Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s Path of Destruction

Posted: October 25, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Leandro M. Velasco (b.1933), Blonde in Red with a White Cat

I’m still focused on Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing. Lately I’ve been wondering what happened to all the furniture and art work.

Was any of it saved, or was everything destroyed along with the building? Has anyone reported seeing moving vans outside the White House that could have been removing some of the valuable items and putting them in storage? If not, could all these things be stored in the White House itself? I doubt it.  Why aren’t journalists asking these questions?

I don’t trust Trump to preserve anything of historical value. I would not be at all surprised if he simply demolished the building and all of its contents. After all, he destroyed the Rose Garden and replaced it with a pavement and tacky tables with attached umbrellas. And Trump has a history of carelessly destroying important art works.

Forbes: Trump’s White House Demolition Isn’t His First Time Leveling A Building — Or Ignoring Preservationists.

With Donald Trump demolishing the White House’s East Wing to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the president is returning to the playbook from his Trump Tower days—move fast, build big and leave preservationists fuming.

Key Facts

In October 1979, New York City’s Planning Commission approved a special permit for Trump to build a 56-story mixed-use tower on the site of the Bonwit Teller department store on Fifth Avenue.

Trump later wrote in “The Art of the Deal” that in December 1979, a representative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked him to donate two 15-foot-tall Art Deco bas-relief sculptures of semi-nude goddesses and a 15-by-25-foot nickel-plated grill from the condemned building’s facade.

“I said that if the friezes could be saved, I’d be happy to donate them to the museum,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal”; he later confirmed the deal in writing, according to Preservation News, a publication of the National Trust for Historic Preservation of the United States.

In June 1980, however, the “sculptures were smashed by jackhammers” while the grillwork, which was supposed to be shipped to a New Jersey warehouse, went missing, Preservation News reported at the time.

Trump said he had the friezes torn down after being told their weight would require “special scaffolding for safety’s sake,” delaying the project by several weeks.

“I just wasn’t prepared to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a few Art Deco sculptures that I believed were worth considerably less, and perhaps not very much at all,” he wrote.

“We are certainly very disappointed and quite surprised,” Ashton Hawkins, vice president and secretary of the Met’s board of trustees, told the New York Times, which ran an article about the destruction on the front page. “Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit?”

Read more details about Trump’s path of destruction:

ArtNet: Donald Trump Has a History of Pulverizing Historic Buildings.

The Daily Beast: Trump’s East Wing Demolition Isn’t His First Shocking Historic Smashup.

There are some things we know for sure Trump has destroyed to make room for his hideous ballroom.

CNN: Bill Clinton once called the White House movie theater the ‘best perk’ of the job. It was destroyed this week.

The White House Family Theater, the movie theater which first came to be in 1942 when a cloakroom was converted into a screening room, was demolished this week as part of the destruction of the East Wing to make room for President Donald Trump’s planned $300 million ballroom.

By Lina Rivo

From sporting events to film screenings, the theater provided entertainment and enjoyment to presidents and their families since the latter part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.

According to The White House Historical Association, Roosevelt enjoyed watching World War II-era news reels in the former cloakroom in the East Terrace at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, “and took special interest in the battles fought in Europe and Asia.”

The 32nd US president demonstrated an understanding of the importance of pop culture, including movies.

“Entertainment is always a national asset,” Roosevelt said in 1943 as the United States was engaged in WWII. “Invaluable in time of peace, it is indispensable in wartime.” [….]

Later presidents greatly enjoyed showing movies in the theater, and the George W. Bush Library detailed that film screenings would run the gamut from official events with members of the public invited as guests to “private events and intended for the enjoyment of the President, his family, and his close friends and staff.”

“The best perk out in the White House is not Air Force One or Camp David or anything else,” said former President Bill Clinton. “It’s the wonderful movie theatre I get here, because people send me these movies all the time.”

I suppose Trump could have saved the vintage chairs with footrests, lights, and decorations, but I’m sure he didn’t.

ABC News: At least 2 historic magnolia trees, Kennedy Garden appear to have been removed to make way for Trump’s White House ballroom. The two trees date to the 1940s and commemorate two past presidents.

Satellite images show President Donald Trump’s project to build a $300 million grand ballroom has appeared to take down at least six trees on the White House grounds — including two historic magnolia trees commemorating Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The satellite images released on Thursday provide the fullest picture yet of the extent of the demolition work on the White House’s East Wing and its effect on the surrounding parkland — changes made without consulting the government commission established by federal law to ensure the preservation and integrity of government buildings in D.C., according to former commission officials who spoke to ABC News.

