Judge Demands Answers From Trump on Giant Tarp at Kennedy Center

Donald Trump totally isn’t bitter about having his name removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Nevermind the fact that his administration put up a massive tarp obscuring the building’s facade after a judge made the president take his name down.

The white tarp attached to the front of the Kennedy Center blocks most of the building’s lettering. (The nameplate now confusingly reads “THE JOHN F. — ORMING ARTS.”) It was erected on June 13, along with some extra scaffolding, one day after the court deadline to remove Trump’s name from the prestigious theater.

Workers took down the letters spelling out Trump’s name in a “predawn operation,” reported Reuters, and installed the tarp immediately afterward. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper demanded the administration explain “the purpose and status of ​the tarp and scaffolding,” though he gave the White House a lengthy deadline, July 31, in which to do so.

Democratic Representative ​Joyce Beatty, a board member at the center, filed the initial lawsuit against Trump after he renamed the center after himself in December. Her lawyers have alleged that the tarp is the White House’s “effort to frustrate the ⁠restoration ​of the status quo as it ​existed prior to the renaming.”

Beatty herself called the new tarp an “act ​of petty defiance.”

The pettiness of this administration is indeed something to behold. Lest we forget, Trump also tried to close the Kennedy Center for two years for “renovations” after multiple artists canceled their performances in the public backlash to the name change. Cooper blocked the two-year closure, too, though the federal government has filed an appeal.

The national median price for a house is now three times higher than the median household income for Americans under 40—an obvious explanation for why nearly all young people say it’s harder for them to buy a home than it was for their parents.

A study from the Pew Research Center released Wednesday shows home prices spiking tremendously in the beginning of the 2010s, and median home value rose 30 percent (from $269,600 to $350,000) from 2019 to 2024. This surge occurred at almost three times the pace of median income, which has risen very slowly.

Pew also noted that a whopping 89 percent of Americans under 40 think their parents had an easier time buying property—and that 60 percent of metro areas in the U.S. were classified as “unaffordable.”

This comes as President Trump canceled the signing of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act on Wednesday—the largest bipartisan housing affordability bill in decades—to pressure Republicans into passing his anti-voting rights SAVE America Act. The housing affordability crisis seems to be on everyone’s list of priorities except the president’s.

President Donald Trump is evidently still reeling from the results of last night’s congressional primaries, especially in New York, where multiple democratic socialists won their races.

After posting on Truth Social Wednesday that he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill until the Senate passed his unpopular voting reform bill, the SAVE America Act, the president spoke to reporters on Capitol Hill before a lunch with Senate Republicans—and quickly veered off topic.

One reporter asked, “Buying a home is unattainable for so many Americans. Is this election legislation more important to you than resolving the housing crisis?”

“Every election is important, we’re doing very well,” Trump responded. “They want a lot of Communists to come in.… The people that they’re pushing are Communists, and this country is not going to have Communists.”

Trump went on a posting spree Wednesday morning, writing, “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!” and “history has conclusively shown that the downtrodden States that [the Communists] will soon be running will ONLY GET WORSE.”

Meanwhile, his decision not to sign this housing bill has sent his own party into a tailspin. As the midterms approach, Republicans are in dire need of a victory to show voters, and this housing package would demonstrate their commitment to making life more affordable for their constituents.

But Trump does not seem to take the housing crisis seriously. He said on Truth Social the bill was “of minor importance” and that it “pales in comparison” to his SAVE Act, which would limit mail-in voting and require voters to show a passport or birth certificate in order to register to vote. As of now, it just doesn’t have the votes to pass.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna was caught using Claude to do her job—and she doesn’t care.

A description of Luna’s National Defense Authorization Act amendment that appeared on the House Rules Committee website Wednesday was filed with a tell-tale indicator of the artificial intelligence assistant.

Squeezed in the middle of the text: “11:25 AM????Claude responded.” The language of Luna’s amendment description has since been revised.

Luna was quick to respond to the controversy on X, writing that her staff had used AI to “spell/grammar check the amendment SUMMARY, not the actual amendment text itself.

“Not a shocker. Most staff use it. I have told them to make sure they are double checking and more thorough,” she continued. “What dork planted this story?”

Luna added that she loves Claude, but Grok is “way more savage.” Elon Musk’s AI chatbot alternative has been riddled with a number of scandals, including instances in which it unquestioningly created nude images of underage girls and espoused Nazi beliefs.

In a separate post, Luna clarified that “NO legislation is ever drafted with AI.”

“All bill text from the House comes from the House Legislative Council which is prohibited from using AI,” she wrote. “The screenshot you’re referencing is an AI summary of the bill that’s also used for spellcheck, c’mon man.”

Nonetheless, it’s important to keep public officials honest about the issue. Federal and state officials alike have been caught leaning on artificial intelligence. In October, federal judges were accused of using AI to write court orders, resulting in serious factual inaccuracies. The year before, a Republican Arizona state representative was found to have used AI software to draft deepfake legislation that was later signed into law.

In an already alarming moment for voting rights, the U.S. Postal Service wants to make things so much worse.

In response to a March executive order by President Donald Trump—which directed USPS to only provide mail-in ballots to voters on a federal list—the theoretically nonpartisan postal service is planning to implement a new rule forcing states to provide the Trump administration with a list of anyone who has requested an absentee or mail-in ballot. If the states refuse, their citizens wouldn’t receive their ballots.

Postmaster General David Steiner made the admission in a Senate hearing on Wednesday following questioning from Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

“If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal?” Peters asked.

“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner replied.

“This is basically a back-door way for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution,” Peters said later. “You’re telling the states, ‘Give the federal government this information—trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we’ll take good care of these—and if you don’t do it, you can’t mail absentee ballots.’”

Senator Margaret Hassan, another Democrat, said the USPS should “immediately” bin the new rule, labeling it “blatantly illegal.” Many postal workers have similarly spoken out against the idea, according to Democracy Docket.

Thankfully, the new rule can still be blocked in courts, and multiple lawsuits have been filed in order to do so. One Massachusetts lawsuit was allowed to proceed last week, after District Judge Indira Talwani stated the rule would hurt states’ constitutional right to run elections.

Steiner said the USPS would abide by whatever the courts rule. But it’s frightening to see, after years of trying to meddle with elections, that MAGA still isn’t done.