Karoline Leavitt Says Trump Can Destroy Entire White House if He Wants

Donald Trump has free license to reshape the White House as he sees fits, according to his staff.

With no warning, the president razed the White House’s East Wing this week to make way for a $300 million ballroom that he claimed would be “100 percent” paid for by himself and his “friends.” 

As the demo bore on, it became clear that what had been originally pitched as a minor expansion to one of the most prominent symbols of American democracy would not only destroy the historic two-story addition, which was constructed under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It would also overshadow the White House entirely, with a square footage nearly double the size of the rest of the building.

Despite public backlash, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down Thursday that the president had total, unquestionable authority to alter the premises however he desires, repeatedly leaning on the supposed allowances of a legal precedent that she failed to name. 

“The White House has explained that the reason you didn’t submit construction plans to the [National Capital Planning Commission] is because that commission, along with others, don’t have oversight over demolitions, but only over construction,” CBS reporter Weijia Jiang said. “So, can you help us understand—can the president tear down anything he wants without oversight? Could he demolish this building or, say, the Jefferson Memorial?”

“So, it’s not the president who came up with that legal opinion himself. That’s a legal opinion that’s been held by the NCPC for many years,” Leavitt said, suggesting that only vertical construction requires the express approval of the federal planning agency. “There have been many presidents in the past who have made their mark on this beautiful White House complex.”

“It sounds like the answer is yes, he can tear down whatever he wants?” Jiang pressed. 

“That’s not what we’re saying. That’s a legal opinion that’s been held for many years,” the 27-year-old press secretary reiterated. 

“That’s how you’re interpreting it,” Jiang said. 

“No, it’s something that presidents have done for years and years,” Leavitt continued, holding up photos of the West Wing’s construction in 1902 while condescendingly prompting Jiang to explain where the “rubble” in the photo came from.

The White House (along with the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court) is technically exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires agencies to undergo a review process and field public opinion before altering historical landmarks. Traditionally, presidents have voluntarily submitted construction proposals to the NCPC anyway, in a show of transparency.

But the Trump administration’s rationale for bulldozing past presidential precedent and public expectation also flagrantly ignores the fact that any significant project on the White House grounds, such as tearing down walls or new construction, requires congressional approval and a lengthy approval process to proceed.

The destruction is a far cry from what Trump had proposed when he first floated the idea of constructing a ballroom on the White House grounds. During the initial announcement in July, Trump claimed that his project “won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it.”

Beyond the gargantuan overhaul, the sitting president doesn’t appear to be a huge fan of the national symbol. During his first term, Trump reportedly called the White House “a dump” (an allegation that he has publicly refuted), and he has spent no small part of his second term living and dining at his own properties rather than the executive mansion.

It is not clear whether the National Capital Planning Commission was consulted or received any meaningful insight prior to the White House’s demolition, particularly as it has been closed since the government shut down 23 days ago.

“The decisions were made in complete secrecy and undertaken without public disclosure or proper consultation,”  the ranking members on the House Oversight and Natural Resources committees and the subcommittee on energy on mineral resources wrote Trump in a letter Thursday. “The American people deserve full transparency regarding the substantial demolition, preparation, and construction at the White House during a government shutdown, particularly when it concerns alterations to one of our nation’s most historically significant buildings.”

Donald Trump has been convinced not to deploy federal troops to the city of San Francisco, as he has in other cities across the country. 

In a Truth Social post Thursday afternoon, Trump wrote that he was persuaded by a phone call with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and conversations with tech industry leaders such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff. 

“They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!” Trump’s post read.  

The post confirms a statement from Lurie Thursday morning that Trump assured him he “was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.” Last month, Trump named the city as one of many places where he planned to deploy the U.S. military for “training,” and on Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the administration planned to send 100 federal agents, including from the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, there within days. 

Those plans appear to be on hold for now, thanks to Trump’s tech baron allies talking him out of targeting San Francisco as he has other cities across America, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. The city may also have benefited from the fact that unlike the other cities Trump has targeted, it doesn’t have a Black mayor. 

Whatever the reasoning, California’s Bay Area has momentarily been spared from Trump’s heavy-handed federal agents, a surprise considering that California governor (and former San Francisco mayor) Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a persistent Trump critic. Maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them. 

House Democrats have formally begun an investigation into President Trump’s brazen attempt at a $230 million payout from his own Justice Department.

The probe is led by Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia.

“If either of your claims had any merit, you could have taken them to court by now and litigated them publicly,” wrote Raskin and Garcia, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees. “You did not do that. Instead, you waited until you became President and installed your handpicked loyalists at DOJ, knowing that you could instruct them to co-sign your demand notes in secret behind closed doors, and then you could present the notes to the U.S. Treasury for cold hard cash courtesy of the American taxpayer. That isn’t justice, it is theft.”

The president is seeking reimbursement for DOJ investigations into Russian election interference and Russian ties to Trump’s 2016 campaign, as well as for the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents. Trump made the claims in 2023 and 2024, but now his own DOJ is in charge of resolving the matter. The $230 million payout would come from taxpayer funds.

Republicans, however, don’t seem to be too worried about the high levels of potential fraud and corruption associated with an unprecedented move like this.

“I don’t know the details about that, I’ve just read it, I didn’t talk with him about that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson replied when asked about the payout on Wednesday. “I know that he believes he’s owed that reimbursement. What I heard yesterday was if he receives it, he was gonna consider giving it to charity, he doesn’t need those proceeds.”

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.