Here’s How Much Money Trump Is Wasting on Giant Banners of His Face

The Trump administration has spent at least $56,000 so far on Orwellian banners displayed on government buildings, according to a report from Democratic Senator Adam Schiff published by MeidasTouch Network.

In August, Trump’s Department of Labor unfurled a giant banner on its headquarters’ facade, featuring the words “American Workers First” and Trump’s glowering second inaugural portrait. Alongside the president’s banner was one depicting Theodore Roosevelt with the same motto. In the spring, Trump’s visage similarly appeared on a banner beside one of Abraham Lincoln on the Department of Agriculture’s building.

An oversight report by Schiff reveals that the Department of Health and Human Services also plans to exhibit political banners on its exterior. The Trump administration has awarded a contract for two “Make America Healthy Again Building Banners” at HHS headquarters, which are yet to be unveiled. Per contracting documents, the signs are to measure 11 feet by 88 feet and be made to last “preferably” the length of Trump’s term. While they will feature “different artwork,” the images are not detailed in the report—but if history is any indication, one of them can be expected to depict the president scowling.

Between all three reported banner orders, the Trump administration has dished out about $56,000 in taxpayer money. The USDA banners cost $16,400, the HHS banners $33,726, and the Labor Department banners about $6,000—though, Schiff notes, the full cost is “yet to be determined.”

According to Schiff, the banners could run afoul of federal appropriations laws that bar the spending of funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” Either way, as the senator notes, they serve as “a stark visual manifestation of measures President Trump and his administration are taking to consolidate power and control that are antithetical to American democracy.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller just made it his mission to go after liberal nonprofits.

Speaking with Vice President JD Vance Monday during a tribute to Charlie Kirk on the far-right firebrand’s eponymous show, Miller said that he intended to “channel all the anger that we have” against the left, claiming that leftist groups and nonprofits had created “terrorist networks” that led to Kirk’s murder.

“The last message that Charlie sent me … was that we needed to have an organized strategy to go after the left-leaning organizations that are promoting violence in this country,” Miller told Vance, celebrating what he described as focused anger. “I will write those words onto my heart and I will carry them out.”

Miller elaborated that, per his belief, these supposed terrorist organizations had produced “organized doxing campaigns” and “organized cells” that facilitated violence.

“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Miller said. “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.

“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” Miller added.

Kirk was shot dead during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University Wednesday. He was struck by a single bullet to the neck, pulverizing his carotid artery.

But details surrounding Kirk’s murder—and his suspected killer—don’t point to the ideological left, as Miller would apparently like people to believe. Instead, the suspect in custody, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, came from a MAGA family, his grandmother told The Daily Beast. Robinson, who hailed from a conservative Mormon family in southwestern Utah, was registered as a nonpartisan voter, according to public records.

Etchings found on bullet casings allegedly belonging to Robinson similarly did not paint the suspect as a liberal. Instead, the writings made references to video games such as Helldivers 2, and echoed 4chan copypastas.

Hardline MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce,” in a psychotic, inaccuracy-laden post about “the left” and Charlie Kirk. 

“There is nothing left to talk about with the left. They hate us. They assassinated our nice guy who actually talked to them peacefully debating ideas. Then millions on the left celebrated and made clear they want all of us dead,” Taylor Greene wrote on X on Monday. “To be honest, I want a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it’s no longer safe for any of us. What will come from Charlie Kirk being martyred is already happening. It is a spiritual revival building the kingdom for Christ.” 

https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1967550436337996189

There’s been a concerted effort on the right to cast Kirk’s shooting as some coordinated leftist attack. Some like Elon Musk are even calling it the work of a transgender terrorist cell. Multiple figures both in and out of government have called for “war” against this anonymous idea they have of the left, when in reality the suspect’s politics are enigmatic at best. Still, they are using Kirk’s assassination to further their own far-right agendas. MTG is doing the exact same, as she is literally calling for a civil dissolution of the United States over this, all while evoking the name of Jesus.   

“Democrats are hardened in their beliefs and will flip the switch back as soon as they have power. And, if you are expecting Republicans to fight against evil, with the power they currently possess, and end this once and for all, you are going to be extremely disappointed. This week Congress will be voting on another CR—Biden’s budget that FUNDS TRANSGENDER POLICIES, NOT our own Trump policy budget that funds what you voted for,” Taylor Greene continued. “Government is not answer, God is. Turn your full faith and trust to our Almighty God and our Savior Jesus. Tighten your circle around your family and protect them at all times. I will pray for the left, but personally I want nothing to do with them.”

While this is far from MTG’s most troubling post, the greater trend it highlights is indeed worrisome. The right’s attempt to whitewash Kirk’s legacy, declare war on the ambiguous “left” before any motive has been confirmed, and act as if political violence (or jokes about it) is unique to the left is an insult to the intelligence of their own supporters. 

