Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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Reflecting Pool liner was cut with a sharp knife or razor, National Park Service says The cut caused damage to the foam sealant installed as part of a $16 million rehabilitation project, said Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the park service. Read more.

Why this matters: Lands made the statement in a court document filed late Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by a nonprofit organization to halt the Trump administration’s work on the project. His statement does not say when exactly the damage occurred or whether it was a suspected case of vandalism and does not identify anyone who might have been involved. This is the first time the Republican administration has offered specifics for when and how the Reflecting Pool may have been damaged after work on the project was substantially completed.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration detention center has closed, governor says   Vance, an admirer of Richard Nixon, says Watergate would be ‘a 12-hour news story’ today   Judge blocks Trump plan that would limit graduate student loans in nursing and other fields    DEA asks watchdog to investigate claims that agents permitted fentanyl to hit the streets   Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list   Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii law requiring permission to carry guns in stores and hotels   Norman Rockwell people-watched in the West Wing lobby. Now those sketches are on public display

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JD Vance Gleefully Compares Himself to His Hero Nixon

The VP claimed the fact Watergate took down a president was “crazy.”

JD Vance has gleefully compared himself to disgraced former President Richard Nixon while downplaying the biggest scandal in U.S. political history.

Vance, 41, was not born when the investigations into five operatives connected to Nixon’s re-election campaign were arrested for burglarizing and wiretapping the Democratic headquarters in 1972.

It led to Nixon’s resignation during his second term in 1974.

However, on Thursday, Vance shared his admiration for the only U.S. president so far to have been forced to resign while speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California, promoting his new memoir, Communion.

Vance claimed that Nixon’s legacy is currently “enjoying a bit of a renaissance,” highlighting his diplomatic achievements in ending the Vietnam War and opening relations with China.

“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance stated.

He then made the bold claim, “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

Vance also compared himself to the 37th president, whom he called a “political genius.”

“Young senator, vice president, writes some bestselling books, is hated by the media,” he said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”

Nixon died in 1994 at the age of 81, four days after suffering a major stroke.

Vance’s comments blew up online on Thursday, as footage of his remarks was shared on social media.

Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor pointed out some of the crimes exposed by the journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal.

“Thanks to Watergate, we know that Nixon’s staff broke into his political opponent’s HQ & Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, and that Nixon himself approved obstructing justice to cover these crimes up, tried to use the IRS to punish enemies, and was cool with breaking finance law,” Vietor posted on X.

He added that Vance “sold his soul for power, so it’s not remotely surprising that he is now fine with all of this stuff!”

One X user said Vance was “vice-signaling,” adding that, “Politicians used to signal virtue, now they just signal vice. They signal how much they’ll hurt the other side.”

Award-winning crime author Don Winslow said Vance’s comments were “So. F---ing. Revealing,” while comedian Stacy Cay noted, “The joke is that they’re doing so many crimes now that nobody would care about Nixon.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Vance’s office for comment.

Vance has already had an awkward week online, after a cringeworthy exchange with his pregnant wife, Usha, 40, also went viral.

The couple appeared on a Father’s Day special of Storytime with the Second Lady, where Vance gingerly tapped his wife’s knee twice after she introduced him.

“The face Usha Vance makes when JD touches her knee is a cry for help if I’ve ever seen one,” Democratic strategist Mike Nellis said on X.“Holy s---. This painfully awkward JD Vance moment is going viral,” anti-MAGA influencer Joe Gallina noted. “I’ve seen more chemistry during the Iran negotiations. This guy will never be president.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-gleefully-compares-himself-to-his-hero-richard-nixon/?

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Judge Corners DOJ for Covering Up Files on Trump’s 13-Year-Old Accuser

Dozens of files related to the FBI’s interviews with Trump’s 13-year-old accuser are reportedly still sealed.

A federal judge has cornered the Justice Department for withholding files on FBI interviews with the woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was 13.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to release unredacted versions of several Jeffrey Epstein files, or explain why the DOJ should be allowed to keep them secret, as he sided with investigative journalist Katie Phang, who had accused Blanche of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He gave the government until July 2 to comply.

Sullivan’s decision covers FBI notes from interviews with a woman who claimed that Epstein introduced her to Trump in 1984, when she was about 13 years old, and that Trump forced her to perform a sexual act on him. Trump has denied the allegation.