Visible construction work on the new ballroom appears to have begun more than three weeks ago, according to satellite images of the White House complex taken over the last month. An image taken on Sept. 26 shows preparations for the construction, including the removal of multiple trees in President’s Park.

The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden — established by first lady Edith Roosevelt as the Colonial Garden in 1903 adjacent to the East Wing — was also leveled during the demolition, according to satellite images.  Earlier this year, Trump also paved over the Rose Garden, which was designed by the same architect who designed the Kennedy Garden.

More details at the link.

ABC News also reports that Trump says no plans to name White House ballroom after himself. Yet, officials are referring to it as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.”

President Donald Trump says he has no plans to name his $300 million White House ballroom after himself.

Speaking to reporters in brief remarks while departing the White House on Friday evening for a trip to Asia, Trump denied an earlier report that he was likely to add his name to the new ballroom.

“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself,” Trump said. “That was fake news. Probably going to call it the presidential ballroom or something like that. We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”

Earlier, senior administration officials told ABC News that some in the administration were already referring to it as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” and that that name was likely to stick….

Before Friday, Trump had not publicly said what he intends to name the ballroom, but he is known for branding his construction projects after himself.

When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on Thursday if he had a name for his ballroom yet, Trump smiled and said: “I won’t get into that now.”

Manfred W. Juergens, The Girl with the Cat

Give me a break. Of course he’ll name it after himself. He’ll probably put a huge “Trump” sign on it–like the one on Trump tower. And I expect his name will also be on the Hitler arch he’s planning that will overshadow the Lincoln Memorial.

And then there’s the corrupt financing of the project. NBC News: White House will allow anonymous donors to contribute to Trump’s ballroom project.

President Donald Trump is accepting anonymous donations for the grand ballroom he is currently having built at the White House, an aide told NBC News on Friday.

While the Trump administration has released a list of donors for the project that has become a fixation for the president (which includes NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast), the aide said that some may contribute anonymously.

“We will, and have so far, released names of donors and companies who wish to be named publicly. Donors also have the option to remain anonymous and we will honor that if that’s what they choose,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the undertaking.

The White House would not commit to publicly releasing the amount of money each donor gives to the project, with the aide saying similarly that the administration “will honor the wishes of the donors of what they want publicly shared.”

Trump claims he won’t accept foreign donations, but how would we know? He’s a fucking liar; you can’t believe anything he says.

An even more serious question about the ballroom: why would Trump be doing this if he’s planning leave the White House in 2028? Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian: Why is Trump demolishing the White House’s East Wing? Because he wants to.

The 123-year-old East Wing of the White House, the home of offices for every first lady for almost half a century, is now a pile of rubble. After Trump said in July that the historic building would not be touched, it was stealthily bulldozed to make way for a $300m ballroom. According to Trump, there was a teeny little change of plans “after really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world”.

While the likes of the National Trust for Historic Preservation are upset about the destruction of a “National Historic Landmark, a National Park, and a globally recognized symbol of our nation’s ideals”, some large corporations appear to be looking on the bright side. Trump has said the new 90,000 sq ft ballroom is going to be “paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine”. Now the world’s CEOs have a wonderful opportunity to prove just how friendly to Trump they are….

By Jane Wood

National history aside, this sudden demolition of the first ladies’ headquarters raises a lot of questions. If I lived in a house that I didn’t own – one that I was scheduled to move out of in January 2029 – I probably wouldn’t start an enormous and extremely controversial construction project. Why is Trump doing this?

Trump has given a few rationales for the project that go beyond ‘because I want to.’ He’s argued that the old East Wing was no longer fit for purpose and a much larger space was needed. There are some people out there who agree with him. Gahl Hodges Burt, for example, who was social secretary for three years under President Ronald Reagan, told the New York Times that tearing down the East Wing to make space for the ballroom was unfortunately necessary and overdue.

Beyond practical issues, there’s also ego. Trump’s big boy ballroom will be a big shiny monument to him long after he’s gone.

Still, you’ve got to wonder whether this mega-project means the president is not actually planning on going anywhere anytime soon. Particularly since Trump doesn’t seem to be the sort of person to start a large project he won’t have a chance to personally enjoy. The US Constitution’s 22nd amendment makes it very clear that a president cannot have more than two terms. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeatedly teasing the idea that he might serve a third term. In March he told NBC News he was “not joking” about the idea and there were methods for doing so.

