Explore how Trump's policies and actions are reshaping the USA's status and challenging the global order, leading to potential third-world implications.
Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Tuesday over a photo of seashells officials said threatened President Donald Trump, marking the administration’s second attempt to prosecute one of his biggest political opponents, three sources first told CNN.
The charges, approved by a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina where Comey allegedly took the photo, include making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, according to court documents.
Comey responded to the indictment Tuesday in a video posted to his Substack account.
“I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid,” Comey said. “And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let’s go.”
Comey is expected to self-surrender on Wednesday to law enforcement at federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, according to a federal official familiar.
The new case represents a reinvigorated effort to satisfy Trump’s demands to investigate his own foes, including Comey, who he sees as a key leader in the perceived effort to “weaponize” the justice system against him.
It also comes less than a month after the president dismissed Attorney General Pam Bondi. Trump had for weeks complained that Bondi was not aggressive enough in executing his agenda.
This now-deleted Instagram post from James Comey shows seashells spelling out the numbers “86 47.” The number 86 can often refer to getting rid of or tossing something out, while 47 corresponds to Trump’s current term in office as the 47th president. Republicans claimed that it was a threat against President Donald Trump, while Comey said he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.” James Comey/Instagram
Todd Blanche, Bondi’s top deputy and a former Trump personal attorney, is now in charge of steering the department, and has moved quickly to act on matters that the president has publicly pushed for.
“While this case is unique, and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate” Blanche said at a press conference Tuesday.
Tuesday’s indictment is centered on a picture Comey posted on social media last May, of shells on a beach writing out the numbers “86 47.” He wrote in the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Almost immediately following his post, Republicans and administration officials went full bore in their criticism of Comey for what they said amounted to a death threat.
When used as slang, the number 86 can refer to getting rid of or tossing something out. Trump is currently the 47th president.
James Comey responds to new DOJ indictment
0:36
Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Comey would be investigated by the Secret Service over what she said was a call “for the assassination” of Trump. The former FBI director sat for an hours-long interview with agents in Washington, DC — an uncommon step by the agency over a non-specific threat — and investigators he saw the shells on a beach in North Carolina.
Court records indicate that an arrest warrant was issued for Comey, but that doesn’t always indicate an arrest is imminent.
Supreme Court precedent has placed a high bar for convictions in threat cases like these, and former prosecutors and First Amendment scholars alike were highly skeptical the new prosecution would be successful.
“This is not going anywhere. This is clearly not a punishable threat,” Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who specializes in First Amendment law, told CNN.
The price tag for the lead vessel in a new Trump-class series of battleships is expected to exceed $17 billion, according to Navy budget documents released Tuesday.
The service’s spending plan includes $1 billion in advanced procurement funding requested for the program in fiscal 2027 and $16.47 billion in net procurement funding for fiscal 2028, when the service plans to buy the first platform. The gross weapon system cost for the lead ship is estimated at $17.47 billion.
The service plans to procure three of the platforms across the Future Years Defense Program, which runs through fiscal 2031. The estimated total net procurement spend for the program during that timeframe is approximately $43.5 billion.
“The Guided Missile Battleship (BBG(X)) program supports the expansion and modernization of the Nation’s large surface combatant fleet, reinforcing maritime dominance,” officials wrote in the budget documents. “The Battleship is based on the validated requirement for high-end surface capability … that cannot be met by current fleet assets.”
The platform is intended to deliver “high-volume, long-range offensive fires” and serve as a command-and-control platform for manned and unmanned platforms.
“Its advanced systems will enable true long-range strike with hypersonic weapons housed in new, larger vertical launch systems. Vastly increased power generation, managed by a sophisticated integrated power system with high-capacity energy storage, will support mission-critical directed energy weapons like high-output lasers and electromagnetic railguns, reducing reliance on costly single-use munitions. Furthermore, its advanced naval gunfire offers cost-effective options for strike and defense, and its capacity to embark a fleet command staff enhances survivability by putting commanders closer to the fight,” per the budget documents.
Officials envision the ship being 840-888 feet in length and having a displacement of 35,000-41,000 tons.
An award for the lead battleship, the USS Defiant, is slated for April 2028, and construction is anticipated to begin in August 2028. The platform is projected to be delivered to the Navy in August 2036.