The South Carolina woman’s allegations were revealed in documents released as part of the DOJ’s Epstein files dump, including redacted FBI documents summarizing the interviews, but The Post and Courier reports that dozens of pages on the interviews have yet to be released.

The woman was interviewed by the FBI four times about her allegations against Trump in 2019, soon after Epstein was arrested on suspicion of federal child sex offenses.

The woman alleged that Epstein took her to a “very tall building with huge rooms.” Trump, she said, ordered everyone else out of the room, unzipped his pants, and pushed her head “down to his penis.” She then “bit the s--- out of” Trump’s penis, she said, after which he punched her in the head.

The White House has denied the woman’s story.

“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them—because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously told the Daily Beast. “As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein Files.”

The DOJ and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday’s court setback.

In her suit, Phang had accused Blanche of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act by failing to publish all the documents the government holds about the convicted sex trafficker and by improperly redacting documents.

The DOJ has released roughly half of the 6 million pages of documents it collected on Epstein, and many of the disclosed files are heavily redacted.

Blanche responded to Phang’s lawsuit by arguing that she cannot sue to compel the DOJ to release documents and must instead seek them through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In his 48-page opinion, Sullivan concluded that Phang had the right to sue over unreleased files and that FOIA “does not provide an adequate remedy.”

In addition to ordering the DOJ to release the documents requested by Phang or “show cause” why it cannot comply, Sullivan also ordered the agency to release a log listing every redaction it has made to the files it has published, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-corners-doj-over-covering-up-files-on-trumps-13-year-old-accuser/?

ps:Pathetic!!!!!

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If You Build It

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If there’s one thing Donald Trump wants Americans to understand, it’s that he knows how to build.

At a Pennsylvania petrochemical plant in 2019, he told workers, “I was a good builder. I built good. I love building.” Talking to reporters in the spring: “What I do best in life is build.” During last year’s Kennedy Center Honors, Trump joked that he has “two jobs”—the second being, naturally, construction.

Even as past ventures have flopped, Trump continues to position himself as the kind of big-shot developer who blasts through red tape and never takes no for an answer. This is the president who once wooed voters by promising to build a “big, beautiful” wall along the southern border. Who, he argued on the 2016 campaign trail, was better positioned to make it happen? In his second term, he’s been focused on redesigning the landscape of Washington, D.C., in his own image.

But earlier this week, Trump showed he’s willing to delay the construction of something that Americans have clearly indicated they need. On Tuesday, lawmakers passed the biggest housing bill in a generation, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Co-sponsored by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott, it’s a bipartisan omnibus with reforms meant to encourage development and push down prices. Trump needs the win; at the moment, most Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy. But on Wednesday, Trump abruptly canceled the signing ceremony for the bill. It will remain canceled, he wrote on Truth Social, until Congress passes the SAVE America Act, a completely unrelated and highly controversial piece of voter-ID legislation. (He’s called it his “No. 1 priority” ahead of the midterm elections.)

The stalled bill targets a pressing national concern. About a third of American households spend more than a third of their income on rent and mortgage payments, and almost four out of five voters identify the cost of housing as an extremely or very important issue. That Trump halted the signing shows that he’s willing to use a bipartisan bill as collateral—even if it means sacrificing the prospect of affordable housing for Americans. Although the move is within his procedural rights, it’s also toothless: Because the bill has passed both the House and the Senate, it is set to become law in 10 days with or without the president’s signature. And even if Trump decides to veto it, Congress (barring a sudden reversal) has the supermajority required to override a veto. Plus, the president can’t unilaterally force the passage of the SAVE America Act, which faces staunch opposition from Democrats.

Quantifying the extent of the country’s housing crisis is difficult (some analysts think the United States is short 6 million units, whereas others think the number is closer to 2 million), but experts tend to agree that building more housing in high-need areas could help. The ROAD to Housing Act isn’t a panacea, and many of its proposals will take effect only in the long term. But by fast-tracking environmental reviews and encouraging legislators to loosen zoning restrictions, among other proposals, the bill aims to incentivize new construction.

Trump has delivered mixed messages on housing affordability throughout his second term. White House press releases make passing mention of increasing housing supply, and Trump released an executive order in March directing agencies to loosen regulatory barriers to building homes. His push for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up mortgage bonds turned out to have little lasting effect on rates. But lately, the president’s own comments have focused on the needs of existing homeowners. “I don’t want to drive housing prices down; I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes,” he said earlier this year. Homeowners of course do want their investments protected, but the housing bill’s incentives for developers to build would not automatically depress the value of all American homes. And in some cases, encouraging more construction could promote economic growth and increase land values in the long run.

