Sheer Assholery

The Trump White House has rolled out a new version of a page on its official website about the history of the building to tout the president’s controversial ballroom project — while gratuitously trolling the last three Democratic presidents.

Based on internet archives, the longstanding webpage appears to have been updated yesterday, amid growing criticism of the demolition of the building’s East Wing. The updated version of the page calls it the “East Wing Expansion.”

The webpage includes a “Major Events Timeline” that purports to be a history of the White House itself. It begins normally enough with the building’s design and construction, its reconstruction after the War of 1812, and other historical highlights until … those come to a screeching halt in 1998:

From out of nowhere, the Monica Lewinsky scandal is slotted in as a key moment in the history of the White House. “The Oval Office trysts fueled impeachment for obstruction,” the caption reads, stretching to find the tie-in to the history of the building.

From there, it only gets worse. Much worse:

After the potshots at Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden, Hunter Biden, and trans Americans, the timeline has four entries for 2025 alone, all various gaudy additions by Trump. No mention of the East Wing demolition, which the timeline dubs as “renovations.”

As so often is the case with right-wing trolling, it’s highly self-conscious, intended to get a rise from foes and knowing chuckles from allies. It isn’t some peel-back-the-curtain glimpse into the inner workings of the MAGA mind. It’s just an expression of its core asshole-ism.

Covering the trolling as news sometimes feels like a school newspaper reporting on the latest graffiti in the bathroom. And yet …

The White House website — like the East Wing (RIP) — is a public good. The staffers doing the trolling are public employees. The history of the White House as a building is a shared national story that parallels our greatest achievements, conflicts, and tragedies. Its history is our collective experience, which isn’t as tangible of a public good as the bricks and mortar, but can be vandalized just the same.

The Destruction: East Wing Edition

In related developments:

• Trump has dramatically upped the cost of the ballroom in recent days from $200 million to $300 million to $350 million.
• In the midst of the government shutdown, the White House press secretary declared: “At this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.”
• An August profile of President Trump’s architect for the ballroom project, James C. McCrery II, suggests we had more warning this was coming than I realized. The piece, in an architecture newsletter, called it a “controversial plan to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to replace the White House’s East Wing” that “threatens to permanently disfigure the White House and its grounds.”

The Retribution: Letitia James Edition

Ahead of the arraignment of Letitia James today in her politicized mortgage fraud prosecution:

• ABC News: Evidence appears to undercut claims against Letitia James, prosecutors found
• NYT: “[I]t is becoming clear that creating the trappings of criminality — the headlines, the scrutiny, the reputational damage — is as much a part of the formula as any realistic chance of conviction.”
• James’ lawyers notified the court that they will be challenging the lawfulness of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as U.S. attorney and suggested her challenge should be combined with the similar challenge by former FBI Director James Comey in his own politicized criminal case.
• James also brought Halligan’s Signal chat with Lawfare reporter Anna Bower to the court’s attention, asking for it to order Halligan to preserve the messages and stop making “any further disclosures” outside of court.

The Retribution: Adam Schiff Edition

Federal prosecutors in Maryland are hesitant to bring charges against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) for drummed-up mortgage fraud because they have insufficient evidence. The case has stalled, but, under direction from the deputy attorney general’s office, prosecutors will keep the case open and continue looking for more evidence.

Note that ongoing open-ended investigations are one of the prime ways President Trump can abuse the Justice Department’s powers.

The Retribution: Jack Smith Edition

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith has called the bluff of Hill Republicans, responding to their demand for his testimony behind closed doors with his own demand to make it a public hearing (provided he gets permission from the Trump DOJ to testify and to access his old files so that he can prepare).

The Latest on Venezuela …

• NYT: A Mystery in Trinidad as Bodies Wash Ashore After U.S. Strikes
• WSJ: “The U.S. flew Air Force B-1 bombers near Venezuela on Thursday … only days after other American warplanes carried out an ‘attack demonstration’ near the South American country.”
• International Crisis Group: Beware the Slide Toward Regime Change in Venezuela
• Charlie Savage, on why the summary killing of alleged drug smugglers “stands apart” from President Trump’s many other sweeping claims of executive power.
• Trump himself:

Trump: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like dead."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-23T20:27:05.043Z

The Corruption: Crypto Pardon

President Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, which is a key supporter of the Trump family’s own newly launched crypto venture.