The second and third vessels in the Trump-class are projected to be delivered in August 2038 and August 2039, respectively. The gross weapon system unit cost for those platforms is projected to be about $13.5 billion and $12 billion, respectively.
“An innovative strategy is guiding the new Battleship’s design and construction, centered on a state-of-the-art digital workflow,” officials wrote in the budget documents. “This utilizes modern digital engineering, AI-enabled design, and advanced production practices to reduce cost and schedule risk. Adopting best practices from Korean and Japanese shipbuilding, the approach emphasizes high design maturity before construction begins, precision modular construction, and tight integration between design and production teams. This digital-first, modular approach allows for distributed construction across the industrial base, with U.S. shipyards focusing on final assembly and integration. The strategy is designed to stabilize the workforce, increase industrial resilience, and deliver the new capability more predictably and affordably.”
President Donald Trump unveiled his vision for next-generation battleships last year. They’re intended to be part of a so-called “Golden Fleet” of new vessels that the Navy aims to field.
During his keynote address Tuesday at the Sea-Air-Space symposium, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan touted the future battleship as a platform that will provide commanders a lot of offensive and defensive options.
“I’ve heard the critiques [that’s] too vulnerable, too expensive, too big. We’ve heard that before about carriers and about submarines, and yet, when it matters most, those are the platforms combatant commanders call for first,” he said.
During a roundtable with reporters on the sidelines of the conference, Phelan said the cost projections in the budget documents are “the early initial estimate.”
“We’ll see where we really settle down as we get through that and start to rationalize some of the costs. So let’s see where we land on that first ship, and then what the economies of scale get us to as we move through it. But I think it is a necessary element to the force … and I think it provides real flexibility to the force. And I think a little bit with those numbers, they’re still moving around because there’s a question, is it nuclear powered, is it not nuclear powered?”
The Navy is still figuring out the propulsion system, he suggested, saying it’s “unlikely” that the battleship will be nuclear powered, but “it could be.”
“I think we’re trying to understand all the proper tradeoffs,” Phelan said.
Earlier this year, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the battleship won’t be nuclear powered.
DefenseScoop asked Phelan at Tuesday’s roundtable if he had any concerns about the industrial base’s ability to handle the battleship program in terms of their shipyard capacity, workforce and capability to integrate new high-tech weapon systems.
“I think it’s a fair question,” Phelan replied. “We are looking at a couple of different ways to relieve some of the pressure that might put on the industrial base. … I think that we have to still define that a little bit more until we get there.”
With regard to the advanced weaponry that the Navy plans to add to the platform, the SECNAV noted that the service has previously worked on railguns, but “kind of abandoned it,” and it’s been testing directed energy systems “in theater.”
“These are all things we have to get better at and need to do. So I think it’s just making sure that we’ve got the design down in an appropriate fashion, pretty locked down, and then making some tradeoffs as we decide where to build that ship, when and how. And I think, you know, what we’re looking at more is this distributed shipbuilding and modular, and I think that is a way to tackle that issue,” Phelan said.
“We have been talking to two different vendors as we speak right now, and then it’ll be a function of how we get through that design process with them, and then their capacity in their yards, and what we think they can do, because we’re looking to really get moving on this and lay the keel by ‘28 on the first one,” he told reporters.
The report, which had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process, had been delayed. It now won’t be published at all, people familiar with the decision told The Post.
An unpublished report showed last winter’s covid vaccine reduced hospitaliations. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter.
The move, which has not been previously reported, has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits is being downplayed because they conflict with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda has received pointed questioning from lawmakers during budget hearings that began last week and conclude Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported two weeks ago that Jay Bhattacharya, who is temporarily overseeing the CDC, delayed publication of the report over concerns about methodology. The report had been scheduled for publication March 19 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
In recent days, a decision was made that the report would not be published, according to two of the people who spoke to The Post.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, confirmed the delay two weeks ago. At that time, he said it was “routine for CDC leadership to review and flag concerns about MMWR papers, especially relating to their methodology, leading up to planned publication.” Nixon said that Bhattacharya had raised concerns about “the observational method used in the study to calculate vaccine effectiveness” and that the scientific team was working to address them.
Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, is leading the CDC while Erica Schwartz, a top health official during President Donald Trump’s first term, awaits Senate confirmation.