Although the administration has taken steps to address the housing crisis, its efforts have at times been misdirected. In an attempt to protect individual landlords (known as mom-and-pop owners), who currently dominate the real-estate market, Trump issued an executive order in January aimed at curbing the influence of institutional investors—a nebulous umbrella term for some larger firms. Parts of the housing bill echo this idea. But, as my colleagues have explained, the panic over institutional buying’s effect on housing prices seems to be overblown. Although big corporate landlords pose a real problem in certain communities (corporations are more likely to evict tenants, and can neglect maintenance and upkeep), institutional investors own less than 1 percent of single-family homes nationwide.

Whether Trump is a “good” builder is a question best left to architecture critics, and perhaps to his creditors. But it’s undeniable that he builds. With his proposed triumphal arch, his modifications to the Reflecting Pool, and his renovation of the White House, he has attempted to reorganize the seat of government around his own aesthetic preferences. His recently announced presidential library, which may also be a hotel, could permanently alter the Miami skyline.

The ROAD to Housing Act may still be a victory for this administration—and the president may even claim credit for the effort to make housing more affordable. But he has yet to prove to the American people that he will build for them, and not just for himself.

Related:

• Trump’s giant face is everywhere.
• The latest ploy to help Republicans win elections

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Bill Maher Corners JD Vance on Election Denial Rhetoric

The vice president refused to break from Trump’s election denial, instead recasting 2020 as a tech censorship conspiracy.

Bill Maher tried to corner JD Vance on election denial—but the vice president wriggled straight out.

Maher pressed Vance on Friday’s episode of Real Time over the MAGAworld habit of crying fraud every time a Republican loses an election.

“Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes that an election can be: Either we win or they cheated,” Maher said.

“That s--t has to stop.”

Maher raised the issue after admitting his own vote could be “in play” in 2028 if Democrats continue moving toward what he described as Democratic socialism, anti-capitalism, hostility toward Israel, and “Jew-hating.”

“If this is where the Democratic Party is going… my vote is in play, OK?” Maher told Vance.

But the comedian said Republicans had their own deal-breaker.

“Trump can’t run again... so it’s either gonna be you or Rubio,” he said.

“And that means the person who has to stop it would be you or Marco. Can you tell me you will do that? Will you bring us back to the middle, at least on that, where we concede elections?”

Vance could not.

“OK, Bill, so this is where I’m probably gonna lose you here,” Vance replied.

Rather than give Maher a clean answer, Vance wrapped Trump’s repeated claims of election denial in a more respectable-sounding conspiracy theory.

“I don’t think that we should not concede elections, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Vance said.

Vance said Trump’s “core argument” was about “problems that exist in 2020,” before trying to move the discussion away from vote counts in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other battleground states.

“The biggest criticism I had of the 2020 election is that you had technology companies that were quite literally censoring negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right,” he added.

Maher tried to drag Vance back to earth.

“That was litigated,” Maher said, referencing Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News over false 2020 election claims.

Fox settled the case in 2023 for $787.5 million.

But Vance kept moving.

“No, I’m actually trying to make the more middle-ground argument here,” he said.

The vice president claimed the 2020 election was “rigged” in a “fundamental sense” because tech companies had “put their thumb on the scale in a way that completely obliterated the real open exchange of ideas.”

“Now, by the way, it didn’t happen in 2024, but it happened in 2020, and it was a problem,” Vance added.

Maher appeared to clock Vance’s real audience immediately.

“Well, you’re gonna get a big pat on the back when you go back to the White House,” he said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/bill-maher-corners-jd-vance-on-election-denial-rhetoric/?

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The Real Fireworks Marking America’s 250th Birthday Will Come on Election Day

A terrified Trump is pulling out all the stops to rig the upcoming midterms.

As we approach July 4^th, the President of the United States has just one thing on his mind: Ending free and fair elections in the United States.

Donald Trump seeks to commemorate the 250^th Anniversary of the birth of our country by effectively ending the democracy that was the entire reason our founders fought to establish a new nation in the first place.

It is an obsession that, for Trump, influences and impacts virtually every action he is taking and statement he is making.

