White House Insults Local Business, Destroys Decades-Long Tradition

The White House this weekend gloated about the Kennedy Center Honors medals—historically designed by a local business in Washington, D.C.—being redesigned by a multinational luxury brand.

Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has sought to use the power of the presidency to mold American culture to his will, including at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he was elected chairman in February after purging the board of trustees.

On Sunday evening, Trump will host the center’s annual honors gala, becoming the first president to do so. He claims to have been “very involved” in selecting the honorees, who were recognized at a medallion ceremony on Saturday.

Since 1978, those medallions were crafted by local artisan James Baturin, who, along with his wife and children, have made more than 250 awards—large, multicolored ribbons with gold name plates—as a family business over the years, according to WUSA9.

That is, until this year.  

On Tuesday, the Kennedy Center unveiled new medallions, created by Tiffany & Co. Somewhat less distinctive than the previous design, the new one features a gold disc hanging from a navy-blue ribbon.

Prior to Saturday’s ceremony, the White House fired off a tweet slighting the mom-and-pop operation that was jilted for a luxury-goods giant. The post celebrated the “new, far more classy design” as a “MASSIVE upgrade from the tacky rainbow sash design of medallions past.”

When a reporter pointed out the storied history of the awards described so sneeringly by Trump’s White House, one social media user quipped: “Taking work from a small family business and outsourcing it to a large corporation? That adds up, yep.”

Donald Trump Jr. weighed in on the Russia-Ukraine war this weekend with this ominous message: No one should bet on his father, the president of the United States, to stand by Ukraine.

As Politico reported Sunday, the president’s eldest son made several comments at the Doha Forum, a gathering of politicians and international figures, that cast Ukraine in a negative light, and President Donald Trump’s position as a changeable, unpredictable thing.

In response to a question about whether his father might walk away from the embattled country, Trump Jr. said, “I think he may.”

The president’s son also shared thoughts about corruption in Ukraine, and criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, calling him “one of the great marketers of all times.” He said that Zelenskiy had become “a borderline deity, especially to the left, where he could do no wrong, he was beyond reproach.”

Trump Jr. remarked that his father’s mercurial nature was actually a positive trait, and one of the things that made him unique. “The fact that he’s not predictable … forces everyone to actually deal in an intellectually honest capacity,” he said, per Politico.

Trump Jr.’s comments in Qatar about his father’s shiftiness and lack of predictability come at a particularly fraught time. The U.S. president has been pressuring Russia and Ukraine to sign a peace deal, but negotiations have dragged on, with no clear end in sight. Many people have also criticized the plan that Trump recently put forth, saying it favors Russia.

Meanwhile, Moscow warmly welcomed President Trump’s newly issued “National Security Strategy” this weekend, saying that it coincides with its political view of the world.

And against a backdrop of ongoing peace talks, Russia is ramping up the aggression.

The country carried out a huge aerial attack on Ukraine this weekend, targeting the country’s infrastructure and energy facilities, and wounding at least eight people.

Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah on Sunday offered a mealymouthed excuse for President Donald Trump’s xenophobic attacks on the Somali community.

“We don’t want ’em in our country,” Trump said of Somali immigrants at a Tuesday Cabinet meeting. “Let ’em go back to where they came from.”

Asked about the remarks on CNN, Curtis refused to criticize them. “I can’t control anybody but me, right?” the senator said.

Rather than address the president’s comments head-on, Curtis took a philosophical detour, urging every American to live as a positive role model for others—to “wake up every morning, look in the mirror,” and ask yourself what you will do “to make all of our immigrants feel more welcome.”

In such a world, Curtis mused, “it would matter less what individuals said.” But, as CNN’s Dana Bash pointed out, Trump is no random individual; “he’s the president of the United States, calling an entire community garbage.”

In response, Curtis deflected again. American voters, he said, “knew very well what we were electing [in 2024]. The country wanted a disrupter.” While acknowledging that such “disruption” can be “painful,” he suggested it was necessary: “You have to remember the reason, I think, the country went that direction is they were very uncomfortable with a number of things we were doing in this country, and we wanted a disrupter.”

Apparently, Curtis’s professed belief in making a daily, personal effort to make “all of our immigrants feel more welcome” did not compel him to provide even the slightest pushback against the president’s bigotry.

Struggling to afford basic necessities? Perhaps you only think you’re feeling the pinch, due to media bias against President Donald Trump—or at least, that’s what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested during a Sunday talk-show appearance.

On CBS News’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan asked Bessent about Trump’s recent controversial description of “affordability” as a Democrat-spun “con job.”

Considering that public opinion polls show Americans are widely concerned about the cost of living and largely disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, Brennan wondered if this sentiment would resonate with voters. “Don’t you need to show that you feel the pain?” she asked.

Bessent began: “I think the president’s frustrated by the media coverage of what’s going on—”

“This is the polling of average Americans,” Brennan cut in.

“Yeah, but I think the average Americans are hearing a lot of it from media coverage,” Bessent replied.

The cost-of-living crisis has bedeviled the Trump administration and GOP of late. As recent elections and polls signal widespread public dissatisfaction with the economy under the Republican-run government, some conservative politicians and strategists have urged their party to radically change course, adopting an agenda that would actually address voters’ material concerns.

Another, seemingly less fruitful, option for the party would be to simply insist, as Bessent did, that Americans’ financial hardships are the result of media influence.

Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, seems unfazed by recent viral examples of federal agents targeting American citizens.

Over the past week, at least two videos circulated widely online and in the media showing immigration agents detaining or pursuing women as they cried out that they were U.S. citizens.

In Louisiana on Thursday, a 23-year-old mother was chased by agents while walking home from a corner store. She repeatedly told them, “I’m a U.S.-born citizen. I was born and raised here. This is my home. My baby’s waiting for me.”

And in Florida on Wednesday, a health care worker was detained during a traffic stop on her way to work. Despite intending to comply, she was threatened and forcibly removed from her car, she said. Footage captured by a Miami Herald reporter shows her being detained, yelling: “I’m a U.S. citizen. Please help me! This is unfair. Why are you doing this to me?”

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, host Dana Bash confronted Homan with these two incidents.

“I can’t tell you how many times an illegal alien claims to be a U.S. citizen,” the border czar said, appearing comfortable with agents inflicting traumatic experiences on citizens as collateral damage in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Homan went on to confess that he does not think “there’s been zero U.S. citizens that have been detained for questioning because reasonable suspicion said they may be in the country illegally.” However, he claimed, “as soon as that questioning’s over, if they’re a U.S. citizen, they’d be released.”

A recent ProPublica investigation identified more than 170 U.S. citizens who were detained by federal immigration agents. About 24 of them were reportedly held for more than a day, unable to call lawyers or their friends and family.