On Tuesday, Nixon described the decision differently: “The MMWR’s editorial assessment identified concerns regarding the methodological approach to estimating vaccine effectiveness and the manuscript was not accepted for publication,” a characterization that differs from accounts by people familiar with the report’s review.
The report is gaining attention at a delicate political moment: The Trump administration has sought to soften its public posture on controversial vaccine actions ahead of the midterm elections. GOP pollsters have warned of the political risks of vaccine skepticism, and many voters oppose Kennedy’s efforts to roll back vaccine policies. Publishing findings showing the vaccine’s effectiveness would be at odds with the administration’s moves to restrict its use, particularly for children, former CDC officials say.
The report had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process, which includes dozens of scientists, according to two of the three people who spoke to The Post. Stopping an MMWR report at that stage is highly unusual, former CDC officials say.
“I cannot recall CDC stopping an MMWR report in the publication phase after scientific clearance and editorial review. On rare occasions we shifted the timing slightly to better align communications plans with competing or reinforcing pieces,” said Michael Iademarco, who was the director of the CDC center with oversight of the MMWR from 2014 to 2022.
Bhattacharya had concerns about a methodology that has long been used by the CDC to evaluate vaccine effectiveness for respiratory viruses, including influenza. A report about flu vaccine effectiveness this past winter — using the same methodology — was published in the MMWR a week earlier. An HHS official had previously said Bhattacharya was not in a position to review the earlier study and would have raised the same concerns.
The methodology was also used in a 2021 study on covid vaccine effectiveness in clinics and hospitals published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Vaccine effectiveness estimates using the same methodology have also been published in other peer-reviewed journals, including JAMA Network Open, the Lancet and Pediatrics.
An HHS official said that Bhattacharya met with scientific staff and that the report’s authors did not want to adjust their methodology.
Kennedy, founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, once referred to covid-19 shots as the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” Last year, he posted a video on X directing the CDC to stop recommending the vaccine for healthy pregnant women and children — an unprecedented move that bypassed the agency’s long-standing process of relying on its federal vaccine advisory panel. The decision drew widespread criticism from medical and public health experts.
Kennedy has said he is not anti-vaccine but is seeking to give Americans transparency and medical choice.
In Trump world, the male ego is often evident — and their appearance scrutinized — under a president’s gaze.
For all the talk about Mar-a-Lago-inspired cosmetic surgery for women in Trump’s world, the attention paid to, and the efforts to safeguard, the male ego also stand out. Many of the men in his administration have adopted a signature look.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Vanity among male politicians is nothing new, with big egos as commonplace as primary campaigns.
For the men of the Trump administration, however, the concentration on their appearance is a constant, with policy pronouncements and social media feeds suffused with displays of physical strength, tough-guy talk and masculine mojo.
At the same time, those traditional tenets of masculinity have been accompanied by flashes of vulnerability about how the men look and dress: Last fall, for instance, the president groused about a photo from Time magazine for a shot that he suggested made him look bald.
“They ‘disappeared’ my hair,” the president said on Truth Social, adding that the photo was “a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out.”
In December, a raft of photos for Vanity Fair — including close-ups of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance — were harshly criticized by Mr. Rubio, who called them “deliberately manipulated.” (The magazine denied any alteration of the photos.)
And allegations of photographic malpractice surfaced anew last month, when The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had barred press photographers from Iran-war briefings because he found their snaps of him “unflattering.” (The Pentagon denied this, saying they had made accommodations for multiple photographers during recent briefings, and calling the premise of the Post story “false.”)
For all the talk about Mar-a-Lago-inspired cosmetic surgery for women in the Trump orbit, the attention paid to, and efforts to safeguard, the male ego also stand out.
“It’s constant attempts at trying to cultivate a persona that in their eyes seems strong and powerful and dominant and stoic,” said Zac Seidler, a clinical psychologist and the global director of research at Movember, a men’s health charity. “But once you scratch the surface of that, all you see is fragility.”
But Mr. Trump has also normalized talking about and critiquing men’s looks, ushering in a new era of fawning assessments and regular commentary about the appearance of his cabinet members and others.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly barred press photographers from Iran-war briefings because he found their snaps of him “unflattering,” which the Pentagon denied.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said that “President Trump has assembled the most talented and accomplished administration in history.”
