolize industry, and rob average Americans of the productivity of their labors.

Now, in a second Gilded Age, a new generation of robber barons is using their wealth to do the same — and to entrench their power.

The first Gilded Age was an era of conspicuous consumption. The second is an era of conspicuous influence.

The new robber barons are having their names etched into the pediments of the giant new ostentatious ballroom Trump is adding to the White House.

They already own — and influence — much of the news Americans receive. And they are eager to promote their views.

Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce, told The New York Times that Trump should send the National Guard to San Francisco. (After his remarks drew condemnation from many of the city’s civic leaders, he apologized. He seems about to get his wish nonetheless.)

Marc Rowan, the billionaire chief executive of Apollo Global Management, is the force behind Trump’s recent “compact” calling on universities to limit international students, protect conservative speech, require standardized testing for admissions, and adopt policies recognizing “that academic freedom is not absolute,” among other conditions. The Trump regime dangled “substantial and meaningful federal grants” for universities that agree.

(It didn’t work. Seven of the nine universities approached rejected the deal.)

Billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone, is also shaping the Trump regime’s campaign to upend American higher education. Schwarzman has emerged as a key intermediary between Trump and Harvard University.

Other of America’s new robber barons are rapidly consolidating their control over what Americans read, hear, and learn about what’s occurring in our country and the world. They include Jeff Bezos; Larry Ellison and his son, David; Mark Andreessen; Rupert Murdoch; Charles Koch; Tim Cook; Mark Zuckerberg; and, of course, Elon Musk.

Perhaps the new robber baron’s most lasting impression on the U.S. government will be the lavish White House ballroom Trump is constructing — a 90,000-square-foot, gold-leafed, glass-walled banquet room that will literally overshadow the so-called People’s House.

It will not be an assembly hall, dance hall, music hall, dining hall, village hall, or town hall. It will be a giant banquet and ballroom designed to accommodate 650 wealthy VIPs.

Trump claims that the East Room, the largest room in the White House, is too small. Its capacity is 200 people. He doesn’t like the idea of hosting kings, queens, and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.

Trump’s real intention is to have the White House resemble Versailles.

Potential billionaire donors have already received pledge agreements for “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” In return for donations, contributors are eligible for “recognition associated with the White House Ballroom.”

Their names will be etched in the ballroom’s brick or stone edifice.

Trump last week hosted a dinner at the White House for the project’s donors, which included representatives from Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and other companies, as well as Schwarzman, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and other billionaires.

Meredith O’Rourke, a top political fundraiser for 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.

Construction began Monday. Trump is now literally taking a wrecking ball to the White House — sending parts of the East Wing’s roof, the building’s exterior, and portions of its interior crumbling to the ground.

It seems fitting that in this second Gilded Age — an age of conspicuous influence and affluent access — the People’s House will be replaced by the Billionaires' House.

  • Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
  • Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.

'Thirstiest man': Analyst says Trump official made 'deal with the devil' in bid for power

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has developed a "reputation as the thirstiest man" and "happily made a deal with the devil," according to a new analysis.

Rubio has his eyes on a 2028 presidential run and has gone full MAGA, Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton writes Thursday.

"Most of America first took notice of Marco Rubio when he gave one of the most-cringe prime-time performances of all time, the official Republican rebuttal to Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address," Parton writes. "No one who watched is likely to forget Rubio’s awkward stare as he furtively reached for a water bottle, cementing his reputation as the thirstiest man in the U.S. Senate. It’s a testament to his limitless ambition that he came back from that and is now one of the most powerful people in the world."

Rubio, dubbed "Little Marco" by President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, has typically focused on national security and foreign policy, and although he has broken with the GOP in the past, including finding evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections — something Republicans now claim to be a "hoax" — Trump appears to have overlooked or ignored that. Not to mention, the former Florida senator's comment about Trump's "small hands" that played out during a 2016 debate on national television.

In his current role, he drives the illegal war in Venezuela, Parton explains.

"According to recent reports in the Wall Street Journal, the extrajudicial killings, CIA covert actions and pending war plans against Venezuela are all being driven by Rubio," she writes.

And although he doesn't always take the lead on each top issue for Trump, "that has just given him time to pursue his own special interests."

"The political establishment, including many Democrats, were relieved when Rubio was chosen for the State Department job, reassured that a supposedly serious fellow with Senate credentials would keep Trump foreign policy from going off the rails," she writes. "The hope was that Rubio might stop the president from doing something silly, like bailing out of NATO or invading Greenland. Little did they know that Rubio had happily made a deal with the devil and now seems to relish the idea of ripping up the world order in Trump’s image."

His main goal has been to fit in to the president's inner circle and carve out a space for his own political future.

"Marco Rubio almost certainly intends to run for president in 2028 and sees his service in that cause as the best way to fulfill his own agenda and expand both his power and his political profile. He’s certainly not the only person in the Trump administration with that idea, but he stands out in that many observers still view him as an 'adult in the room' with establishment credibility. That’s entirely wrong. He’s a fully paid-up MAGA fanatic now, and no one should think otherwise," Parton writes.

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