Republicans are calling to utilize government resources to memorialize Charlie Kirk, the MAGA activist and provocateur who was fatally shot last week at a university speaking engagement in Utah.

On Monday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced a vigil will take place in the evening in the Capitol Building’s National Statuary Hall. At the event, which comes on the heels of a prayer vigil at the Kennedy Center Sunday, Johnson will deliver remarks and lead prayers.

The vigil is just the latest effort by Republicans to canonize Kirk.

Last week, MAGA Representative Nancy Mace said she was introducing a resolution to authorize Kirk to be “lain in honor” at the Capitol Rotunda. The rare distinction, in which the remains of distinguished private citizens are placed in the Capitol for public viewing, was established in 1998—similar to the long-standing tradition of “lying in state,” which is reserved for government officials and military leaders.

If Mace has her way, Kirk would join a small group of individuals to have lain in honor at the Capitol: two Medal of Honor recipients, four Capitol police officers, civil rights leader Rosa Parks, and minister Billy Graham, a close adviser to several U.S. presidents.

Others are even pushing for a statue of Kirk to be erected in the Capitol. In a draft letter to Johnson last week, GOP Representative Anna Paulina Luna said a statue would serve as a “permanent testament” to Kirk’s “life’s work, his courage, and his sacrifice.” Supporting the effort, Republican Representative Andrew Clyde told a NOTUS reporter, “We have a statue of [Martin Luther King Jr.] in the Capitol, don’t we?”

Notably, part of Kirk’s life’s work was distorting the history of the Civil Rights Movement. He attacked King as an “awful” person and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a “huge mistake.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and other Republicans have wasted no time fashioning the late Charlie Kirk into a prop from their political agendas.

During an angry rant on Fox News Friday, Miller revealed that Kirk’s final missive to him was a directive to use the full force of government to “dismantle” the left.

“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in Heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” Miller fumed. “That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us.”

Miller said he was open to leveling any charges against left-wing organizations responsible for inciting riots, doxing, committing violence, and “trying to inspire terrorism.” It’s worth noting that the alleged assassin has not been linked to any such organization, and in the wake of Kirk’s death, right-wing activists have undertaken a massive doxing campaign against anyone they feel belittled the shooting.

Miller also threatened to exile the “domestic terrorists in this country spreading this evil hate,” warning that law enforcement would be used to “find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law, take away your freedom.”

It’s certainly not impossible that Kirk fully supported Miller’s long-standing goal of destroying left-wing organizations; it’s just a little convenient that the late right-wing activist’s final message rubber-stamped Miller’s dreams of a law enforcement crackdown against the left.

Miller’s latest threat comes as Donald Trump has moved to defend right-wing radicals and demonize the left, and MAGA declared “war” before they even knew who had fired the shot.

As fate would have it, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also said Kirk’s final message to her was cheering on her attacks against state and local-level Democrats, as she works to expand immigration law enforcement operations in major cities.

“The last thing Charlie had texted me about—about a day or two before he passed away—was about those mayors and governors,” Noem said Sunday on Fox News. “That he wanted them to be held accountable for how dangerous they were making the situation for their people that had to live in those cities.”

Noem has already been on the warpath against the leaders of sanctuary cities, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Arizona Republican Kari Lake and several Republican pundits also attempted to use Kirk’s death to further their political attacks against higher education—too bad the alleged shooter only attended college for one semester.

Television host Brian Kilmeade’s personal beliefs about the homeless are deeply disturbing, even for Fox News.

The prime-time anchor was forced to apologize on air during Sunday’s episode of Fox and Friends after he said that the correct answer to handling the displaced population should be mass euthanization by the government.

The comment slipped out during an uncontentious roundtable last week discussing the August 22 murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. Zarutska was aboard a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, when she was attacked by a homeless and mentally ill man, Decarlos Brown Jr.

But due process for Brown was, apparently, not the obvious answer to Kilmeade, who suggested that a better answer for combating mental illness among America’s homeless populations would be death.

“Involuntary lethal injection, or something,” Kilmeade said, receiving no pushback from either of his co-hosts. “Just kill them.”

By the end of the weekend, the network had forced Kilmeade to change his tune—at least publicly.

“During that discussion, I wrongly said that they should get lethal injections,” Kilmeade read off the teleprompter. “I apologize for that extremely callous remark. I obviously am aware that not all mentally ill homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina, and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.”

Other recommendations for handling the homeless discussed during last week’s roundtable included institutionalizing or incarcerating those deemed to be mentally unwell.

But Kilmeade’s compassionless gut instinct belies the reality: that homelessness and mental illness often go hand in hand. People experiencing homelessness report significantly higher rates of serious mental illness than the general population—a correlation that researchers argue is a two-way street.