“And,” she added, in an email, “They just happen to be straight out of central casting!”
The focus on looks could be seen as part of a larger trend with men — particularly younger men — including ideas like “looksmaxxing” (trying to amplify one’s good looks, with surgery and other methods) and “mogging” (dominating another male in appearance), which are steadily percolating through the so-called manosphere.
Whatever the case, Mr. Trump’s interest in outward images has been adopted and echoed by his staff, said Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, who has studied the president’s approach to masculinity.
“Men in the Trump administration are performing a very specific type of masculinity in order to try and appeal to Trump,” Mr. Cassino said.
Of course, women in the workplace have been accustomed to — and concerned about — comments and judgments about their looks.
Now, it seems, men are, too.
“Commenting on someone’s look or looks is one of the most basic forms of power play we have,” said Rose Hackman, the author of “Emotional Labor,” a study of women’s often-underestimated role in the workplace and elsewhere.
Ms. Hackman added that what Mr. Trump has said about men in his inner circle “effectively reduces them to assets,” which can “make them feel like they have to be jumping around him, or else their status in his eyes could change at any time.”
Mr. Trump himself is almost always in a suit and seems to like the formality of previous eras. He cultivates a look reflecting a seeming obsession with the ’80s, including the suits and red power ties his close advisers often wear and swept back hair, Gordon Gekko style (as currently sported by Mr. Hegseth).
On the flip side, that sort of presidential evaluation can also trigger men’s insecurities, part of “this overarching belief that you must look and appear a certain way or you have failed,” said Mr. Seidler.
“When the image is threatened,” he said, “the whole edifice shakes.”
Over the last decade, Mr. Trump has made his aesthetic evaluations a potent if crude political tool, belittling opponents for everything from their weight (including Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey) to their height (mocking Rep. Adam Schiff of California as “little”).
Mr. Trump’s political theory seems to hold that being less attractive, or flawed, is weak and thus marks a loser. It’s a viewpoint perhaps drawn from his fixation on television, where looks and appearance are paramount.
And Mr. Trump, himself a former reality TV star, has for years prized individuals who vocally support him in front of cameras, especially those who combine the look of newscasters with the ease of entertainers.
It’s a list that includes Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host; Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation and a past participant on MTV’s “Real World”; and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who made his name as a television doctor before leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Mr. Trump has always prioritized image control, and often connects himself with men who evince masculine traits, including musclebound influencers. He featured Hulk Hogan at the Republican National Convention in 2024.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times
But Mr. Trump has taken that image control even further. His surrogates frequently tout his vitality, and the president often connects himself with men who evince masculine traits, including musclebound influencers.
He featured Hulk Hogan, the histrionic pro wrestler, at the Republican National Convention in 2024, where he tore off his shirt, and he is hosting — and promoting — a U.F.C. fight at the White House in June, hot off the heels of an “exclusive training seminar” the fighters held with F.B.I. agents in March.
The second-term machismo is also evident in a series of demonstrations of gym-rat toughness, including a recent video — harshly criticized by some Democrats — of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and the veteran rapper Kid Rock that shows them working out alongside each other.
All of which is seemingly applauded by Mr. Trump, despite his own aversion to such alpha-male activities: With the exception of frequent rounds of golf, Mr. Trump himself does not exercise.
At the same time, there are signs of a common insecurity for many men: hair loss. Those concerns led to Mr. Trump’s complaints about the Time cover, as well as him using a hair-growth drug and making the occasional joke about hiding his “bald spot.”
Tom Wooldridge, the founding dean of the school of psychology at Golden Gate University who has studied the emotional impact of baldness, said such fears are sometimes deeply primal.
“Many of us die without much hair.” Mr. Wooldridge said. “So for many men, it’s a symbol of aging and mortality.”
The concentration on men’s appearance is a constant, with policy pronouncements and social media feeds suffused with displays of physical strength, tough-guy talk and masculine mojo.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Experts say that masculinity is often “earned” from other men. They constantly assess one another’s apparent manliness against stereotypical ideals like toughness, aggressiveness and dominance, and, by extension, revoke it when a man fails those subjective tests.
“It’s fragile,” said Maryam Kouchaki, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University who has studied the phenomenon of what she called “precarious manhood” in the workplace. “And it’s easily lost.”
