Why Is Dirt From Trump’s White House Reno Going to a Golf Course?

President Trump is reportedly taking the dirt from his demolition of the White House’s East Wing and moving it to the golf course he’s planning on taking over and renovating in Washington, D.C.

Martin Austermuhle, a reporter for local news site The 51st, noted Wednesday that dirt was being trucked from the White House to Hains Point, where the East Potomac Golf Links is located. Trump has reportedly been considering rebranding the golf course as the “Washington National Golf Course,” with a new logo eerily similar to that of his own courses.

So we have the president tearing up the East Wing of the White House to both make a ballroom and renovate a golf course, with no regard for any rules or regulations. If any other president was doing this kind of thing in office they’d be eviscerated with accusations of greed, corruption, or at least a lack of focus. But no one has batted an eye.

Dr. Mehmet Oz got his math completely wrong while trying to defend President Donald Trump on drug prices.

NBC’s Kristen Welker pointed out in an interview Wednesday night that Trump has repeatedly mentioned cutting drug prices by more than 100 percent, even throwing out mathematically impossible figures such as “1,200; 1,300; 1,400; 1,500 percent.” Welker asked Oz if making cuts of 100 percent or higher would essentially make drugs free.

“Is that a realistic goal from the president?” she asked. The former TV host failed to clear things up.

“The president does the calculation by saying, ‘OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it to $50, it’s 100 percent cheaper because you’re taking $50 off and left with only $50, so the amount you took off the price is equal to the amount that’s left. They’re equal so it’s 100 percent,” Oz replied.

Walker reminded Oz that Trump threw out 1,500 percent as one figure, and Oz doubled down in his reply.

“Well, if you take a drug that is $200 or $240, like we did last week, and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you’re talking about. That stated, the bigger question we should be asking ourselves is why didn’t we do this earlier?” Oz said.

Oz’s explanation does not back up the president’s impossible numbers, nor does it reflect reality. Meanwhile, health care costs stand to go up significantly if Affordable Care Act tax subsidies expire at the end of the year, an issue at the center of the current government shutdown. Will the president offer a coherent solution or keep throwing out numbers that don’t make sense?

Some of America’s largest corporations are backing Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom.

With no warning, the president razed the White House’s East Wing this week to make way for his lavish project, destroying the portion of the building that has traditionally been the starting point for White House tours and served as the dedicated space for the first lady’s offices.

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday, Trump said the 90,000-square-foot ballroom would be nearly twice the size of the White House, and quietly added $100 million on top of the project’s previously announced price tag. He also swore that the government would not bear the cost of the gathering space, noting that it would be paid “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.”

Those “friends” include the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, according to a list released by the Trump administration of people and companies expected to attend a dinner about the construction project. Other stand-out names include the defense titan Palantir, cell service provider T-Mobile, and the names of some of the country’s wealthiest families.

Read the full list below.

• Altria Group, Inc.
• Amazon
• Apple
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Caterpillar, Inc.
• Coinbase
• Comcast Corporation
• J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul
• Hard Rock International
• Google
• HP Inc.
• Lockheed Martin
• Meta Platforms
• Micron Technology
• Microsoft
• NextEra Energy, Inc.
• Palantir Technologies Inc.
• Ripple
• Reynolds American
• T-Mobile
• Tether America
• Union Pacific Railroad
• Adelson Family Foundation
• Stefan E. Brodie
• Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
• Charles and Marissa Cascarilla
• Edward and Shari Glazer
• Harold Hamm
• Benjamin Leon Jr.
• The Lutnick Family
• The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation
• Stephen A. Schwarzman
• Konstantin Sokolov
• Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher
• Paolo Tiramani
• Cameron Winklevoss
• Tyler Winklevoss

Donations are being managed by the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that previously oversaw the restoration of the Washington Monument in the wake of the 2011 earthquake. Exactly how Trump will be aggregating the funds, however, is not totally clear. Some of the expected money will come by way of previous arrangements in Trump’s settled lawsuits. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, for instance, agreed to contribute $22 million to the ballroom’s construction as recompense for banning Trump from YouTube in the fallout of the January 6 Capitol riot.

At least one unlisted entity is already roped into the ballroom development plan, according to Trump: the U.S. military.

“We’re also working with the military on it because they want to make sure everything is perfect,” Trump said. “And the military is very much involved in this. They want to make sure everything is absolutely beautiful.”

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he’d been personally insulted by Israel’s “very stupid” move to annex the West Bank.

While preparing to depart from Ben Gurion airport after a two-day trip to Israel, Vance was asked about the Israeli Knesset voting in support of a bill that would apply Israeli sovereignty to the occupied Palestinian West Bank, where the Israeli military and settler killings of Palestinians continue.

“When I asked about it, somebody told me that it was a political stunt, that it had no practical significance. It was purely symbolic,” Vance said. “I mean, look, if it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it.

