Trump Is Having the Dumbest Fight With His Ballroom Architect

The president’s ballroom obsession has put him at odds with the project’s architect, who doesn’t see eye to eye with him on the ballroom’s proposed size.

Donald Trump handpicked James McCrery II for the job. But several insiders that spoke with The Washington Post said that the two have not agreed on the scope of the project, with McCrery reportedly arguing that the 90,000-square-foot blueprint would overshadow the 55,000-square-foot White House mansion, violating basic architectural principles.

A White House official acknowledged that the pair has disagreed but would not provide specifics.

“As with any building, there is a conversation between the principal and the architect,” the unidentified official told the Post. “All parties are excited to execute on the president’s vision on what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”

After promising Americans in July that his ballroom proposal would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing, Trump completely razed the FDR-era extension in October, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission or the express permission of Congress. Conveniently, Trump started demolition during the government shutdown, when the NCPC was consequently closed.

The Trump administration said that the 90,000-square-foot forthcoming event space will be capable of hosting 650 people, a 200-person bump from current maximum seatage at the White House East Wing. But real estate experts have since pointed out that the possibilities of that square footage should be much broader, considering a space of that size will be roughly equivalent to two football fields.

The project’s price tag also inexplicably grew by 50 percent after Trump began tearing down the East Wing. What Trump had originally pitched as a $200 million project was instead referred to in late October as a $300 million development plan. The White House suggested that the project would be funded, in part, by some of the country’s wealthiest families and biggest corporations, including the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.

Some major players in the defense industry with massive federal contracts have also forked over significant cash to develop the ballroom, including Lockheed Martin and Palantir, though it’s unclear what they might get out of a venue designed for dancing.

The White House’s partial destruction is, ultimately, another illustration that the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances has eroded. The international real estate mogul’s desire to destroy the government—and with it, the architectural face of American democracy—has received practically zero pushback from his allies in Congress, who appear all too willing to sit back as Trump courts billionaires to fund his golden banquet hall.

Administration officials close to the project told the Post that Trump has, at times, micromanaged his eponymously styled ballroom, spearheading frequent meetings about its design. Other reports indicate that he has become so fixated on his renovation project that he has literally wandered away from his presidential duties in order to admire its progress.

MAGA Republicans accused a Democrat running against Vivek Ramawamy for Ohio governor of posting an AI-generated video of the DOGE czar-for-a-day pitching a truly terrible policy idea. Too bad for them, because the video was actually real.

Former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, a Democratic primary candidate for governor in Ohio, shared a clip on X Monday that showed Ramaswamy pitching an outrageous idea to lower the cost of childcare.

“Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going to four o’clock instead of three o’clock, so you don’t have to pay for childcare,” Ramaswamy said in the video.

That proposal was so blatantly bad that Republicans immediately started to accuse Acton of sharing a fake video. Far-right commentator Tim Pool claimed on his show Tuesday that the video Acton shared was AI and that the audio had been “replaced.” He aired an edited version of the video pulled from Ramaswamy’s social media that appeared not to include the Republican’s proposal to extend school hours. “If we are playing this game, we are done,” Pool said, arguing that Ramaswamy ought to sue his opponent.

MAGA influencer Austin Padgett claimed in a post on X that the video was “probably the most successful example of a political deepfake I’ve seen so far.”

And Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republicans Federation, also railed against candidates sharing manipulated videos. “If you’re a candidate and you share AI-altered videos of another candidate and pass it off as reality, you should be fined a lot of money,” Guidarini wrote on X.

But they couldn’t have been more wrong—as Acton noted in a reply to Guidarini. “Agreed. The bad news for Vivek Ramaswamy is that his plans for Ohio are so backwards, his own party is convinced they’re AI,” she wrote on X. “Spoiler alert: they’re not.”

It turns out, the only one manipulating the video was Ramaswamy. The full video was originally posted to Ramaswamy’s social media accounts before being removed. Another version of the video was later reposted without the Republican’s plan to extend school hours, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

Some MAGA accounts backed off their claims that Acton’s video was fake. “Never mind, this does not appear to be AI. It seems Vivek did post this, then reposted it with the year-round school part removed. However, he forgot to re-edit it on his Threads account (forgot that site existed),” America First Insights wrote on X. “Year round school is such ‘only GDP going up matters’ thinking.”

A Georgia judge has officially dismissed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case against President Donald Trump and his allies for interfering in the 2020 election. 

The RICO charges—filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in 2023—were connected to Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden. This is a significant victory for Trump and co., as this case was initially seen as a potential campaign killer for him. 

