tRump is using the people’s house, the house for the president while he is in office as if it was one of his own properties. Like he was always going to stay there. He is acting like the White House should be a palace like the Saudi royalty or the English kings / queens. He wants the place to be spectacle and pomp instead of what it really is for, a work place for the president to live and work. He also spends the public treasury paid for by the taxpayer as his own private checking account when the laws say that is illegal. Congress approves the budget not the president, but the republicans in congress are too afraid of him to even say anything. I bet you they find their voice if a democrat wins the presidency. Hugs.
President Donald Trump is continuing his renovations of the White House with potential new additions to the West Wing.
After demolishing the White House’s East Wing to make way for a new ballroom in 2025, Trump is now setting his sights on the colonnade linking the West Wing to the executive residence, where he wants to add a second level.
The administration unveiled the plan during a meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington this week.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email.
Why It Matters
The White House announced the East Wing ballroom project in late July, with demolition beginning in October, when workers were seen tearing it down.
The White House has said the project will be funded by private donations and no taxpayer burden, though the projected cost has increased from an estimate of $200 million to $400 million.
New Renovation Plans
In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Trump said he was calling the project the “Upper West Wing.” He said it was still in the design phase and that the space could be used for additional West Wing offices or serve as “first ladies’ offices for future first ladies.” These were previously in the East Wing.
The project’s architect, Shalom Baranes, said the White House was weighing up the one-story addition to the West Wing to restore what he described as the complex’s “symmetry” once the East Wing ballroom was finished.
Architect Shalom Baranes shows elevation drawings for a new $400 million ballroom at the White House to members of the National Capital Planning Commi… | Chip Somodevilla/Getty
“I did mention the potential for a future addition, a one-story addition to the West Wing,” Baranes told the commission. “The reason to think about that is so that we would reinstate symmetry along the central pavilion of the White House.”
He made the remarks after unveiling plans for a two-story colonnade that would link the East Room to the new ballroom. The ballroom is set to be about 22,000 square feet and designed to accommodate 1,000 seated guests.
In a statement released in July, the White House said the “much-needed and exquisite addition” would add “approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space, with a seated capacity of 650 people—a significant increase from the 200-person seated capacity in the East Room of the White House.”
Backlash
The overall renovation plans have been met with some backlash in recent months.
In December, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit to stop the East Wing project, saying the administration had dodged a required review process for federal projects. During a hearing in the case, the administration told a federal judge it would submit the project’s plans to the appropriate federal oversight bodies. The judge said he would schedule a follow-up hearing in January to review the White House’s process and declined to halt construction in the meantime.
The trust said following the meeting on Thursday: “Today’s NCPC informational presentation about the White House ballroom was a good and necessary first step. The National Trust continues to urge the Administration to comply with all legally required review and approval processes before commencing construction, including the NCPC, the Commission of Fine Arts, compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, and approval by Congress.”
It added that it looked “forward to the American people having a voice in the process moving forward.”
“O.K., I’ll put that on my calendar and we’ll just keep an eye on the weather and the fall of democracy.”
Peaceful tourists, even if Trump and his MAGA supporters try to whitewash over Trump’s violent history against his own people, will never be successful. Eyewitnesses, archives, and the internet preserve the memories – it is impossible to erase all the evidence. History remains.
ICE are killing blonde white women now. Every act of violence is a message meant to intimidate us. Trump and his ICE storm troopers first came for the people of color and immigrants while few resisted. Now they’re coming for anybody and everybody. Total fascism stage of the game where nobody has privilege anymore and it’s open season on anyone who resists or happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I am not sure if I need to say this but this is a total fraud attack on a real US hero. This is fascism up close and clear. tRump and his people are scared of the truth and a drunken Christian Nazi nationalist is trying to demote a real US hero military man because he told the truth. The truth every military person learns in what ever basic training they went through and often during their time in service. Remember the Mỹ Lai massacre in Vietnam and the shit that followed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre . Hugs
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is firing back after the Pentagon moved to censure him over last year’s video urging service members to refuse illegal orders.
Full disclosure. Ron was working for tRump at Mar-a-largo as his nighttime butler and nighttime house supervisor. He knew all about this and told me of it. Sadly he couldn’t do anything about it other than give the doctor and staff comfort and support.
Meredith Kile is a Digital News Writer-Editor at PEOPLE. She has been an entertainment and political journalist for more than a decade, previously working for Entertainment Tonight, VICE and Al Jazeera America.
The report, which cites unnamed former Mar-a-Lago and Epstein employees, claims that Trump’s spa would send masseuses, manicurists and other spa workers to Epstein’s nearby residence.
“Epstein wasn’t a dues-paying member of the club, but Trump told staff to treat him like one, the employees said,” according to the report.
It also alleges that workers “warned each other about Epstein, who was known among staff for being sexually suggestive and exposing himself during the appointments.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to the Journal that the publication was “writing up fallacies and innuendo in order to smear President Trump.”
“No matter how many times this story is told and retold, the truth remains: President Trump did nothing wrong and he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for being a creep,” Leavitt said in a text message.