But that process of evaluation has been supercharged in the Trump era, said Michael Kimmel, the author of “Manhood in America,” adding that many male members of the Trump administration are seemingly “cosplaying their Rambo-ness” to impress the president.
Part of flattery, presidential or otherwise, is simply timeworn politics: complimenting people as a means of ingratiation. And Mr. Trump himself continues to lavish praise, whether it be the physical size of the U.S. men’s hockey team or the attractiveness of a wounded veteran at the State of the Union.
That said, the president has also shown an occasional hint of sensitivity about other men’s looks, including in February, when he offered a compliment, of sorts, to Santiago Peña, the 47-year-old president of Paraguay, describing him as a “young, handsome guy.”
“It’s always nice to be young and handsome,” the president said. “Doesn’t mean we have to like you.”
Jesse McKinley is a Times reporter covering politics, pop culture, lifestyle and the confluence of all three.
The Trump administration’s contract governing hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations to build President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom shields donors’ identities, excludes the White House from conflict of interest protections and was disclosed only after a lawsuit and a judge’s order, records obtained by The Washington Post show.
The agreement establishing the legal and financial framework for the planned $400 million undertaking — the most significant change to the White House in decades — was signed in early October, less than two weeks before demolition crews started destroying the East Wing. Public Citizen, a government watchdog organization, sued to obtain the contract between the White House, the National Park Service and the Trust for the National Mall, the nonprofit managing donations for the project, and shared the document with The Post.
“The Trump administration’s failure to disclose this contract was flatly unlawful,” said Wendy Liu, a Public Citizen attorney and lead counsel on the lawsuit, filed after the Park Service and the Interior Department failed to fulfill a public records request for the document. “The American people are entitled to transparency over this multi-million-dollar project.”
The secrecy surrounding the contract mirrors the administration’s broader approach to the project. White House officials have declined to disclose the total amount raised, the identities of all donors or, until recently, basic details about the building’s design. Court documents show Trump knew he was going to tear down the East Wing at least two months before doing so, but he never told the public.
The contract provisions, taken together, allow wealthy donors with business before the federal government to contribute anonymously to a sitting president’s pet project, while exempting the White House from key conflict of interest safeguards and limiting scrutiny by Congress and the public.
“President Trump is working 24/7 to Make America Great Again, including his historic beautification of the White House, at no taxpayer expense,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement defending the administration’s process.
White House officials said not publicly posting the agreement was standard practice for contracts involving the executive residence, citing security concerns. They also said offering anonymity for donors was standard for significant projects and framed the use of private funds as a boon for taxpayers. The administration did not respond to questions about failing to respond to the public records request for the contract or fighting the release of the document in court. Trump has said that the administration has raised about $300 million for the project.
The contract resembles templates used by the Park Service formore routine fundraising partnerships — with several notable differences: Provisions peppered throughout the agreement prevent the signatories from revealing the identities of anonymous donors, and a review process for detecting conflicts of interest with the Park Service and Interior Department makes no mention of doing the same for the president, other White House officials or the 14 other executive departments he oversees.
Dozens of the project’s known donors — which include Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and Google — collectively have billions of dollars in federal contracts before the administration. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.) Critics have argued that allowing anonymous gifts to a sitting president’s signature project creates precisely the kind of conflict the contract itself states it seeks to prevent.
“This document reveals that anonymous donations are the heart of this agreement,” said Jon Golinger, a lawyer and public policy advocate with Public Citizen. “Who are these anonymous donors, and what are they hiding?”
Charles Tiefer, a retired law professor at the University of Baltimore who spent three years on a congressionally authorized commission scrutinizing wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the anonymity provisions potentially setup the Trump administration to block congressional inquiries into the project’s funding.
“If Congress knocks on the door, the White House is going to slam it shut and say, ‘You’re not allowed to know these donors,’” Tiefer said.
The National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions about the agreement. The Trust for the National Mall said the Park Service asked it to accept and manage private donations for the project and that it is “not involved in the fundraising, planning, design, contracting, or execution” of the ballroom, spokeswoman Julie Moore said in an email. Donations are subject to the same vetting process the Trust uses for other Park Service projects, and donor names are disclosed in its annual report, website and tax filings, she added.
“Some donors may wish to remain anonymous and we respect donor wishes, while in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” Moore said.