Read more at the link.

According to Nancy Walecki at The Atlantic, Trump may be planning to use the rubble and dirt from the East Wing teardown to upgrade a golf course (gift link). My Quest to Find the East Wing Rubble.

I’d heard that the dirt from the East Wing demolition was being deposited three miles away, on a tree-lined island next to the Jefferson Memorial called East Potomac Park. So yesterday I drove around until I saw trucks and men in construction gear. They were congregating at an entrance to the public East Potomac Golf Links, where rounds of golf carried on as usual, except every few minutes, dump trucks entered the green.

By Giovanni Parlatto da Massaquano

The trucks would cut across the course to a cordoned-off site in the middle, where the grass had been torn away and replaced with piles of dirt. It did not look like much, but several employees at the site confirmed: This was not just any dirt. This was White House dirt. The precursor to the East Wing was constructed during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration in 1902 and updated during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in the ’40s. Maybe this was not just White House dirt but Roosevelt-era dirt. I gazed upon the golfers going about their games. Do they know, I wondered, that they are in the presence of such particularly American soil?

I asked one employee what the plan was for all this dirt. “Oh, they’re gonna turn it into another hole,” he said. Other reporters have heard the same. But when I asked a different employee about it, he demurred; his boss drove by and said, “No comment” before my colleague Grace Buono had even asked him a question. Donald Trump has reportedly been considering rebranding East Potomac Golf Links as the Washington National Golf Course and giving it a makeover. He even mocked up a new golden logo for it that’s nearly identical to those of the courses he owns. I suppose the East Wing demolition is an excellent source of soil. (The White House did not respond to my request for comment. It told CBS News that wood and plants from the site could end up being recycled for garden nurseries.)

Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.

This might be a dumb question, but where will all those hundreds of people going to the ballroom park their fancy cars and limos? Maybe Trump is planning to knock down the entire White House and replace it with a parking lot?

Meanwhile, thanks to the government shutdown, the “big beautiful bill,” and Mike Johnson’s keeping the House from meeting, millions of Americans will soon be facing hunger and lack of health care.

The Guardian: Americans brace for food stamps to run out: ‘The greatest hunger catastrophe since the Great Depression.’

While Republicans have sought to blame Democrats for the potential loss in benefits that people who make little money rely on, those who work in the food-insecurity space say that is misleading because Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act already eliminated almost $187bn in funding for Snap through 2024, according to a congressional budget office estimate.

Should funding run out at the end of the month, “we will have the greatest hunger catastrophe in America since the Great Depression, and I don’t say that as hyperbole”, said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America.

Snap supports working families with low-paying jobs, low-income people aged 60 years and older and people with disabilities living on a fixed income, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Snap participants generally must be at or below 130% of the federal poverty line. The average participant receives about $187 a month, the center reports.

The Department of Agriculture recently sent a letter to regional Snap directors warning them that funding for Snap will run out at the end of the month and directing them to hold payments “until further notice”.

More than 200 Democratic representatives have urged the USDA to use contingency funds to continue paying for Snap benefits.

“There are clear steps the administration can and must take immediately to ensure that millions of families across the country can put food on their table in November,” a letter from the lawmakers to the USDA states. “SNAP benefits reach those in need this November would be a gross dereliction of your responsibilities to the American people. We appreciate your consideration of these requests.”

But that’s not going to happen.

Politico: Trump administration says it won’t tap emergency funds to pay food aid.

The Trump administration won’t tap emergency funds to pay for federal food benefits, imperiling benefits starting Nov. 1 for nearly 42 million Americans who rely on the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.

USDA said in the memo that it won’t tap a contingency fund or other nutrition programs to cover the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is set to run out of federal funds at the end of the month.

By Gurutze Ramos

The contingency fund for SNAP currently holds roughly $5 billion, which would not cover the full $9 billion the administration would need to fund November benefits. Even if the administration did partially tap those funds, it would take weeks to dole out the money on a pro rata basis — meaning most low-income Americans would miss their November food benefits anyway.

In order to make the deadline, the Trump administration would have needed to start preparing for partial payments weeks ago, which it has not done.

White House and Trump administration officials warned earlier this week they were unlikely to shift funds around to avert SNAP lapsing for 40 million low-income Americans in November — instead blaming Democrats for the pending lapse.