Earlier this week, Trump had a rare opportunity. A bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress presented him with a bill to take important, concrete steps to address the housing crisis that is among the biggest problems average Americans face. In a time of partisan division in America and of gridlock in Washington, it represented an opportunity for Trump to have a big win. It could have been a big plus for his party in the upcoming midterm elections, too.

But, you see, Trump does not believe he can win the elections fairly and squarely. That is why, rather than taking the win and celebrating it as virtually any other politician in this country would have done, Trump canceled the bill’s signing ceremony at the last minute. He then asserted he would not sign the legislation until after the so-called SAVE Act, a Trump-conceived scheme to help him and his party cheat to win in November, was passed.

The SAVE Act is so odious that many of the president’s Republican supporters refused to back it. Despite his energetic efforts, Trump could not get it passed. He coerced. He cajoled. But none of his old tricks were working. So instead, he decided to throw a tantrum and hold a good bill hostage until he got his way.

It is not clear that even the SAVE Act can save the GOP majorities in the House and Senate. That is why pushing for it is hardly the extent of Trump’s efforts to help rig the fall elections.

Just this week, Trump’s Postmaster General went before Congress and defended a proposed regulation that would have the postal service deny service for mail-in ballots in states that refused to provide them with voter rolls. Why do they need voter rolls? Because they want to be able to challenge potential Democratic voters’ ability to participate in the elections?

The process of seeking such voter rolls has been going on for a while and via multiple channels. Trump continues to lose in the courts in support of such efforts, but that has not stopped him and his team from continuing their pursuit.

And, again, other avenues are also being pursued. Trump has installed as his new acting Director of the Office of National Intelligence (ODNI) Bill Pulte, a man with zero qualifications for the job. Pulte is being tasked with a ‘deep clean’ of the intelligence community. Why? Well, Trump clearly believes the ODNI can help him fiddle with election results. How do we know? Well, among her last visible acts as ODNI, Tulsi Gabbard made a widely publicized visit to Atlanta as part of the administration’s efforts to seize voter records there. What does the ODNI have to do with voter records? In a sane world, nothing at all. But it is believed that Trump wants to use widely and repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories about foreign interference in the 2020 elections to assert further foreign interference today—and thus allow him to question or challenge election results, seize voting machines, and take other actions that could conceivably tip the balance of the vote in favor of enough Republicans to maintain Trump-protecting majorities in the Senate and House.

(We have heard Trump riffing on “rigged election” schemes during recent press gaggles, whether or not it is appropriate—and given that there is zero evidence of rigged elections or even significant instances of election fraud in the U.S., one could argue it is seldom, if ever, appropriate. He also called U.S. elections rigged during his appearance at the G7 Summit in France, and has argued that fellow reality show veteran Spencer Pratt could not have possibly lost his bid to become Mayor of Los Angeles, despite Pratt’s complete lack of qualifications for the job.)

We have seen other tactics the administration appears to intend to employ. In New York State, ICE agents this week confronted a poll worker at a voting location in Syracuse. They apparently “came to warn her to remove a social media account they claimed broke federal law by threatening federal law enforcement officials.”

Given the increased scrutiny social media accounts are getting from the Trump administration, and their hair-trigger criteria for identifying offenses (remember they are trying to prosecute James Comey for a picture of sea shells he briefly posted online), many saw the Syracuse incident as ominous—particularly coming as it does with Trump supporters calling for him to use ICE and troops to intimidate voters and given the blind loyalty to Trump and obliviousness to personal rights and freedoms displayed by members of his Cabinet including DHS Director Markwayne Mullen.

Why is Trump so obsessed?

Because he fears that if he loses control of one or both houses of Congress, his effectiveness as a president will be severely compromised. He will be able to advance little or no legislation. Worse still, Democrats might take their oversight responsibilities seriously and begin to hold Trump and his Cabinet accountable for their corruption, malfeasance, and incompetence.

House Speaker Mike Johnson captured Trump’s concerns and those of the rest of his party well when, during a statement to fellow Republicans on Friday, he said, “If we lose the midterms, these Democrats will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, friends. Half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. We’ll take care of you.”

Even with the immunity the Supreme Court granted him, Trump knows that impeachment is a real possibility and that the investigations that come with it could be ugly. He knows that dirt on corruption scandals could get very messy. And of course, he knows that there is much further digging to do into the “Epstein files” that could come back to haunt him and those close to him.