The Trust has performed a similar role on previous White House projects, including first lady Melania Trump’s Rose Garden restoration and tennis pavilion during her husband’s first term.
The contract excludes the White House from its conflict of interest review, which explicitly obligates the Trust and the Park Service to ensure that fundraising does not give rise to “an appearance of a loss of integrity or impartiality.” But the Executive Residence at the White House, the party responsible for identifying and referring donors to the Trust — and which the Trump administration has said in court filings is helping manage the overall ballroom project — is not required to face that scrutiny.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, called the agreement’s review process “nothing more than a sham,” because it mandates the Trust conduct a narrowly scoped conflict of interest examination while ignoring the vast majority of the federal government. Meanwhile, companies and individuals could be anonymously donating tens of millions of dollars as they stand to gain billion-dollar government contracts, want to avoid a Justice Department criminal investigation, or rid their companies of onerous labor or environmental regulations, she said.
The contract was signed as work on the ballroom project was already underway. Crews had begun clearing trees and foliage from the White House grounds in September. Twelve days after it was signed, demolition crews started tearing down the East Wing. The existence of the contract was not disclosed at the time. Trump, who says the ballroom is needed to host VIPs at larger functions, is pushing to finish it before the end of his second term in 2029.
Congressional Democrats have pressed the Trust for months to share more information about the project. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and colleagues sent a letter in January demanding to know how much money had been raised, whether donors had been promised special access or other perks, and whether the organization had internal controls to prevent preferential treatment. The Trust declined to disclose the amount raised but said it was adhering to all Park Service guidelines.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, demanded answers from dozens of ballroom donors and contractors about their involvement and questioned the “rapidly changing and secretive terms” of Trump’s planned ballroom. He also sent letters to several people who attended a White House dinner in October, which Trump held to honor ballroom donors. Blumenthal asked whether they had contributed and under what terms, noting that the administration had acknowledged it had not publicly identified all donors.
“At every turn, President Trump has sought to conceal the facts about his monstrous multimillion-dollar ballroom,” Blumenthal said in an statement to The Post. “His Administration has kept the contract under wraps, the identities of big dollar donors secret, and the American people in the dark about what big corporations have to gain by funding this boondoggle.”
Blumenthal, Warren and other Democrats have introduced legislation to ban anonymous donations for the ballroom and other projects on the White House grounds.
“There’s only one good explanation for why Trump’s ultra-wealthy ballroom donors want to stay anonymous: They have something to hide,” Warren told The Post.
A federal judge last month also criticized the Trump administration’s approach to soliciting private donors through its contract with the Park Service, calling it a “Rube Goldberg contraption” that allowed the president to avoid congressional oversight while building the ballroom. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled last month that construction must be halted on the ballroom until Congress authorizes the project. The Trump administration has appealed that ruling, and a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has allowed construction to continue while the case proceeds.
The White House has repeatedly declined to release the government’s contracts with the private companies designing, engineering and building the ballroom.
A U.S. aid worker said that the Afghans, who were evacuated to Qatar, would face a choice between moving to the Democratic Republic of Congo and living under the Taliban.
Listen · 6:38 min
A photograph released by the U.S. Army showing Afghans being processed at Camp As Sayliyah, in Qatar, in August 2021.Credit…Sgt. Jimmie Baker/U.S. Army, via Getty Images
After halting a U.S. resettlement program for Afghans who helped the American war effort, President Trump is in talks to send as many as 1,100 of them to the Democratic Republic of Congo, an aid worker briefed on the plan said Tuesday.
The group includes interpreters for the U.S. military, former members of the Afghan Special Operations forces and family members of American service members. More than 400 children are among them.
The Afghans have been living in limbo in Qatar for over a year. They were taken there after being evacuated by the United States for their own safety because they supported American forces during the war against the Taliban that began in 2001.
Shawn VanDiver, the president of the aid group AfghanEvac, said he had been briefed on the Congo plan by State Department officials. He said that the Afghans would be given a choice between returning to live under the Taliban or being sent to Congo, which is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
More than 600,000 refugees, mostly from the Central African Republic and Rwanda, are currently in Congo, according to the United Nations. Human rights activists say that the country is not equipped to take in more in the midst of fighting with neighboring Rwanda that has displaced even more people because of attacks on refugee camps.