The Washington Post: Average Obamacare premiums are set to rise 30 percent, documents show.

Premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov will spike on average by 30 percent next year, according to final rates approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and shown in documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The higher prices — affecting up to 17 million Americans who buy coverage on the federal marketplace — reflect the largest annual premium increases by far in recent years. The higher premiums, along with the likely expiration of pandemic-era subsidies, mean millions of people will see their health insurance payments double or even triple in 2026.

The premium spikes, mirroring the rising cost of private-employer-sponsored plans,arrive during a protracted and bitter congressional battle over health insurance costs that prompteda government shutdown Oct. 1.Democrats have urged an extension of enhanced subsidies for plans sold through the Affordable Care Act to soften the blow of rising insurance costs, while Republicans have said the additional assistance was never meant to be permanent.

The spike in premiums will become visible to more Americans on Monday, when the Trump administration is expected to open Healthcare.gov for window shopping to browse the price of plans ahead of the Nov. 1 start to open enrollment.

But Trump will get his ugly ballroom.

I’ll end there, and add some links in the comment thread. What do you think about the Trump’s destruction of the East Wing? What else is on your mind today?

Wednesday Reads: The Demolition of U.S. Democracy

Posted: October 22, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Good Morning!!

This looks like a war zone.

I’m heartsick about what Trump is doing to the White House. The White House belongs to the American people, not to the current president. But Trump is doing whatever he wants to our government and to “the people’s house.”

Yesterday, at his substack, Law Dork, Chris Geidner posted the clearest photos of Trump’s demolition I have seen so far. From the photos, it’s clear that either the entire East Wing or most of it will be destroyed. The first photo shows the destruction of the front of the building, and the second shows the damage from above, show how far back the damage to the roof goes. I can’t post the photos here–they are protected–but you can see them at the link.

From the article:

Exclusive: Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete.

Photos obtained exclusively by Law Dork on Tuesday show that President Donald Trump is completely demolishing the East Wing of the White House as part of his stated plan to build a ballroom befitting his standards on the White House grounds.

Although Trump earlier had said the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,“ this week it became abundantly clear that was a lie. And, this dramatic change to the governmental building, Trump says, is happening care of private money and outside of any governmental — and transparent — funding process.

After The Washington Post first reported on Monday that demolition had begun, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday night that Treasury Department employees next door to the demolition were told to “refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs.“

On Tuesday, Law Dork obtained these photographs taken of the ongoing demolition.

Although the Post’s initial story detailed the “East Wing facade“ being demolished and that teams on Monday were “demolishing a portion ofthe East Wing,“ the Tuesday photograph obtained by Law Dork makes clear that most if not all of the entirety of the East Wing is being demolished.

A second photo obtained by Law Dork from another angle shows the extent of the demolition has already reached all but the western and northern walls of the East Wing.

Geider links to this piece by Ryan Gottleib at ENR East: White House Ballroom Build Advances as Oversight Gaps Emerge.

Demolition crews began work Oct. 20 on the East Wing of the White House to clear space for a privately funded 90,000-sq-ft ballroom addition valued at roughly $200 million at the behest of President Donald Trump

The project, announced July 31 by the White House, will be built by Clark Construction Group with AECOM as engineer and McCrery Architects as designer.

Officials said it will create a larger venue for state and ceremonial events, financed entirely by the president and “patriot donors.”

The addition marks the most substantial change to the Executive Residence since the Truman reconstruction of 1948-52. Renderings depict a limestone-clad structure with tall arched windows, ballistic-resistant glazing and interiors described by the White House as “ornately designed.” [….]

The design calls for the addition to remain structurally distinct from the residence while echoing its neoclassical form. The press office said the ballroom “will be substantially separated from the main building… but its theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical.”

As for Trump gaining approval for the project, he took care of that by appointing a sycophant.

Regulatory filings show that as of Sept. 4 no submission had been made to the National Capital Planning Commission, which reviews major federal projects in the capital region.

 

Commission Chairman Will Scharf, who also serves as White House staff secretary, said during a public meeting that “what we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” explaining why demolition and site-preparation work began before commission review. The interpretation leaves design oversight unresolved, even as groundwork proceeds.

Under the Presidential Residence Act, the White House is managed by the National Park Service and operated by the Executive Office of the President’s Facilities Management Division.