He not only knows all this, but he appears to be obsessed by it—terrified even, fearing nothing so much as precisely the kind of free and fair elections that the signatories of the Declaration of Independence felt were worth taking on the world’s most powerful empire for.

It may not be the best way to commemorate Independence Day. Indeed, it may mean we have to wait several months to see this year’s real fireworks.

But if those fireworks come as Trump tries to steal the election and the rest of us rise up to fight back and preserve democracy in America, it may truly be a semiquincentennial that is truly worth celebrating.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-fireworks-marking-americas-250th-birthday-will-come-on-election-day/?

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Trump's shadow AI policy

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

The Trump administration's intervention this week in the release of OpenAI's next model is the latest example of its retreat from its hands-off approach to AI — a change that's creating major uncertainty for the industry, Axios' Ashley Gold and Mackenzie Weinger report. Why it matters: The Trump administration entered office promising to get government out of the AI industry's way. It hasn't worked out that way. The administration has what amounts to a shadow AI policy that shapes AI deployment without spelling out rules. Industry watchers argue two factors are kneecapping the U.S. government's desire to export American AI: An erratic export controls strategy, with decisions about access to advanced models made on the fly. Not paying sufficient attention to China's efforts to spread its open-source AI models abroad. Go deeper.

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🗳️ Trump's "communist" midterm message

President Trump needs a potent message to reverse his party's bleak midterm outlook — and he's found it in the rise of democratic socialists in New York and beyond, Axios' Mike Zapler writes.

Why it matters: In a blistering speech to religious conservatives yesterday, Trump warned that "communists" are taking over the Democratic Party and "they want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life."

• Afterward, Faith & Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed, a close ally of the president, told reporters that Trump's words were intentional and had the makings of a Republican message for the midterms.

🛰️ The big picture: Trump spent much of his speech to the coalition's annual "Road to Majority" conference railing against the far-left victories.

• He joked that he'd be the "greatest communist in history" — by giving everyone free rent, free food, free everything. "The problem is, after two or three years, the country is a disaster area," Trump said.
• "The Democrat Party is in big trouble, because this isn't stopping with New York," he went on. "This is the most serious threat to our country in its existence, in my opinion."

🥊 Reality check: Reed, a seasoned political operator going back to the 1990s, was blunt about the GOP's prospects in the election even as he praised Trump's performance.

• The enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, Reed said, is 11 to 14 points. "Anything above 10 points is a three-alarm fire," he said. But "if [voters] understand there's a contrast between common sense and crazy, it will definitely change these numbers."

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🇮🇱 How Bibi lost the GOP

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos via Getty Images

Benjamin Netanyahu lost the Democrats. Now a growing number of Republicans are souring on the Israeli prime minister and his country, too. More Republicans, especially younger ones, turned on Israel as its military leveled Gaza — and then Netanyahu alienated President Trump and his team as they sought to end the Iran war, Axios' Mike Zapler writes. Why it matters: For 15 years, Netanyahu offset collapsing Democratic support by cultivating Republicans. If Republican support is no longer guaranteed, he has a serious problem — and so does Israel. 🏛️ The big picture: That problem starts at the top of the Republican Party. Last September, as President Trump was pressing Netanyahu to accept a Gaza peace deal, he told the Israeli prime minister that "all the Jews are sick of you" and there would be a "divorce" between the two countries if he refused to go along, according to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, "Regime Change." Axios reported that Trump called Netanyahu "fucking crazy" and warned his actions risked isolating Israel further. Trump later told Axios in an interview that his relationship with Netanyahu is good, "but we have to keep him a little bit sane." 🎙️ The strains over the war came as high-profile "America First" anti-interventionists — led by Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene — stoked the backlash against Israel. Carlson, who left the Republican Party last week, said Netanyahu manipulated Trump into joining the war. He called the president a "slave" to the Israeli prime minister. Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire co-founder and staunch Israel defender, has seen his ratings fall as right-wing listeners opposed to U.S. support for Israel turn elsewhere. By the numbers: Four in 10 Republicans have an unfavorable view of Israel, according to an April Pew Research Center poll. 57% of Republicans ages 18-49 felt that way. One in four aged 50+ had a negative view. 💡 Reality check: The GOP still broadly backs Israel. A February Gallup poll showed 70% of Republicans sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians — down 10 points from 2024.  Zachary Basu contributed reporting.