White House Stops Press From Documenting Trump’s Disaster Renovation

Donald Trump is apparently so proud of the ballroom he’s building at the White House that he doesn’t want anyone to see the construction in progress. 

On Thursday, the Secret Service closed off access to the Ellipse park, where journalists were taking pictures and video of the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Both CNN and Reuters photojournalists had to leave the area, according to CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

Images of the ongoing destruction of a major section of the White House seem to have caused enough of a backlash that Trump is trying to keep the public from seeing them. It’s easy to see why: Trump previously claimed that the ballroom would result in no demolition of any part of the White House, and ignored the normal legal process for making any changes to the building. 

The ballroom itself is going to be a garish 90,000-square-foot construction full of Trump’s trademark gold decor. Gone will be a guest entrance as well as offices for the first lady’s staff and other White House employees. A majority of Americans are opposed to the demolition, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the backlash “fake outrage.” She  claims that Trump is doing what other presidents have only dreamed of, saying “he was reelected back to this people’s house because he’s good at building things.” 

While Trump claims that the ballroom construction isn’t being paid for by taxpayer funds, that’s not reassuring: $300 million in donations is coming from the president’s wealthy friends, allies, and corporations looking to curry favor with his administration. That money could be considered a bribe. 

Now the Trump administration is attempting to hide the probably illegal destruction and construction from news coverage, and while that won’t make the story and images disappear, nothing will or likely can be done now that a big chunk of the White House is gone. Future occupants of the Oval Office will now inherit a big ballroom that nobody asked for. 

Donald Trump just pardoned a crypto criminal who’s making the president’s family richer, according to an exclusive Wall Street Journal report Thursday.

After months of lobbying the Trump administration, the president signed a presidential pardon Wednesday for Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former chief executive of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

“The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over,” announced White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. But is another war on American customers just beginning?

Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 for failing to maintain an anti-money-laundering program at Binance, earning him a four-month prison sentence. Binance Holdings Limited agreed to pay the United States $4 billion to resolve an investigation into violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act, failure to register as a money-transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Why would Trump pardon Zhao? Likely because he helped line the Trump family’s pockets through his support of World Liberty Financial, or WLFI, the decentralized finance platform that is majority-owned by a Trump business entity.

Binance has repeatedly boosted and incentivized the use of USD1, WLFI’s stable coin, which is a cryptocurrency that maintains a value of $1. Binance provided WLFI its first significant boon in May when the platform accepted a shady $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi–based MGX made in Trump’s stable coin. The announcement followed an April meeting between Zachary Witkoff, son of special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, who is a “promoter” of WLFI, and Zhao in Abu Dhabi where they discussed USD1.

The Wall Street Journal reported in March that representatives from the president’s family met with Zhao to discuss a potential stake in Binance.US, the company’s American arm, which has been heavily restricted due to regulatory issues. The company had first reached out to the president’s allies last year, looking to strike a deal to bring the exiled firm back to the United States.

New York City’s second mayoral debate did not pan out well for disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, least of all when one of his accusers emerged from the crowd to prompt a question.

Charlotte Bennett was the second of 13 women to accuse Cuomo of sexually harassing them during his time in office. Bennett worked as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in the Cuomo administration, but left after the governor asked several unwelcome questions about her sex life and if she “had ever been with an older man.”

Bennett sued Cuomo in 2022 but eventually dropped the case. In April, she agreed to receive a settlement claim tied to separate litigation regarding Cuomo’s alleged harassment. But Cuomo has since said that he would sue Bennett for defamation, effectively silencing her during the mayoral race.

Bennett was apparently invited to the debate hall Wednesday night by Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and her presence forced one of Cuomo’s most contemptible scandals to center stage.

“You sought to access her private gynecological records,” Mamdani said, referring to actions that Cuomo’s legal team undertook as part of his defense. “She cannot speak up for herself because you lodged a defamation case against her. I, however, can speak.

“What do you say to the 13 women that you sexually harassed?” Mamdani pressed, turning to face Cuomo as the crowd roared.

Despite months of bankrolled debate prep that quickly proved worthless, the former governor’s reply was remarkably underwhelming.

“Uh—if you want to be in government, then you have to be serious and mature,” Cuomo stammered, before noting that he had never been found criminally or civilly liable for his alleged behavior.

Continuing the takedown of Cuomo into the next day, Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa followed up with his own zinger, telling reporters Thursday morning that “if you’re under 30, Cuomo’s always flirty.”

Andrew Cuomo’s campaign for mayor of New York City is not going well. In polls, he consistently trails the front-runner and Democratic nominee, New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. And on Wednesday night, he was on the receiving end of blistering attacks during the final debate of the mayoral race.

How did Cuomo respond the following morning? By making an offensive and bigoted 9/11 joke about Mamdani, a Muslim.

The former New York governor was on the WABC radio show Sid and Friends in the Morning, and asked host Sid Rosenberg, “God forbid, another 9/11—can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?”

“He’d be cheering,” Rosenberg replied, to which Cuomo replied, “That’s another problem.”

It’s one thing to claim Mamdani lacks the experience to handle a major crisis like a terrorist attack. It’s quite another to insinuate that the Democratic nominee would cheer on a horrific tragedy to the city he’d be leading, with a nod toward Islamophobia in the process. And the radio show is not even the first instance of Cuomo engaging in bigotry against Mamdani.