While Section 107 of the act exempts the executive residence from mandatory review, Executive Order 11593, issued in 1971, directs federal agencies to consult with the U.S. Interior Dept. before altering historic structures.

Past administrations have voluntarily submitted major projects for review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. These measures, while not legally binding, form the preservation framework that has guided White House alterations for decades and remains relevant even for privately funded work.

More information on Trump’s vanity project from The Washington Post (gift article): White House expands East Wing demolition as critics decry Trump overreach.

A demolition job that began Monday with the disappearance of the White House’s eastern entrance advanced Tuesday with the destruction of much of the East Wing, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post and two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the scene.

Photos of construction teams knocking down parts of the East Wing, first revealed by The Washington Post on Monday, shocked preservationists, raised questions about White House overreach and lack of transparency, and sparked complaints from Democrats that President Donald Trump was damaging “the People’s House” to pursue a personal priority.

“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University in Maryland. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”

A White House spokesman said that the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt.”

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 20: Workers demolish the facade of the East Wing of the White House on October 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.

“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement, citing two federal commissions that have traditionally reviewed White House additions.

White House officials dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage,” arguing that past presidents had pursued their own changes to the executive campus as necessary. They said that the privately funded ballroom will be a “bold, necessary addition” to the presidential grounds.

You can read more using the gift link.

After the backlash, Trump has decided to submit his plans for review–now that the work is in progress.

Reuters: White House says it will submit ballroom plans for review, with demolition already under way.

The White House said on Tuesday it will submit plans for President Donald Trump’s $250 million White House ballroom project to a body that oversees federal building construction, even though demolition work began earlier this week.

Trump reveled on Tuesday in the demolition sounds by construction workers for the ballroom addition to the White House, the first major change to the historic property in decades.

But critics, aghast about images of the White House walls crumbling after Trump had pledged the project would not interfere with the existing landmark, said a review process should have taken place before the work began.

This schematic from the Washington Post article shows the planned layout of the new White House complex.

The White House still intends to submit those plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction in Washington and neighboring states, a White House official told Reuters

“Construction plans have not yet been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission but will be soon,” the official said, adding that the NCPC does not have jurisdiction over demolition work.

The commission is now led by Will Scharf, a White House aide.

Asked why the demolition of East Wing walls was occurring despite Trump’s promise that it would not affect the existing building, the official said modernization work was required in the East Wing and changes had always been a possibility.

“The scope and size was always subject to vary as the project developed,” he said.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt thinks the critics of the East Wing teardown are just jealous.

The Daily Beast: Karoline Leavitt Gives Wild Defense of Trump Destroying the White House.

Karoline Leavitt thinks Democrats are just jealous that Donald Trump is building a swanky $250 million ballroom at the White House.

The White House press secretary says that’s the only way to explain the “fake outrage” after part of the White House’s iconic East Wing was demolished to make way for the 90,000-square-foot structure.

The Trump administration has received widespread backlash for starting work on the event space that will eventually dwarf the White House itself. “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted on X.

But Trump officials have attempted to convince the public that it’s what presidents, administrations, and White House staff have longed for, for 150 years.

“Are the Democrats jealous that Trump is building this big beautiful ballroom?” Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Leavitt on Tuesday.

Leavitt replied that it “certainly appears that way.”

“I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” she added.

I’m speechless at this point.

Another Trump outrage from yesterday: Trump is demanding that he be paid $230 million for the prosecutions against him.

The New York Times (gift link): Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases.

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general; Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, with President Trump in the Oval Office last week.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.

The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.

Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, “I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.”

He added, “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

A bit more:

Lawyers said the nature of the president’s legal claims poses undeniable ethics challenges.

“What a travesty,” said Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University. “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

He added: “And then to have people in the Justice Department decide whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who serve him deciding whether he wins or loses. It’s bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe.”

The president also seemed to acknowledge that point in the Oval Office last week, when he alluded vaguely to the situation while standing next to the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche. According to Justice Department regulations, the deputy attorney general — in this case, Mr. Blanche — is one of two people eligible to sign off on such a settlement.

Unbelievable.

Arizona’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday.

NBC News: Arizona AG sues to force House Speaker Johnson to seat Democrat Adelita Grijalva.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won her late father’s seat in a special election nearly one month ago.

Johnson, R-La., has said he will seat Grijalva once Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government. But the two parties haven’t been talking for weeks, and there is no indication when the shutdown might end.

The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson last week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents living in Arizona’s 7th District of congressional representation. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. House, as well as the House clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”

As he left the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”

Mayes, he said, has “no jurisdiction.”

