Trump Is Spending Millions to Cover Four Horse Statues in Gold

President Trump thinks that covering ornamental horses on the National Mall in thick 23.75 karat gold leaf is a good use of taxpayer funds.

NOTUS reports that the Trump administration is spending $5 million to cover four bronze horses, known as the Arts of War and Arts of Peace, on the roads around the Lincoln Memorial with the gold by July 4, thanks to a no-bid contract awarded to a Maryland studio through the National Park Service.

According to federal documents, the Gilders’ Studio will use gold paint that is very thick, heavier and purer than the gold paint job the same studio made on the Wyoming state Capitol dome seven years ago.

Trump’s Department of the Interior is spending $95 million on beautification projects in Washington, D.C., according to NOTUS, all initiated between December 2025 and April of this year. The horses haven’t been restored since the 1970s, and their gold coating looks patchy with their stone bases showing cracks and dirt. But the administration’s aesthetic spending raises eyebrows, especially relating to how contracts have been awarded.

Trump’s decision to repaint the National Mall’s reflecting pool blue, for example, is expected to cost $13.1 million, thanks to contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings overcharging the government to the tune of a 20 percent profit margin. That’s seven times what Trump promised the job would cost. The president is also spending millions to repaint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a historic building next to the White House, drawing lawsuits from historic preservation groups.

All of these projects are being rushed so that they are completed before the July 4 America 250th anniversary. The lack of a bidding process means that the government, and by extension, taxpayers, could easily be overcharged by contractors, and the rushed projects mean that the work could be shoddy and cause permanent damage to important landmarks in the nation’s capital. In Trump’s eyes, though, these projects take precedence over improving Americans’ lives.

A North Carolina Republican is suddenly walking back his support for an anti-abortion bill that could cost patients and health care providers their lives.

State Representative Ben Moss removed his name from House Bill 1232, which, if passed, would let North Carolinians vote to change the state constitution’s definition of “life” to beginning at the moment of conception or fertilization, a concept more broadly known as “fetal personhood.”

The one-page document is unequivocal in its language, proposing that any person who seeks to terminate a fetus “shall be held accountable for attempted murder for first degree murder,” and further proposing that such a crime be “punishable by death.” The text of the bill grants no special permissions for cases of rape or incest.

Moss’s reversal came in the wake of enormous public backlash to the measure, reported NC Newsline. In a statement published to his social media accounts Tuesday night, Moss said that he would no longer sponsor the bill, and claimed that the bill’s phrasing had been “broadly misinterpreted.”

“The purpose behind this legislation was to affirm the value and dignity of unborn life—not to suggest that women should face capital punishment or to create uncertainty surrounding difficult medical situations,” Moss said. “Unfortunately, portions of the bill’s current language have led to significant misunderstandings and differing misinterpretations that distract from the core pro-life message and intent.”

Moss, nonetheless, stated that he remains “firmly pro-life.” His retraction leaves state Representative Keith Kidwell as the bill’s sole sponsor.

The issue gained more attention after Jen Hamilton, a labor and delivery nurse, posted a video to Instagram earlier this week claiming that the bill’s broad language would effectively allow people to kill anyone using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, such as IUDs.

“We can’t feed kids in school, and we won’t give health care to people, but we will make it legal to murder women who use birth control,” Hamilton said.

By the time of publication, Hamilton’s video had garnered more than 209,000 likes.

The bill’s broad language means that doctors and nurses could also be considered accountable and therefore eligible to be put to death.

Pro-abortion activists have long warned that fetal personhood, an ideology that calls for providing equal human rights to a fetus (even if it’s just a cluster of cells), grants embryos rights while stripping them away from pregnant people.

But the concept is not unique to North Carolina: The language of “fetal personhood” is a MAGA policy point, and has already reached the national stage by way of sneakily drafted executive orders. One of dozens of executive orders Donald Trump signed the evening of his inauguration cemented language at the executive level to delegitimize transgender identities. But within the fold of that order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” the Trump administration also decided to legally brand a person’s gender identity as beginning “at conception.”

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” the order read in part. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

The Trump administration says it’s reeeeeally close to figuring out who’s funding antifa. Who’s gonna tell ’em? 

During a White House press briefing Thursday, the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for an update on the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation into antifa. “How close are you guys to figuring out who’s funding it?” she said.