On Wednesday, right before the debate, the Cuomo campaign quickly posted and deleted an AI-generated video showing “criminals” supporting Mamdani’s campaign, including a drunk driver, domestic abuser, and a Black man wearing a keffiyeh shoplifting.

It’s quite clear the Cuomo campaign is getting desperate in the final weeks of the mayoral race. Mamdani has managed to gather support from the city’s diverse communities, and Cuomo’s little joke may set him back further in his attempt to drum up support for his flagging campaign.

Listen to Cuomo’s interview with Rosenberg at WABC radio’s website (the “joke” is at the 21-minute mark).

House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong by blocking the deciding signature on a bipartisan petition for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files in full.

Speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, Johnson denied Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva’s claim that she was unable to start constituent work because she lacks a budget, an office in her district, or even a badge allowing her access to Capitol Hill. But the Louisiana Republican insisted that wouldn’t matter, anyway.

“She has computers and 16 employees, and there’s no excuse for it,” Johnson snapped.

Johnson also rejected the suggestion that he was somehow blocking the release of the government’s files on Epstein, because in his view, the files were already coming out.

“The Epstein files are being released,” Johnson claimed, pointing to the latest batch of documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee on Friday, which he said included Epstein’s financial ledgers, daily calendar, and flight logs.

“All the things people have been saying they wanted. It’s all coming out. Why? Because the House Oversight Committee has been working through this period,” Johnson said.

“These are all distractions. All distractions from the main point. They have shut the government down for political purposes, and we gotta get it reopened,” Johnson continued.

The latest release included testimony from Alex Acosta, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who approved a nonprosecution deal for Epstein in 2008, allowing him to avoid federal charges despite substantial evidence of sex trafficking and abuse of minors. Acosta, who had previously served as Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, defended his decision to lawmakers. “A billionaire going to jail sends a strong signal to the community that this is not, not right, that this cannot happen,” he said Friday.

Last month, Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee released excerpts of flight logs and daily schedules showing that Epstein had vacation plans with Elon Musk, held meetings with Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon, and flew around with Prince Andrew.

Previous document dumps have been more underwhelming. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee found that 97 percent of documents included in a September release of 33,000 pages had already been made public, and one journalist at the Miami Herald noted that the dump contained multiple duplicates of old reports.

Health care in Idaho just got more expensive thanks to the government shutdown.

Idaho’s Affordable Care Act portal opened Thursday with new price tags, offering the nation its first glimpse at an Obamacare marketplace without federal tax credits.

The federal government has been shut down for more than 22 days, in large part over a debate on the merits of the credits. Still, neither national political party appears willing to shatter Congress’s stalemate on how to fund Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included details to slice billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

Now, recipients in Idaho are facing noticeably higher premiums.

“On average, gross premiums, or the overall cost of the premium, has gone up about 10 percent. And the net premium, or the amount the consumer pays after the tax credit has been applied, has increased about 75 percent,” Pat Kelly, executive director of Your Health Idaho, told The Hill.

“So, those are averages across all of our enrollees, but it does give an indication of overall increase and then increase to what the consumer actually pays,” he said.

The expired subsidies were created through the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and allowed households making more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify for lowered premiums. (That looks like a family of four on a $128,600 salary, or a single person making $62,600, per federal guidelines.) Age and residency also factor into eligibility for the credits.

Idaho has roughly 135,000 enrollees on the marketplace, more than 6 percent of the state population. Of those, about 13,000 fall within that salary bracket and are at risk of no longer receiving the credits should Congress fail to act, according to Kelly.

Recipients in other states are similarly on the chopping block. More than a dozen states have opened up their Obamacare marketplace for a window-shopping period, including California, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada, Maryland, and Maine. Individuals in those states could see prices rise by thousands of dollars annually. People in Wyoming, West Virginia, Connecticut, and Illinois can expect the largest differential in their monthly premiums, rising anywhere from 535 percent to nearly 700 percent, reported The Hill.

The result, according to policy experts, will be a mass exodus from Obamacare plans altogether, leaving roughly four million Americans uninsured. The spike in uninsured Americans will spur a public health problem that has historically proved to make premiums more expensive for the insured as hospitals look to recoup the lost cash.

Low-income regions of the country will be particularly hard-hit, such as Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina, as recipients decide whether they can afford the rising costs.

But not everyone will see it coming. Enrollees in Idaho will be automatically reenrolled into the newly pricier plans, “potentially leaving some people unaware of the upcoming spike in their monthly costs,” reported The Hill.

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.

1. Altria Group, Inc.
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. Booz Allen Hamilton
5. Caterpillar, Inc.
6. Coinbase
7. Comcast Corporation
8. J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul
9. Hard Rock International
10. Google
11. HP Inc.
12. Lockheed Martin
13. Meta Platforms
14. Micron Technology
15. Microsoft
16. NextEra Energy, Inc.
17. Palantir Technologies Inc.
18. Ripple
19. Reynolds American
20. T-Mobile
21. Tether America
22. Union Pacific Railroad
23. Adelson Family Foundation
24. Stefan E. Brodie
25. Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
26. Charles and Marissa Cascarilla
27. Edward and Shari Glazer
28. Harold Hamm
29. Benjamin Leon Jr.
30. The Lutnick Family
31. The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation
32. Stephen A. Schwarzman
33. Konstantin Sokolov
34. Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher
35. Paolo Tiramani
36. Cameron Winklevoss
37. 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.