Trump Denied Another Chance to Carve Name Into Something

President Trump has been denied yet another chance to carve his name into something he didn’t make.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Institute of Peace in a Wednesday court order temporarily preventing President Trump from placing his name onto the building—something former employees of the Institute alleged was coming in an emergency injunction last month, especially given that he had already placed his name on the building’s exterior sign (in removable letters) last December.

Beyond the naming, Trump attempted a complete hostile takeover of the Institute—using Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (and private security) to fire and escort workers out of the building in March of 2025. That takeover was blocked in federal court in May, but lifted in June. This most recent blockage will be retried in November.

Trump has been moving like some middle schooler carving his name into a desk with a pocket knife on the last day of school. He’s unsuccessfully tried to place his name on the John. F. Kennedy Center and was alleged to be looking into doing the same with Ford’s Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The White House denies any plans to actually carve the President’s name into the Institute of Peace—an independent organization established more than 40 years ago. But Trump’s baseless, relentless claims to any old building justifies the sense of urgency accompanying the emergency injunction from the Institute’s employees.

President Trump has yet to publicly comment.

President Donald Trump is edgy with all kinds of media these days.

In an interview with Time magazine, published Thursday morning, Trump snapped at reporter Eric Cortellessa after he was asked a question about the health situation of Senator Mitch McConnell, who went missing from the Senate all summer. Trump went off on a tangent about President Joe Biden and lost it at Cortellessa, dropping an expletive.

“It was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans. So that’s just—well, Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody. He gave them to Fauci. He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them? This ain’t gonna be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative,” Trump said.

In the same stream of thought, Trump complained that Cortellessa hadn’t asked him about Venezuela, even though he had, at length, earlier in the interview.

“Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?” Trump asked, to which Cortellessa said, “We did earlier.” Trump replied, “No, no, I brought it up, and then you said—”

“You beat us to it. But yeah,” Cortellessa said.

Among other gems in the interview is that Trump regrets all of his Supreme Court picks, failing to remember they saved him from prosecution.

“Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too,” Trump said.

Trump also defended his barring of Politico, CNN, and MS NOW from the White House grounds, but he seemed unclear about U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly’s order blocking the ban.

“Well, the court actually said that, if you look at the judge’s decision, he’s been a very anti-Trump judge, which is very interesting. But if you look at his decision, he really said process. He talked about—come back to us with process,” Trump said, to which Cortellessa noted that Kelly was a Trump appointee.

“Yeah, he was. He was. It’s one of those things,” Trump said. Cortellessa asked if Trump thought he was ignoring Kelly’s order, to which Trump claimed he wasn’t.

“I’m not ignoring his order. I’m just saying that when I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories. When they say orders, what order? I’m not even aware,” Trump said. White House communications director Stephen Cheung interjected to note that “the judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”

“He actually said to the premises of the White House?” Trump replied, dumbfounded.

The entire interview showcased Trump’s narcissism and clear cognitive decline, with him going on tangents, lashing out unprompted at critics, and complaining about the “fake news” going after him constantly. Trump loves the attention, but it’s been clear for a long time that he is unable to handle the duties and scrutiny that comes with being president.

Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers has surrounded himself with people tied to the Living Word Church sex abuse scandal, but he’s not willing to publicly address the matter.

The former FBI agent dodged one such question while collecting a local endorsement in Saginaw on Wednesday, where a reporter asked why two pastors from the Living Word Church were on Rogers’s Faith Leadership Coalition, months after three elders at the church’s Midland chapter were sent to prison for sexually abusing children.

The dubious personnel inclusions involved Brian Ford of Living Word Church in Ludington as well as Tim Cross, the founding pastor of Living Word Church in Muskegon. Ford defended former pastor James Randolph at trial, before he was sentenced to at least 25 years for first degree criminal sexual conduct.

But when asked why Ford remained on his team, Rogers was suddenly much more interested in discussing left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, and the commentator’s connection to Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. (El-Sayed has worked to distance himself from Piker in recent months.)