We’ll see what the judge has to say about it.

At the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War) tells military officials they can’t talk to Congress without his approval.

AP: Hegseth changes policy on how Pentagon officials communicate with Congress.

Leaders at the Pentagon have significantly altered how military officials will speak with Congress after a pair of new memos issued last week.

In an Oct. 15 memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, ordered Pentagon officials — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to obtain permission from the department’s main legislative affairs office before they have any communication with Capitol Hill.

The memo was issued the same day the vast majority of Pentagon reporters exited the building rather than agree to the Defense Department’s new restrictions on their work, and it appears to be part of a broader effort by Hegseth to exert tighter control over what the department communicates to the outside world.

According to the memo, a copy of which was authenticated by a Pentagon official, “unauthorized engagements with Congress by (Pentagon) personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives.”

More from NBC News: Pete Hegseth cracks down on Pentagon staff speaking to Congress.

It’s a departure from current practice; previously, Defense Department agencies were free to manage their own interactions with Capitol Hill.

But under Hegseth, the department has sought stricter control over messaging coming out of the Pentagon. Dozens of reporters turned in their badges and left the building last week, when most news agencies refused to sign unprecedented restrictions Hegseth imposed that threatened consequences for journalists who reported information he had not approved for release, even if it was unclassified.

The new directive, which would further curb information flow from the Pentagon to Congress, is designed “to achieve our legislative goals,” Hegseth and his deputy wrote in the memo.

“Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” the memo says, using the initialism for the “Department of War,” the Defense Department’s secondary but unofficial name used by the Trump administration.

Why is Hegseth so paranoid? Is it because he’s incompetent and realizes the competent DOD people know that?

Two more articles to check out:

The Washington Post (gift link): Health insurance sticker shock begins as shutdown battle over subsidies rages.

Millions of Americans are already seeing their health insurance costs soar for 2026 as Congress remains deadlocked over extending covid-era subsidies for premiums.

The bitter fight sparked a government shutdown at the start of October. Democrats refuse to vote on government-funding legislation unless it extends the subsidies, while Republicans insist on separate negotiations after reopening the government. Now lawmakers face greater pressure to act as Americans who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are seeing, or about to see, the consequences of enhanced subsidies expiring at the end of the year.

Healthcare.gov — the federal website used by 28 states — is expected to post plan offerings early next week ahead of the start of open enrollment in November. But window shopping has already begun in most of the 22 states that run their own marketplaces, offering a preview of the sticker shock to come.

Premiums nationwide are set to rise by 18 percent on average, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF. That, combined with the loss of extra subsidies, have left Americans with the worst year-over-year price hikes in the 12 years since the marketplaces launched.

Nationally, the average marketplace consumer will pay $1,904 in annual premiums next year, up from $888 in 2025, according to KFF.

The situation is particularly acute in Georgia, which recorded the second-highest enrollment of any state-run marketplace this year and posted prices for 2026 earlier in October. About 96 percent of marketplace enrollees in Georgia received subsidies this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that supports extending the subsidies.

Now Georgians browsing the state website are seeing estimated monthly costs double or even triple, depending on their incomes, as lower subsidy thresholds resume.

Use the gift link to read more.

It’s a shame this didn’t get more publicity. CNN: Democratic senator protests Trump’s ‘grave threats’ in marathon overnight floor speech.

Sen. Jeff Merkley has been speaking on the Senate floor for more than 12 hours after announcing he would protest what he called President Donald Trump’s “grave threats to democracy.”

The Oregon Democrat began his remarks at 6:24 p.m. ET Tuesday and was still speaking as of Wednesday morning.

Senator Jeff Merkley

“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution,” he said at the start of his remarks.

The senator’s marathon speech stands as a symbolic show of Democratic resistance as his party remains in a standoff with Republicans over health care subsidies amid the government shutdown. The shutdown is expected to drag on with the impasse entering a fourth week Wednesday. Democrats have so far held their position, blocking the GOP stopgap bill to reopen the government 11 times until their demands are met.

Merkley in his speech pointed to the Trump administration’s previous halting of research grants for universities in its battle over campus oversight as well as the recent indictments of several of the president’s political opponents as well as his push to deploy National Guard troops to Portland.

“President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots. Because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation,” he said.

Read the rest at CNN.

Those are my offerings for today. Sorry there’s not more good news.