Prosecutor Peter Skandalakis—who replaced Willis on the case after she was removed by an appeals court for the “appearance of impropriety” caused by her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade—filed a motion to drop the case in order “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.”

A judge approved his motion Wednesday.

“Given the complexity of the legal issues at hand—ranging from constitutional questions and the Supremacy Clause to immunity, jurisdiction, venue, speedy-trial concerns, and access to federal records—and even assuming each of these issues were resolved in the State’s favor, bringing this case before a jury in 2029, 2030, or even 2031 would be nothing short of a remarkable feat,” Skandalakis wrote in his explanation for why he dropped the case. “The timeline of events outlined at the beginning of this report demonstrates just how difficult it is to move appellate issues through the courts with any degree of speed.” 

The original indictment had 13 criminal counts against Trump, and implicated many of his personal lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, and Ray Smith. 

The case surrounded a 2021 phone call from Trump to  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he pleaded with him to “find” 11,780 votes—the exact number needed to beat Biden in Georgia. The indictment also alleged that Powell paid a group of Trump supporters to access voting machines at the county’s election office to copy sensitive data and upload them to a site for election deniers as evidence of a rigged election. 

While Trump was certainly angered by the indictment, it never seemed to damage him politically, as he went on to win the presidency a second time. 

This story has been updated. 

House Democrats, led by Representative Jamie Raskin, are trying to force Republicans on the record against Ghislaine Maxwell.

Raskin introduced a resolution Wednesday “expressing the opposition of the House of Representatives to any grant of commutation, clemency, or pardon to federal convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who refuses to take responsibility for her crimes.”

Maxwell was the accomplice of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Over the past month, the House Oversight Committee has released several damning emails from Epstein’s estate detailing his and Maxwell’s network of contacts, including President Trump. The president has not ruled out commuting Maxwell’s 20-year prison sentence or even pardoning her.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is the exact opposite of the kind of prisoner who deserves a pardon. She continues to lie about the crimes she committed and enabled, continues to disparage and denigrate the women who she victimized and continues to cover up for perhaps the worst global sex-trafficking conspiracy ever run out of the United States,” Raskin said in a statement.

“Every Member should support this Resolution to send a clear and unequivocal message in advance to President Donald Trump before he makes a mockery of the pardon power once again,” Raskin added. “America opposes the grant of any get-out-of-jail-free card to the unrepentant, unremorseful liar and criminal who was an indispensable actor in a vicious billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring.”

Over the summer, Maxwell gave an interview to the Department of Justice claiming that she never saw Trump doing anything improper and that he wasn’t close to Epstein, which seems to be a lie. Shortly after that meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security facility in Texas, where she has enjoyed a cushy life, getting perks such as secret meetings in the prison chapel, meal service in her cell, and unlimited toilet paper.

Last week, Maxwell said she wouldn’t cooperate with a House Oversight Committee probe into Epstein and how the DOJ handled his case. Trump still might pardon her anyway, but Raskin and other Democrats are hoping to make sure that GOP representatives are on the record first.

Just one hour after angrily ranting about how he is in perfect physical and mental health, President Donald Trump was posting about how his supporters should be called “Tpublicans.”

“There is a new word for a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, which is almost everyone (GREAT POLICY IS THE KEY!),” he mused Wednesday morning on Truth Social. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???

The president may want to go back to the drawing board here, as neither of these really roll off the tongue well.

More importantly, posts like these don’t do much to instill faith in his mental acuity—especially the morning after a report from The New York Times that noted his slowed schedule compared to his first term, suggesting his age is impacting his ability to govern. The report also mentioned his moments of grogginess, his usual incoherent ramblings, and his more recent existential comments about his chances at getting into heaven.

This set the president off, claiming that he had “never worked so hard” in his life, and that all those facts showed that the Times—which he again referred to as a “rag”—was lying. But his “Tepublican” posting doesn’t exactly bolster his case.

Even military veterans and people not in public office are receiving death threats for standing up to Donald Trump’s unlawful commands.

Days after the president called for the “death” of several Democratic lawmakers who reminded America’s service members to follow the rule of law, Richard Ojeda—a retired Army major running as a Democrat for North Carolina’s 9th congressional district—joined a choir of ex-military voices elevating their message. In a video statement, Ojeda urged members of America’s military and intelligence community to refuse unlawful orders issued by their commander in chief.

“As a former leader who spent 24 years in service to this country, I think it’s important to remind everyone that we teach our soldiers … that if they are ever given an order that is unlawful, illegal, or immoral, it is their duty to refuse those orders,” Ojeda said in the video last week. “This isn’t rocket science.”