“The West Bank is not gonna be annexed by Israel,” he added. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy, and if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that. But we certainly weren’t happy about it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar claimed that the opposition had staged the vote to “embarrass the government” during Vance’s visit, adding that the bill did not have the support of the government. Last month, Sa’ar himself publicly floated annexing the West Bank.

“As much as it’s our wish or aspiration, we have decided not to bring it [at] this stage to the Knesset, because now on the table, we have huge efforts to [do] everything that Trump’s plan will be successful, and we will invest in that,” Sa’ar said Wednesday.

As President Donald Trump’s supposed “ceasefire” sets in, violent raids and assaults have continued in the West Bank, where the Israeli government has approved dozens of new settlements over the last two years, sparking increased violence against Palestinian residents. There have been more than 1,000 violent settler attacks since the beginning of 2025, according to Al Jazeera, putting this year on track to be the most violent year in the West Bank on record.

Israel has violated the terms of Trump’s fragile peace deal since the start, launching a wave of airstrikes at the Gaza Strip over the weekend, killing dozens of people, including children. The Israeli military said it was responding to violence from Hamas, after individuals in the Rafah area fired guns and an anti-tank missile at IDF forces. But Hamas said it had not violated the agreement.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is still going rogue.

The infamous MAGA hard-liner was on Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday night explaining why she “hates” her own party.

“These people are so fake,” Greene told Carlson. “The only reason that they kiss up to Donald Trump, our president, the only reason they kiss up to him, is because they’re terrified of a Truth Social post, because they’re terrified of their own constituents that fully support MAGA, that fully support America First, and fully support everything that Donald Trump has laid out now for years and years.

“Americans got to the point where electing Donald Trump was a referendum on the Republican Party,” she said. “And I very much feel that because many times I hate my own party, and I blame Republicans for many of the problems that we have today.”

This is par for the course lately for Greene, as she becomes perhaps the most outspoken individual Republican in Congress—no Truth Social post can muzzle her. She has come out against her party’s obstruction of the Epstein files, her party’s decision to shut down the government instead of improving health insurance, and the funding and enabling by both parties of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“You don’t HATE your government enough,” she said earlier this month in response to the shutdown. And she’s still going.

“I blame them for being so America last to the point where they are literally slaves to all the big industries in Washington, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, health insurance industries, you name it,” Greene said later in the Carlson interview. “They are literally slaves to them, and they love foreign war so much.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called out the erosion of American soft power and international legitimacy in the age of Donald Trump, noting that the U.S. president’s actions have caused former economic strengths to become economic weaknesses.

“This decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over. And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country … strengths based on close ties to America, have become our vulnerabilities,” Carney said during a Wednesday night speech to students in Ottawa. He also noted that Canadian manufacturing sectors and businesses were “under threat” due to Trump’s tariffs.

“Our relationship with the United States will never again be the same as it was … we have to take care of ourselves, because we can’t rely on one foreign partner. We have to take care of each other because we are stronger together,” he said.

These are harsh and alarming words to hear from the leader of what has been this country’s closest geographical and political ally for decades. But Carney’s view is entirely warranted. Trump has stoked conflict and disrespect by calling for Canada to be the 51st state, imposed harsh tariffs on Canadian goods, and overall tarnished what was once a fruitful relationship—all under the guise of his “America First” ideology. Now, Carney is thinking “Canada First.”

“Now, above all, we will build Canadian,” Carney continued. “Our upcoming budget will move forward with our Buy Canadian policy—prioritizing Canadian steel, aluminum, lumber, manufactured goods, and technology for Canadian projects.”

It isn’t just Canada. Countries throughout Europe have shifted away from the United States as they can no longer expect consistency and good faith negotiation from the Trump administration. So far “America First” has been more isolating than liberating.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was caught by his own words Wednesday night after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called out Republicans for some shutdown hypocrisy.

Johnson initially thought he was making a good point by invoking a statement by Democratic Representative Katherine Clark, who spoke of using the shutdown as leverage despite knowing “that families will suffer.”

“It was pretty shocking today to hear them say that. They usually don’t say the quiet part out loud,” Johnson told Collins. But the CNN journalist then played a montage of Johnson’s fellow Republicans making similar statements, including then-vice presidential nominee JD Vance last year and President Donald Trump just last month.

“Some people might look at that and say, ‘Well, how is what Democrats are doing now different than what Republicans have argued before?’” Collins asked Johnson, who quickly claimed that those instances were “different times and different circumstances.”

Johnson insisted that the current shutdown was the first time that the government was shut down despite a clean continuing resolution being presented, and that Republicans have a clean record in that regard. But even if Vance’s statements last year could be claimed as “different circumstances,” Trump’s statements were only last month.

Trump has also publicly threatened to lay off federal workers, using their jobs as well as their backpay as leverage against the Democrats to get what he wants during the shutdown. Meanwhile, recent polls are not looking very good for the president, showing that as this standoff drags on, Trump and his fellow Republicans are taking a hit with the public.