While mental illness can prevent an individual from accessing the systems or tools to help them get out of homelessness, not having a home, reliable possessions, or having one’s daily needs met can quickly materialize into severe trauma that only furthers the chasm between an individual and the available systemic resources.

“Mental or behavioral health disorders and substance abuse are many times outcomes of experiencing homelessness,” according to the Maine-based homeless nonprofit and shelter system Preble Street. “The stress and trauma of homelessness makes it a known risk factor for creating the conditions for mental illness and substance abuse disorders, and people who experience chronic homelessness have a far higher risk of mental illness, disability, or a substance abuse disorder.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr told a crowd mourning Charlie Kirk that he and Kirk first met in 2001—when Kirk would’ve been about 7 years old.

“I met Charlie for the first time in July of 2001. I went on his podcast, and I think we approached each other with a lot of trepidation at that time, but by the end of the podcast, we were soulmates. We were spiritual brothers,” RFK Jr. told the Kennedy Center vigil attendees on Sunday. “We were friends. And over the next couple of years, our friendship blossomed. He ended up being the primary architect of my unification with President Trump.”

The administration’s reaction to Kirk’s death—the vigil, the calls for him to get a statue in the Capitol, the flags at half-mast— show that Kirk wasn’t just a culture-war podcaster, he was a legitimate figure within the MAGA apparatus. And yet top officials  in leadership are still struggling to eulogize him in ways that feel human. RFK Jr. can’t correctly recall when he and Kirk even met, and Trump was more eager to talk about his 90,000 square foot grand ballroom construction project than he was to publicly process his grief for Kirk.

“A slight majority of Americans voted to give literally insane people full authoritarian powers over them,” one X user wrote. “Also, it’s funny RFK Jr and Trump probably don’t really know who Charlie Kirk was. Neither of them care.”

The Washington Post fired its last full-time Black opinion columnist, who says it was because they didn’t like what she posted after Charlie Kirk’s shooting.

Karen Attiah joined the Post in 2014 as a columnist, then became the founding Global Opinions editor in 2016, and has received numerous awards since, including for her coverage of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On Monday, she announced she was fired for criticizing gun violence and posting a racist quote from Kirk in the wake of his death. 

Last Wednesday, in the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting in Utah and the school shooting in Colorado, Attiah made a string of posts on Bluesky, with only one of them actually mentioning Kirk by name. 

“I wish I had hope for gun control and that I could believe ‘political violence has no place in this country.’ But we live in a country that accepts white children being massacred by gun violence,” she wrote first. “Not just accepts, but worships violence.”

“Political violence has no place in this country.... But we will also do nothing to curb the availability of the guns used to carry out said violence,” she said in another post. “The denial and empty rhetoric is learned helplessness—because the truth is ... America is sick and there is no cure in sight.” 

Those posts are not lacking in validity, and neither are the statements Attiah suspects she actually got fired for. 

“Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence,” she wrote, referring to Kirk, who spent much of his career punching down and spreading racism and negativity. “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning  for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence,” she said later. 

The one post Attiah made that actually had Kirk’s name in it was a slightly paraphrased quote. 

“‘Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot’—Charlie Kirk.” (Kirk’s original quote was “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously,” in reference to former first lady Michelle Obama, news host Joy Reid, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and former Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, although his ire was certainly directed at any successful Black woman.) 

Attiah said the Post found her BlueSky posts to be “unacceptable,” “gross misconduct” and “endangering the physical safety” of her co-workers. She added that she was fired “without conversation.” 

“This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold,” Attiah wrote. “Since then, my words on absolution for white male violence have proven prescient. The suspect in Kirk’s killing is indeed a young white man, and already, lawmakers are urging us to pray for him. The media is painting the 22-year-old as a good, all-American suburban kid. The cycle I mentioned has once again come to pass.” 

Attiah also noted that her firing, as the last Black opinion columnist at the Post, reflected a greater trend of reactionary, anti-DEI policy that has been reaffirmed by the Trump administration’s culture war on woke, “a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful—and tragic,” she wrote. 

This comes as many on the online right try (with some success) to attack and censure anyone they see speaking ill of Kirk, even if it just entails reposting the countless wildly offensive and inaccurate things he said while he was alive. This shows once again that the right wing’s ideology has never been one of free speech in America, no matter how much they say it is. 

From McCarthyism to the backlash against the Dixie Chicks, to this current witch hunt, it’s clear that the right is far more sensitive than it has portrayed itself to be. That’s why it’s crashing out over people like Attiah and others rightly pointing out that Kirk’s legacy is one of bigotry and contempt, not one that should be held up as some shining example of political discourse.  

Attiah plans to continue her writing on her substack The Golden Hour. 