Mass Deportations: Star Wars Edition

• In a letter posted on social media, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche threatened to prosecute Democratic officials in California if they arrest federal agents for violating state laws, calling the public chatter about such a move an “apparent criminal conspiracy.”
• Attorneys representing journalists and protestors rushed to court Thursday afternoon with allegations that CBP commander Greg Bovino launched a gas canister at a crowd of protestors in Chicago earlier in the day in potential violation of a federal court order.
• The ACLU is suing on behalf of a D.C. man who briefly detained in handcuffs after trolling National Guard troops by playing the “The Imperial March” from Star Wars:

Ooo, went looking for video of this… Oh The Horror! 🤣

— AgonyFlips (@agonyflips.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T14:15:02.786Z

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US Strikes Extend to Pacific

By its own admission, the Trump administration has expanded its lawless attacks on supposed drug-smuggling boats from the Caribbean to the Pacific.

The U.S. military has conducted two strikes that we know of in the Pacific, bringing the total number of attacks since the campaign began to nine, with a reported death toll of 37. The Pacific attacks took place in international waters, and at least one of them was off the coast of Colombia, according to reports.

Throughout the weeks-old campaign, nearly all of the publicly available information about the attacks has come from the notoriously unreliable Trump administration. The campaign has also happened in parallel with an administration purging of the reporters who usually cover the Pentagon, most of whom gave up their press credentials rather than accede to a restrictive new media policy. What remains to cover the Defense Department on-site is a hodgepodge of mostly right-wing media outlets that agreed to sign on to the new restrictions.

The combination of fewer reliable reporters at the Pentagon and compromised news outlets taking their place could hardly come at a worse time given the administration’s own struggles with truth-telling. Well before Trump, the national security realm was one of the hardest to cover for journalists, and the structure and traditions of American government gave overwhelming deference to secrecy and security at the expense of transparency and accountability.

Even now, the campaign is being waged on the basis of a secret memo from the Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, and the president has issued a secret presidential finding authorizing the CIA to conduct covert operations in and around Venezuela. Congress and the American public have been kept in the dark about the legal basis for the attacks, their ultimate goal, the larger strategy, and the endgame.

Similar practices in past administrations have created enormous historic tensions between democratic processes and military/intelligence operations. But no past administration has launched military operations at the same time it is conducting a vigorous, sustained, and broad-based attack on the rule of law, the constitutional order, and the professional military like President Trump is.

It’s a bad combination at a bad time … something earlier opponents of government secrecy, deference to the military, and extrajudicial killings warned would eventually come back to bite us.

The Corruption: $230M and Counting

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is warning that President Trump may be able to settle his own $230 million claim against the federal government for the criminal investigations of himself without immediately divulging the settlement publicly.

“Our reading is that, even though this is a private settlement, it doesn’t have to be disclosed anywhere until there is an accounting of where all the money has gone at the end of the year,” Raskin tells Greg Sargent.

Raskin also cites the Emoluments Clause — which proved to be a weak tool in Trump I — as barring any compensation to the president from the federal government other than his salary.

CONFIRMED: East Wing Demolished

After a few days of weak dodging and poor deception, the Trump administration — first via an unnamed senior official and then by President Trump himself — confirmed what photographic evidence had made undeniable: It is demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for the president’s ballroom pet project.

Facing a groundswell of backlash over the unannounced demolition of one-third of the White House complex, Trump took to holding up mockups of the ballroom during an Oval Office press availability with the NATO secretary general.

Philip Bump writes of the demolition of the East Wing:

The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that.

Also Demolished: CISA

“The Trump administration has effectively closed the division of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that coordinates critical infrastructure cybersecurity improvements with states and local governments, private businesses and foreign countries,” Cybersecurity Dive reports.

Wahoowhat? UVa Capitulates

Under pressure from the White House, Mr. Jefferson’s University of Virginia became the first public university to strike a deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to the imposition of certain race-based policies in order only to pause ongoing federal investigations.

For the Record

On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) concluded a marathon 22-hour floor speech in which he warned it was time to “ring the alarm bells about authoritarian control.”

He’s Telling Us He’s Going to Do it Again

Trump: "We can never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again. We just can't let that happen. I know Kash is working on it, everybody is working on it. And certainly Tulsi is working on it. We can't let that happen again to our country."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-21T21:05:06.786Z

National Guard Case Confusion

Late yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear en banc a decision that paused a lower court order that blocked National Guard troops from being deployed in California. A total of 11 judges joined in a powerful dissent by Judge Marsha Berzon, TPM’s Kate Riga reports.

To make sense of the three big National Guard cases — California, Oregon, and Illinois — and the current legal status of each case, I’ll defer to Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck who does a bang-up job this morning of sorting out the various moving parts.

ICYMI …

During oral arguments this week, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals appeared deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s effort to detain and deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student being punished for his political views.

Party Time!

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I hope you’ll pardon our undisguised pride at having made it through 25 years of political and industry turmoil, a small boat in a raging sea of chaos, uncertainty, and re-invention. We could not have done it without you. Thank you.

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