Indiana Senate Republicans aren’t falling in line behind President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme to keep control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

Molly Swigart, a spokesperson for Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, put it simply when speaking to Politico Wednesday. “The votes aren’t there for redistricting,” she said.

Four people familiar with the matter spoke anonymously with Politico, and two of them suggested that Bray and his leadership team were holdouts on mid-cycle redistricting. “If Bray would personally release his leadership to support this, there would be enough votes for this to pass,” one of those people said.

The White House reportedly conducted a dial-in poll, which revealed that the majority of Republicans supported the redistricting effort. But one Republican claimed their colleagues had been confused by the poll’s instructions, and that the White House had not provided specific guidance on how to proceed with redistricting.

Three of the people who spoke anonymously with Politico said that Governor Mike Braun was inclined to call a special election in order to redraw the state’s congressional district maps to scrounge up extra GOP seats. In September, Braun had floated the idea of lawmakers returning for a special session in November, and warned that there could be “consequences” for breaking with Trump’s wishes.

A spokesperson for Braun told Politico that the governor was “confident” that he could secure a majority of state Senate Republicans to “ensure fair representation in Congress.”

The Trump administration has previously urged Indiana to follow the lead of other states’ redistricting efforts and deliver Trump one or two additional Republican House seats. In August, Vice President JD Vance visited with more than 55 Republicans at the Indiana state House, pressing them to approve a new map, and Trump met privately with the Republican heads of the Indiana House and Senate in the Oval Office.

Trump’s redistricting efforts are widespread across the country. On Wednesday, North Carolina Republicans passed a new congressional map that diluted the voting power of Black residents and merged districts to make them more conservative, likely giving the GOP another seat in Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has apparently chosen the silent treatment in response to a threat on the life of one of his colleagues.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday that he still hadn’t heard from the Republican House leader, days after the wannabe assassin was arrested.

“Has Speaker Johnson reached out to you since a January 6er made a threat on your life?” a reporter asked.

“No,” Jeffries said plainly.

Christopher Moynihan, a 34-year-old from upstate New York, was arrested Saturday for plotting to kill Jeffries at New York City’s Economic Club.

Moynihan was convicted in 2022 for participating in the Capitol riot. Video evidence captured him breaking through fences, entering the Capitol, and rifling through documents in the Senate Gallery. During the riot, Moynihan said, “There’s got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags,” according to court documents. Moynihan was also depicted standing behind the Senate well alongside Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman.

He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in 2023 but was prematurely released thanks to a blanket pardon from Donald Trump that freed 1,500 January 6 rioters on his first day back in office.

Johnson claimed Tuesday that he was previously unaware of Moynihan’s threats against Jeffries, before he attempted to divert attention away from the right-wing attacker toward the past weekend’s anti-Trump No Kings protests and “violence on the left.”

“The assassination culture that’s been advanced now—this is the left, in almost every case that is advancing this, and not the right,” Johnson told reporters. “Let’s not make this a partisan issue, you don’t want me to go there.”

Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday that “threats of violence will not stop us from showing up, standing up and speaking up for the American people.”

Moynihan sent text messages Friday that spelled out his plans to end Jeffries’s life.

“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan allegedly wrote, according to a criminal complaint. “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated.… I will kill him for the future.”

The anonymous recipient flagged the messages to authorities, expressing additional concern over Moynihan’s “increased narcotic abuse and homicidal ideations,” reported Axios.

President Trump’s unilateral, indiscriminate “drug boat” bombings have expanded from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.

“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on Wednesday. “The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics. There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”

Hegseth then went on to compare these alleged drug traffickers—who were killed thousands of miles away from the U.S. border—to the 9/11 perpetrators.

“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” he said. “There will be no refuge or forgiveness—only justice.”

All previous bombings have occurred in the Caribbean Sea, where the Trump administration is ratcheting up its military presence. This strike has broadened the scope of the administration’s already deeply controversial bombing campaign. And this kind of language, combining the failed war on drugs with the failed war on terror, has been deployed to justify brutal extrajudicial executions that have killed 32 people at this point, at least two of whom were just regular fishermen.

“Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives, so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough,’” Trump said last week. “It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people … these are people that are killing our population.”

That number is a complete guess at best. And there is no evidence beyond the administration’s own word that these boats were carrying drugs, or that the men blown to bits were drug traffickers. There are no questions asked, and no other evidence aside from the grainy highlight reels officials like Hegseth post.

Chad “Charpo” Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were two northern Trinidadian fishermen murdered by the Trump administration earlier this month for being “narcoterrorists.”

“I just want to know why Donald Trump killing poor people just so,” Joseph’s uncle “Dollars” told The Guardian. “Just because he going after the people gas and their oil. He going after people riches and killing poor people children.”