“It is ongoing. We’ve made substantial progress. And I think in the weeks and months ahead, we’re gonna have a lot to report,” Bessent said. 

There’s just one problem for Bessent’s loose timeline to deliver results: Antifa doesn’t formally exist. Antifa, which is short for “anti-fascist,” is a movement, not a group. The so-called organization lacks a central structure and instead functions as a loose network of individuals and small groups who act separately under the banner of opposing facism. Still, the Trump administration has insisted this so-called group is a major domestic terror threat.

On that front, Bessent claimed he could announce some slight progress: He said the IRS was now providing new guidance on 990 forms, requiring nonprofits to report the recipients of funding following the government’s (spurious) claims about the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

“And we are going to encourage, or demand, that nonprofits know their grant recipients. So, if a grant recipient is violent, if they are suppressing people’s rights, then you are responsible for that,” Bessent said. 

It was a particularly ironic answer from the secretary, who had, moments earlier, defended the creation of a $1.8 billion slush fund that could award funding to some of Donald Trump’s most dangerous allies, including the leader of a violent hate group.  

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill is calling for the Delaney Hall immigration detention center to be shut down after the Department of Homeland Security denied state health inspectors access to the facility.

“The New Jersey Department of Health today sought to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall, but it was denied full access and was allowed to inspect only a limited part of the facility,” Sherrill wrote on Thursday. “As I’ve said repeatedly, refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view. New Jersey believes in the rule of law, will uphold the Constitution, and Delaney Hall should be closed down. I am calling for ICE to immediately de-escalate the situation as I continue working to keep New Jersey residents safe.”

Since last Friday, around 300 detainees have reportedly been engaging in a labor and hunger strike inside the facility in protest of due process violations and inhumane conditions—in which at least one person has died. Denying state health inspectors access to the prison only exacerbates those allegations. There have also been protests outside the jail that have seen federal immigration agents pepper-spraying, tasing, and arresting protesters. In one incident over the weekend, agents pepper-sprayed Democratic Senator Andy Kim after he visited the detention center.

Delaney Hall is also where four Democratic politicians, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Representative Lamonica McIver, attempted to visit to conduct oversight last year. Baraka was arrested, and McIver is still facing criminal charges after the incident.

The Trump administration has completely denied that the hunger strike is happening, even as border czar Tom Homan threatened to force-feed prisoners participating in it.

“People detained at Delaney Hall are facing brutal and inhumane conditions. Their families and community members who are protesting their treatment, and the elected officials who are asking to inspect the facility, should not face pepper spray and rubber bullets for doing so,” the New Jersey ACLU wrote in a statement. “Our federal representatives—who have the congressional authority to conduct oversight visits of the facility—have instead taken pepper spray to their eyes and experienced abuse at the hands of federal agents.”

Delaney Hall is a for-profit private mass prison run by security company Geo Group, which contracts with the federal government.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gracelessly dodged questions about the $1.8 billion slush fund the Department of Justice awarded to the president and his allies.

During a White House press briefing Thursday, a reporter asked Bessent to comment on the process for developing the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” set up as part of a settlement for Donald Trump’s failing lawsuit against the IRS.

Surprise, surprise: Bessent’s response did not mention the fund at all.

“This is going to be the only question I take on this matter today. So, there’s ongoing litigation, so it’d be inappropriate for me to comment,” Bessent said. “President Trump is a great American who has endured more than 10 years—10 years—of nonstop harassment and weaponization from federal and state government actors. A bad actor at the IRS leaked more than 400,000 tax returns, including the Trump family, all the employees, and that’s how we got here now.

“No American should be targeted for political reasons, and every citizen deserves fair treatment and the full protection of the law. The Department of Justice represented the Treasury and the IRS in this matter, and I’m going to have to refer any questions to active Attorney General Todd Blanche.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins also pressed the secretary on the sudden exit of Brian Morrissey, the Treasury’s top legal officer, following the announcement of the fund—but Bessent wouldn’t bite.

“I will not be taking any other questions, I will not be taking any other questions,” he repeated. Maybe he should add that to his list of pathetic affirmations?

It appears that Bessent is intent on allowing Trump to pillage the Treasury and award his worst allies with taxpayer dollars—without owing taxpayers any answers. This lack of transparency is par for the course, but Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund is a criminal enterprise so egregious that it manages to stand out in a presidency that was already blatantly corrupt.