It was apparently, however, fuel for Libs of Tiktok’s Chaya Raichik, who shared the clip with her 4.5 million followers on Twitter alongside an incendiary claim that Ojeda was urging America’s military to “REFUSE and DEFY orders from Trump.”

That post made over a million impressions. It also put Ojeda in enough danger that he said he received a visit from the FBI, who warned him they had observed several threats for him to be “shot on sight.”

But the death threats have done little more than inspire him to “invest in a decent gate.” Ojeda, a former West Virginia state senator, told The New Republic that he’s “not going to be bullied” from running for office, let alone stating the law.

Ojeda cautioned that America’s service members aren’t safe from prosecution simply because they were following orders. Instead, he said that they could be the ones left holding the bag for carrying out Trump’s indiscretions long after he leaves office.

“He is by far the most corrupt man to ever occupy the office, period,” Ojeda told TNR.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Ojeda noted he wasn’t fazed by the death threats. “I don’t want hardworking men and women in the U.S. military to end up prosecuted because the draft dodger in the White House ordered them to break the law,” he wrote.

He pointed to the Trump administration’s recent wave of airstrikes against small boats in the Caribbean as a prime example. Pentagon officials have claimed that the boats were trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia, despite skipping out on any typical investigations or interdictions that would provide such evidence.

The White House’s careless killing spree has so far killed at least 83 people aboard the tiny watercraft. It has also rallied tens of thousands of Venezuelans in favor of war against the United States.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human rights advocates alike, including the United Nations’ human rights chief.

It’s been a week since six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—urged service members not to “give up the ship.” In a video statement posted to Facebook, the bloc repeated that America’s military and intelligence communities “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

But that didn’t stop Trump from taking things personally. He responded to the video Thursday by warning that “their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” He followed up on that Truth Social post an hour later by calling for their “DEATH.”

Dissent under the Trump administration has become a tenuous game, with militant vigilante groups ready and willing to act on Trump’s behalf to silence his critics. Just in June, a Trump supporter allegedly assassinated Minnesota Democratic state Senator Melissa Hortman, her husband, and their dog, and allegedly attempted to assassinate Democratic state Senator John Hoffman.

Ojeda is still just a primary candidate, far from actually holding public office, and yet his perceived slight to Trump has put him in enough danger that the FBI took notice.

Weighing the volatile reaction he received from the American public for what should be an uncontroversial stance, Ojeda commented to TNR that Trump’s more outspoken opponents are probably facing even more heat.

“With the temperature that’s going across this country, it wouldn’t surprise me if all elected officials aren’t catching flack from folks,” he said.

President Trump was sent into a Truth Social rage after The New York Times reported on what appears to be a serious drop in his energy compared to his first term, as he is attending fewer events and starting them much later.

As the report highlighted, the Roll Call official presidential schedule database shows that in his first term, Trump arrived at scheduled events by 10:31 a.m. on average. Now he starts about 90 minutes later, at 12:08 p.m. From January 20 to November 25 in his first term, Trump held 1,688 official events. This term, that number is at 1,029 by the same point, a 39 percent decrease. His days still end around 5 p.m., as in his first term.

The Times also noted Trump’s apparent grogginess, his classic ramblings, and his existential musings about death.

This report got the president posting bright and early Wednesday morning—nearly a full five hours before his typical scheduled event arrival.

“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again … I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history—I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down,” Trump wrote. “To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite.”

Those “facts” are a bit murky.

In 2020, Mr. Trump weighed in at six-foot-three, 244 pounds—a frame that used to be classified as obese. In 2025, his physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, had him down to 224 pounds, still overweight. Trump also reportedly loves red meat, McDonald’s, and candy.

“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander in chief and head of state,” Barbabella said in April.

Others note that while he appears to be up and running at these events and Oval Office appearances, we really have no clue what goes on afterward—or what happens when he goes into his golf clubs every weekend.

“[Trump’s aides] show him as effective,” former White House physician Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman told the Times, “but every time he’s in the Oval Office, he’s sedentary.”

While Kuhlman thinks it’s “commendable” that Trump uses the Air Force One stairs, “you don’t know what he does as soon as he walks in the door.”

Political historian Matthew Dallek drew comparisons between how Trump’s and Biden’s teams have presented their health.

“The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides,” he said. “They would talk as if we’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world. Trump, in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors, [has] created this fiction about his health to hide the hard, cold truth that he is 79 and one of the oldest people to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

To Trump’s credit, he has completed more international trips than he did in his first term. And even at a lower rate, he is still (just ever so slightly) more active and alert than President Biden was. When taking his constant dialogue with the media and his near-prolific social media posting into account, Trump is perhaps—for better or worse—the most accessible president of the century. But it’s unclear how much longer that can last.