“This is a guy that came to our students and preaching that we deserved 9/11, that’s a story,” Rogers said, according to ABC News 12. Rogers did not confirm or deny if Ford was still a member of his Faith Leadership Coalition.

He did, however, briefly address his prior connection to Cross, who resigned from Rogers’s team earlier this year after he admitted he initially did not believe the sex abuse victims.

“Our volunteers, the people that volunteer for us, one of those folks have stepped away from his volunteer work, someone is still in the faith volunteer work, we think the most important part here is about who is stepping up and who is surrogates,” Rogers told reporters.

Rogers was in Saginaw to collect an endorsement from Democratic Sheriff William Federspiel, though the local Democrats immediately rebuked Federspiel’s support. Saginaw County’s Democratic Party Chair, Brandell Adams, told ABC News 12 that Federspiel was simply a “Democrat in name” who was furthering his “track record of endorsing losing candidates.”

Democratic dreams of midterm victory are alive in Mississippi and Kansas—two states that have been conservative strongholds for decades.

Republican Senator Tim Scott admitted as much while speaking with Semafor about the Kansas Senate race between Republican Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton on Wednesday.

“It’s a very competitive state, more competitive than I’d like to see it,” the South Carolina Senator said in a surprisingly candid comment. “But the fact of the matter is that we’re going to win in Kansas.… It’ll be closer than I want it to be.”

President Trump won Kansas by about a 16 percent margin in 2024. Kansas Democrats haven’t sent someone to the Senate in more than 90 years. Scott speaking about their once in a lifetime moment of weakness in the state speaks to both Marshall’s weaknesses as a candidate and the larger, widely unpopular Trump administration record that he and every other GOP candidate is being forced to defend.

Scott’s comment comes as Senate candidate and former district attorney Scott Colom’s campaign begins to pick up steam in Mississippi, further reaffirming that even traditionally deep blue states and districts may not be as safe as they seem.

“The wave doesn’t have to be humongous for us to capture Mississippi,” Colom said to The Washington Post. He’s met with Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, and Ralph Warnock. “If we try, we win these voters.… They’ve been written off, not just by Cindy Hyde-Smith but also by other people in the Democratic Party. And I’m just not going to write them off.”

While Colom and Hamilton both have uphill battles in spending and messaging, it’s clear that the tide is turning against this current iteration of the GOP. Only time will tell if the Democrats can successfully take advantage.

The family of Renee Good, the mother of three who was shot and killed earlier this year by a federal immigration agent Minneapolis, has filed two lawsuits against the United States government and several immigration officials alleging wrongful death and other violations of federal law.

The lawsuits were filed Thursday by Renee Good’s partner Becca Good, who was targeted by the Department of Justice after she filmed the fatal shooting, and Brent Ganger, Renee Good’s brother who testified about her death in front of Congress.

The first lawsuit was filed against “the United States of America,” and alleges the wrongful death of Renee Good under Minnesota law that is “predicated on the battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence that caused Renee’s death.”

The second lawsuit alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights, and was filed against Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Good in her car, as well as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, her adviser and alleged boyfriend Corey Lewandowski, border czar Tom Homan, former ICE Director Todd Lyons, former Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and 10 unnamed federal agents.

Video footage of the January incident showed Good, who was blocking traffic, wave at the federal agents and urge them to “go around” her vehicle. Instead, the ICE agents swarmed her vehicle, pulling on the doors and demanding she “get out of the fucking car!” One witness even said that another officer ordered her to leave. When Good attempted to drive away from the group of officers, Ross shot her in the head at least three times.

The Trump administration was quick to argue that Good had deserved to die, but her killing sparked widespread backlash against the government’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

In the nearly 10 months since her death, absolutely nothing has come of the investigation into her killing. Federal law enforcement shut police and other Minnesota authorities out of the initial investigation. Later, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ Civil Rights Division, made clear that she had no intention of conducting a civil rights investigation.

This story has been updated.