Donald Trump is finally getting his wish to turn the White House into the gaudy resort he calls home by adding a $200 million ballroom. 

The White House announced that it would begin construction in September on a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that can seat 650 people. 

Yes, Trump is laser focused on the issues that matter most to Americans: replacing the “large and unsightly” tent that typically hosts guests just 100 yards away from the building. 

During a press conference Thursday afternoon, Trump confirmed that he wouldn’t spend any taxpayer dollars on the $200 million project. “It’s a private thing, yeah, and we’ll probably have some donors,” he said. 

“They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that’s good at ballrooms,” he added. 

Trump said the expansion would not “interfere” with the White House. “It’ll be near it but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building,”  

Trump’s mission to add a gaudy event hall to the White House didn’t come out of nowhere—he claims that he pitched it to the last two presidents. During a press conference in February, Trump said he’d asked Joe Biden about building a ballroom in the White House, offering to have it built himself. 

“I was going to build a beautiful, beautiful ballroom like I’ve done before,” Trump said. “It would cost $100 million. I told them again and again. They didn’t know what to do. They had no idea.”

He made a similar claim on the presidential campaign trail in 2016, telling his supporters that he’d offered to have a ballroom built for the Obamas. 

Trump has already begun a massive decor overhaul at the White House, gilding the Oval Office with gaudy gold detailing and ornate crown molding, plastering a golden Trump crest above the door, and shipping in golden cherub statues straight from Mar-a-Lago, according to The Daily Beast. 

It’s clear that Trump much prefers the luxury aesthetics of his resort home, and with the dismal report card he’s received in office so far, the president should feel free to pack his bags any time. 

In 2024, Trump was so protective of judges who ruled in his favor that he claimed it’s illegal to publicly criticize them.

Not so when judges rule against him, apparently. In recent months, as judges serve as bulwarks against his administration’s lawless actions, the president has lashed out, leading his supporters to inundate them with threats.

At a virtual event held by Speak Up for Justice on Thursday, judges spoke up about the vitriol they’ve faced of late.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell, who blocked Trump’s federal aid freeze earlier this year, said his court has received four or five hundred “vile, threatening” voicemails.

“We’re going to come for him,” said one voice message, which was played at the meeting. “You know what, motherfucker? Your ass is going to go to prison. OK, son of a bitch? And I wish somebody would fucking assassinate your ass. Somebody needs to fucking wipe his ass out.”

McConnell has received six credible death threats, he said, recalling one instance in which “someone was on the dark web searching for my home address, because, this is a quote, he wanted, ‘Smith & Wesson to pay me a visit at my home.’”

McConnell said of the threats: “I’ve been on the bench almost 15 years, and I must say it’s the one time that actually shook my faith in the judicial system, in the rule of law, in the work that we do with the Constitution.”

McConnell and others also said they received threats in the form of pizza deliveries to their home addresses to indicate that they’ve been doxed.

Sometimes, in order to make the message clearer and threaten judges’ families, such pizza deliveries are made in the name of Daniel Anderl, the late son of another judge at Thursday’s event, District Judge Esther Salas. Anderl was killed in 2020 by a disgruntled lawyer attempting to attack Salas.

District Judge Robert Lasnik, whose family was sent pizzas in Anderl’s name, said he believes over 50 judges have received pizzas.

Salas spoke to the distressing experience of hearing the name of her late son, who “stands for … love and light,” be weaponized “to inflict fear on” judges.

“What we need is our political leaders, from the top down, to stop fanning these flames, to stop using irresponsible rhetoric, to stop referring to judges as corrupt and biased and monsters that hate America,” Salas said.

District Judge John Coughenour, who blocked Trump’s executive order against birthright citizenship, described being swatted.

“The local sheriff’s office received a call saying that I had murdered my wife, and then arrived at my house with weapons drawn,” Coughenour recalled. Soon after, he said, they received a message from the FBI that there was a bomb at their house.

“There wasn’t, but what kind of people do these things?” Coughenour said.

Toward the end of the event, Lasnik recounted the heroism of federal judges who, during the civil rights era, pushed for the enforcement of desegregation “over the objections of Southern governors.”

Such judges faced “death threats, bombings of their family home,” Lasnik said. “They were under tremendous physical intimidation and threats.”

The difference between then and today? “In that period of time, the presidents of the United States—President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy—enforced the courts’ rulings and didn’t support defying them,” Lasnik said.

“And we’re hopeful that this administration will do the same thing and support the courts’ rulings and not defy them going forward.”

Senate Republicans voted Thursday to confirm Tulsi Gabbard fanboy Joe Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, despite his known ties to far-right extremists.

Kent previously courted white nationalists as part of his failed congressional campaign against Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler in 2022. Kent was endorsed by white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Oath Keeper Wendy Rogers, and Christian nationalist Joey Gibson spoke at one of his fundraisers. Campaign finance disclosures revealed that Kent paid known Proud Boy Graham Jorgensen $11,375 for “consulting.”

But if Senate Republicans actually had a problem with far-right ideology, then we wouldn’t be in this situation now, would we?........

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