“They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.’ The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” Trump continued in his reaction post. “Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever, and with record setting investment being made in America, they should only go up. There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (‘That was aced’) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

On Tuesday, Donald Trump had to defend the contents of a leaked call between his envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Yuri Ushakov, a senior foreign policy adviser to Vladimir Putin.

The call took place on October 14, days before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to meet Trump at the White House. On the call, Witkoff seemed to be coaching Ushakov on convincing language to use on Trump, and promising to give Russia Ukrainian land under a final peace deal.

On Air Force One Tuesday evening, a reporter asked Trump if he had heard the “audio of Witkoff coaching the Russians on how to appeal to you.” Trump said no, and dismissed the call as “a standard thing.”

“He’s gotta sell this to Ukraine, he’s gotta sell Ukraine to Russia.… That’s what a dealmaker does. You’ve gotta say, look, they want this, you’ve gotta convince them of this. You know, that’s a very standard form of negotiation. I haven’t heard it, but I heard it was standard negotiation, and I would imagine he’s saying the same thing to Ukraine,” Trump responded.

Another reporter asked Trump if he was worried Witkoff was too pro-Russian, alluding to the envoy’s chumminess with Ushakov on the call. Trump’s answer blew past that premise.

“I think, look, ahh—this war could go on for years, and Russia’s got a lot more people, got a lot more soldiers. So I think if Ukraine can make a deal, it’s a good thing. Frankly, I think it’s great for both. But, Ukraine’s gotta—it’s a much smaller group of people. They’ve lost a lot of people, Russia’s lost a lot of people. But Russia has a much bigger pool of people,” Trump said.

The released transcript of the call seems to show Witkoff effectively telling Russia how to sell the early peace deal draft to Trump, as if it was being proposed by Putin to the United States, with Witkoff suggesting Putin praise Trump as a “man of peace.”

We know now that the initial deal was effectively drafted by Russia and contained what Secretary of State Marco Rubio describes as a “wish list” for the country, with no Ukrainian input at all. It turns out that Trump wasn’t even that involved himself.

The mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew was reportedly swept up by Donald Trump’s sprawling deportation campaign.

Bruna Caroline Ferreira was taken into custody in Massachusetts after she reportedly overstayed her visa by 26 years, a source told WMUR in a story published Tuesday. She is currently being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Leavitt’s nephew lives with his father, Michael Leavitt, and stepmother in New Hampshire. Speaking to WMUR, Michael Leavitt said that following the arrest a few weeks ago, he was primarily concerned for his son’s safety and well-being.

DHS claimed that Ferreira, who is originally from Brazil, was required to leave the country in 1999 and that she had a prior arrest for battery. But Todd Pomerleau, Ferreira’s lawyer, insisted that she had remained in the country legally and was pursuing citizenship through DACA, and that she had no criminal record.

“Bruna has no criminal record whatsoever. I don’t know where that is coming from. Show us the proof. There’s no charges out there. She’s not a criminal, illegal alien; we’re hearing that said about anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen,” Pomerleau told WMUR.

Meanwhile, Karoline Leavitt, a fierce defender of Trump’s immigration crackdown, declined to comment to WMUR. The two women reportedly have not spoken in years.

Obamacare may have no future at all if it’s up to Donald Trump.

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One Tuesday, the president claimed he would rather shift the cost of the subsidized health care marketplace entirely onto the Americans who depend on it.

“Are you planning to extend those subsidies?” asked a journalist.

“I’d rather not. Somebody said, ‘I want to extend them for two years.’ I don’t want to extend them for two years. I’d rather not extend them at all,” Trump said.

“Maybe some kind of extension may be necessary to get something else done, because the ‘unaffordable care act’ has been a disaster,” he continued. “It’s a disaster. And I said it was when it first got put in.”

Trump then went on to blame Democrats for skyrocketing ACA premiums, despite the fact that Republicans were the ones who voted against extending the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits when the government shutdown finally ended earlier this month. That move effectively ensured that health insurance premiums would double for some 20 million Americans.

A record 24 million Americans signed up for coverage through the ACA marketplace at the beginning of this year, roughly double the number of people who enrolled just four years earlier amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Obamacare subsidies in some states lapsed during the shutdown to disastrous effect. In Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers warned that premiums would rise by more than $30,000 a year for supposedly affordable health insurance. 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.

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.