“I am proud of my eleven years at the Post. Beyond awards and recognition, the greatest honor has been working with brilliant colleagues and connecting with readers and writers around the world,” she wrote. “To all who have supported me, read me, even those who disagreed with me—I say, thank you. You’ve made me a better writer, thinker, and person.”

The president is threatening to withhold federal funding from a U.S. city unless its local election goes his way.

Donald Trump warned Monday that he would stop “sending good money” to New York City if it chose Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor—hours after the 33-year-old politico earned Governor Kathy Hochul’s critical endorsement.

“Governor Kathy Hochul of New York has Endorsed the ‘Liddle’ Communist,’ Zohran Mamdani, running for Mayor of New York,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “This is a rather shocking development, and a very bad one for New York City. How can such a thing happen?”

“Washington will be watching this situation very closely. No reason to be sending good money after bad!” he noted.

Hochul—a bonafide centrist—spelled out her support for the Democratic Socialist in a sprawling New York Times op-ed Sunday, detailing their mutual policy goals of lowering the cost of living, instating strong leadership atop the New York City Police Department, and vehemently opposing Trump’s “abhorrent and destructive policies.”

“Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has killed jobs and dragged down our economy with tariff tax hikes that make life more expensive for working families. He’s gutted Medicaid and food assistance, slashed federal funding New York City relies on and threatened a federal takeover of New York—all while trying to put his thumb on the scale of our local elections,” Hochul wrote.

“We must never allow Mr. Trump to control our city like the king he wants to be,” the governor noted. “Anyone who accepts his tainted influence or benefits from it is compromised from the start.”

It’s not the first time that Trump has overtly threatened Mamdani. The president accused the Ugandan-born New Yorker of being in the country “illegally,” and in July said he would arrest Mamdani if the mayoral hopeful followed through on defying ICE.

Mamdani has been repeatedly accused by conservatives of being a communist, a badge that he has roundly rejected. Politifact, an independent fact-checking organization, said that the Queens lawmaker’s platform for free buses, subsidized daycare, protected rent control, and city-owned grocery stores was not akin to communism, a system in which the government seizes and retains complete and total control over private property and industry. Instead, Politifact decried the cheap smear as a “red scare tactic that has existed in U.S. politics for decades.”

But the name-calling and federal intrusions have not swayed New York voters away from the race favorite: Mamdani clinched New York City’s Democratic primary with 56 percent of the vote in June. He eclipsed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo by double digits, beating out the establishment Democrat by 12 points.

New York City’s election day is Tuesday, November 4, though early voting begins October 25.

FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday denied any wrongdoing in his clumsy handling of the investigation into last week’s fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, Fox News reports that his position in the Trump administration could be in jeopardy.

Kash is facing fire mainly for his premature social media post the day of the shooting, declaring that “the subject for the horrific shooting” was in custody—a claim almost immediately contradicted by local officials. Patel later backtracked, and the manhunt ensued for another 27-plus hours before the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was turned in by a family member.

On Fox and Friends Monday, Patel said he was simply “being transparent with working with the public on our findings as I had them.”

“The job of the FBI is not just to manhunt the actual suspect who did the killing, or suspects, but it’s also to eliminate targets, and eliminate subjects who are not involved in the process, and that’s what we were doing,” Patel said. “Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not.”

Patel’s comments come as Trump administration insiders say his ouster could be in the works. Fox reported Sunday that “Patel’s purported off-ramp, which the White House denies, would not involve his firing but a reassignment to another administration role, according to multiple people who described it.”

One source told Fox that Patel will “get Billy Long-ed,” referring to the IRS commissioner whom Trump recently removed and then nominated as U.S. ambassador to Iceland.

The White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Deputy A.G. Todd Blanche “have no confidence in Kash,” a source knowledgeable of personnel talks told Fox, adding that Bondi and Blanche in particular “can’t stand” him. Both officials denied the characterization to Fox, and White House officials also denied that there are plans to replace Patel.

Trump allies and Patel critics reportedly believe that the FBI’s freshly sworn in co-deputy director, Andrew Bailey, could be his planned replacement—which Bailey denies, telling Fox he was not “brought in to replace anyone in leadership at the FBI.”

The day after Patel’s premature post about a shooting “subject,” the FBI director kept silent at a press conference with Utah Governor Spencer Cox and other officials. Citing multiple sources, Fox reports that this was because he was “forcefully instructed” not to chime in.

Similarly, Cox took the lead in the press conference on Friday announcing that the suspect was in custody—though the FBI director did speak, including telling the deceased Kirk, “I’ll see you in Valhalla.” A source told Fox that there had been a concern that “letting Kash talk much could f*ck up the prosecution.”

Patel is set to testify before the Senate and House Judiciary committees this week.