Leavitt’s claim about Trump kicking Epstein out seems to align with the Journal’s reporting, which goes on to say that, in 2003, an 18-year-old worker returned to Mar-a-Lago from an Epstein house call and said the billionaire had “pressured her for sex.”
“A manager sent Trump a fax relaying the employee’s allegations and urged him to ban Epstein, some of the former employees said,” the report claims. “Trump told the manager it was a good letter and said to kick him out.”
The incident was not reported to police, according to WSJ. However, two years later, Epstein would be investigated after a parent alleged that he sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.
That conviction preceded the 2019 charges of sex trafficking, for which Epstein was awaiting trial when he died in prison. The billionaire’s friendships with many high-profile celebrities and businessmen have been highly scrutinized in recent months as Trump’s Department of Justice — which was ordered to release all evidence in the Epstein case by Dec. 19 — has continued to release documents and photos one batch at a time.
One of the documents, dated Oct. 27, 2020, appeared to be an FBI intake report that featured the account of a former limo driver, who claimed to have met Trump in 1995, when he said he drove the real estate mogul to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
The document read, “[Driver] reported some of the things President Trump had spoken about during the ride while on his cell phone were very concerning. [Driver] reported he was ‘a few seconds from pulling the limousine over on the median and within a few seconds of pulling him out of the car and hurting him, due to some of the things he was saying.’ “
Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.Davidoff Studios/Getty
While telling the story to an unnamed woman years later, the driver alleged that the woman went “stone cold.”
“[Woman] stated, ‘He raped me,'” the FBI intake report read. “[Driver] said, ‘What?’ as [Woman] replied ‘Donald J. Trump had raped her along with Jeffrey Epstein.’ “
The Department of Justice took proactive measures against the claims while releasing the new batch of documents. In a Tuesday, Dec. 23, statement on social media, they wrote, “The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”
“To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the statement continued. “Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims.”
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Wednesday, January 07, 2026 at 2:15:25p EST
The US officially acknowledged Denmark’s rights
On 4 August 1916, Denmark’s rights to Greenland were confirmed by the United States, as part of a deal that facilitated the American purchase of the Danish West Indies. That deal, the Treaty of the Danish West Indies was signed at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City. The US got the Danish West Indies, now known as the US Virgin Islands. Denmark got US$25,000,000 in gold and the United States’ recognition of Denmark’s rights over Greenland. [Those rights had been in some dispute with Norway because Greenland had been a colony of the monarchy of Denmark and Norway which broke apart in 1814.]
Some later history from Mikkel Runge Olesen:
“After the Second World War, the United Nations pushed for decolonization in Greenland. In 1953, the former colony was incorporated into Denmark and granted two seats in the Danish Parliament. In 1979, Greenland achieved Home Rule, which included the formation of the Greenlandic Parliament, and it gained self-rule in 2009 through the passage of a law that included a ‘blueprint’ for seeking independence. The 2009 law firmly established that the decision to go for independence from Denmark would now rest with the Greenlandic people.”
The collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion in 2025 as working-class Americans faced a cost-of-living crisis made worse by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and unprecedented assault on the social safety net.
An analysis released Friday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that the top 15 US billionaires saw the largest wealth gains last year, with their collective fortune growing from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. That 33% gain was more than double the S&P 500’s 16% increase in 2025.
What IPS describes as the “elite group” of US billionaires includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world; Google co-founder Larry Page; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; and Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison.
IPS emphasized that “these staggering combined billionaire wealth totals come as the Trump-GOP budget bill passed in 2025 defunded health insurance, food stamps, and other vital anti-poverty safety net programs, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and budget increases for militarism and mass deportations.”
“The affordability crisis is hitting ordinary Americans particularly hard as we head into the new year, but not everyone is feeling the pain: Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, said in a statement.
“These extreme concentrations of wealth and power,” Collins added, “undermine our daily lives and further rig our economy in favor of the ultra-rich and corporations, while ordinary Americans get a raw deal once again.”
IPS released its analysis days after Bloomberg reported, based on its Billionaires Index, that the world’s 500 richest people gained a record $2.2 trillion in wealth last year.
Omar Ocampo, an IPS researcher, said that in the US, billionaires are “paying far less in taxes compared to the huge amount of wealth they amass,” allowing them to continue accumulating vast fortunes, supercharging inequality, and using their wealth and influence to subvert reform efforts.
“Not only are a small number of Americans holding more wealth than the rest of America, but they’re also not paying their fair share in taxes,” said Ocampo.
The new report comes as families across the US struggle to make ends meet amid high and still-rising prices for groceries, housing, and other necessities. A Century Foundation survey released last month found that “roughly three in 10 voters delayed or skipped medical care in the past year due to cost, while nearly two-thirds switched to cheaper groceries or bought less food altogether.”
Peaceful tourists, even if Trump and his MAGA supporters try to whitewash over Trump’s violent history against his own people, will never be successful. Eyewitnesses, archives, and the internet preserve the memories – it is impossible to erase all the evidence. History remains.
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Scottie's Playtime 