“We think this is just them wanting to send these people back to Afghanistan, where they know they will face certain death,” said Mr. VanDiver. “They know that Afghans are not going to accept the D.R.C. Why would you go from the world’s No. 1 refugee crisis to the world’s No. 2 refugee crisis?”
A refugee camp near Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, last year.Credit…Guerchom Ndebo for The New York Times
The discussions highlight the longstanding tension between America’s obligation to Afghans who face grave danger in retaliation for helping U.S. forces during the war, and the Trump administration’s pledge to curtail immigration.
Much is unknown about the plans taking shape, including whether all the Afghans would go to Congo or whether deals were coming together in other countries. Negotiations like this have stalled before.
A Congolese government spokesman did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, accused the Biden administration of moving hastily in bringing Afghan allies to the United States. He said the Trump administration was working to find options for the remaining Afghans.
“The American people have had to pay the price for the irresponsible way hundreds of thousands of Afghans were brought into the United States,” he said. “Our focus now is on restoring accountability by advancing responsible, voluntary resettlement options.”
American diplomats have been asking countries in Africa to take in the Afghans for months. But talks fell apart in many places, according to Mr. VanDiver and diplomats with knowledge of the discussions.
More than 190,000 Afghans who aided the U.S. effort resettled in the U.S. between August 2021 and mid-2025, after passing background checks.
But a group of more than 1,100 Afghans are being housed in a former U.S. military base in Qatar known as Camp As Sayliyah. The American government brought them there in late 2024 and promised them a path to settlement in the United States if they passed further checks.
Qatar was intended as a stopover, but many of the Afghans found themselves in limbo after the Trump administration ended policies that would have enabled them to resettle in the United States.
“They had the expectation that within weeks they’d be relocated to the U.S.,” said Rina Amiri, a former senior diplomat working on Afghan human rights issues. “Who is going to fight alongside the U.S. when the U.S. betrays the people who stood alongside us?”
The Congo negotiations follow behind-the-scenes pressure from the Qatari government to find the remaining Afghan refugees a new home.
A Taliban flag in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, last year.Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Some of the people left at the camp have been fully vetted; others have not, Mr. VanDiver said. But Mr. Trump’s immigration policies have made it impossible for any of them to come to the United States now. In November, the government froze the special visa program after a National Guard member was shot in Washington last year by an Afghan man allowed into the United States after the Taliban took power again. In January, the administration said it would close the transit camp without saying what would happen to the people there.
Many of the Afghans in Doha have told officials that they would not voluntarily agree to being sent to Congo, according to a person familiar with the planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential discussions. Some Afghans questioned whether they would be protected there. Others asked why they would go to Congo when their loved ones are in the United States.
Andrew Sullivan, a military veteran and the executive director of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit group that has been working to resettle Afghans to America, said some had been deemed ineligible for reasons that have nothing to do with national security. For example, one woman turned 21 and is no longer eligible to be included on her father’s visa, he said.
But, he said, the administration has other options available to bring them to the United States, including the ability to issue exemptions to the policy.
“Our belief is that if, if they can pass security vetting, they should be coming to the United States,” Mr. Sullivan said. “If they can’t, and they’re not going to come to the United States, I do believe the U.S. government has an obligation to ensure that they’re going to a third country where they’re going to be secure, they’re going to be supported, and there aren’t ongoing humanitarian rights issues.”
American diplomats have been meeting with Democratic Republic of Congo officials for months. Recently, the Trump administration struck an agreement with the country to accept migrants from other countries who face deportation from the United States. Part of that deal included a $50 million grant to the U.N. refugee agency to provide assistance in the country.
Discussions over the Afghans are separate from the deportation deal, but both are examples of what has become a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s immigration strategy: moving people to faraway places, even when those countries have human rights abuses or authoritarian governments.
Pranav Baskar in New York contributed reporting.
Megha Rajagopalan is an international investigative reporter based in London.
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
WASHINGTON – In a rare 1994 interview, President Donald Trump’s mother described the first time her husband, New York developer Fred Trump, saw the black personal helicopter their son had bought.
“Of course, my husband, first thing he saw was the helicopter said TRUMP on it. He was satisfied,” the late Mary MacLeod Trump said, laughing, in an interview with Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland’s public service broadcaster.
The president is very much his father’s son.
Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump has tended to view all manner of tangible things as branding opportunities – putting his name on hotels, golf courses, wines and steaks. Even a Bible.
In his second term as POTUS, Trump has sought to burnish his legacy by naming governmental entities after himself, too. But what passes for branding in commercial circles is antithetical to democratic values when a sitting president puts his name on federal property and policy initiatives, say experts.More: Donald Trump’s ‘Triumphal Arch’ design revealed
Enabled by his appointees and admirers, the 79-year-old commander-in-chief’s name has been inserted into decades-old establishments such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He’s also slapped his name on key policies including TrumpRX,Trump Gold Card, Trump Coin and Trump Accounts.
Federal buildings, including the Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture and Department of Justice, unfurled large banners with Trump’s face on them over the past few months.
Lawmakers have sought to cater to Trump’s ego with legislation to put him on Mount Rushmore.
The latest canvas? The Treasury Department announced in March that Trump’s signature will appear on future U.S. paper currency in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.
“There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement.
Trump takes Manhattan
His penchant for naming things after himself comes as no surprise to Barbara Res, a former executive vice president at Trump Organization who oversaw construction. She worked on major projects like Trump Tower in the 1980s.
“He got it from his father, Fred Trump,” Res said of the elder Trump, a developer who built thousands of apartments and row houses in Queens and Brooklyn following World War II. His biggest project, Trump Village, built in 1964, was the first project to bear the family name.
“He (the president) was raised to believe that he was different and his family was different. And by different, I mean better than and more important than anyone else,” said Res, who worked as a close adviser to Trump for 18 years, from the late 1970s to early 1990s.
While his father’s business was restricted to the outer boroughs, Queens-raised Donald Trump set his sights on Manhattan. He made waves with his transformation of the crumbling Hotel Commodore into the Grand Hyatt in the 1970s. The first building to feature the family name in gold letters was his second project – Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, which completed construction in 1983.
By 2015, more than 15 buildings in New York City bore the Trump name – though some of the signs have since been taken down by building associations.
Get the Susan Page newsletter in your inbox.
Get the latest story from Susan Page right in your inbox.
Delivery: VariesYour Email
“He put his name on any building he built while I was there,” Res said, adding that a super yacht he bought from a Saudi billionaire was renamed the “Trump Princess.”
When he bought Eastern Air Lines Shuttle from Texas Air Corporation in 1988, he renamed the fleet Trump Shuttle.
What was her take on the naming spree?
“So what is the best possible, highest-quality, most luxurious, most important name? Seriously – Trump,” Res said with a sarcastic laugh.
Reminiscent of authoritarian regimes, experts say
What’s branding in business is problematic in governance.
Trump plastering his name and likeness on federal initiatives and real estate is reminiscent of authoritarian regimes, and central to developing the “personality cult,” experts say.
For instance, portraits of Kim II Sung, the founder and supreme leader of North Korea, and Kim Jong Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong Un, are mandatory in public places like train stations, hospitals, schools and factories.
Images of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to 1953, appeared everywhere during that period, emblazoned across buildings and lining the streets, carried in parades and woven into carpets, according to art historian Anita Pisch, who analyzed the construction of Joseph Stalin’s public persona in her book, “The Personality Cult of Stalin in Soviet Posters, 1929–1953: Archetypes, Inventions and Fabrications.”
“Modern personality cults are possible due to the capability to disseminate images of the leader” far and wide and saturate public spaces with “cult products,” Pisch writes in her book.
Throughout history, when countries begin putting their living leaders on their currency or their flag, or hanging their leaders’ pictures everywhere, that’s almost always associated with autocracy, said Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“The leader is the state is what those messages are trying to convey,” he said. “And in our country, the leader’s not the state, the people are the state.”
‘There is no precedent in American history’
Engel, who has authored or edited 13 books on American foreign policy, said there are two reasons why presidents’ names are traditionally only added to buildings and other things after their death.
“First, because it’s gauche,” he said. “Second, more importantly, this is still a constitutional republic.”
Even presidents who thought very highly of themselves still recognized that they were only temporarily holding the office, Engel said: “Basically, from the moment they got it, they were keeping it warm for the next person.”
“I’ve run out of synonyms for the word unprecedented when it comes to Trump,” said Engel. “There is no precedent in American history, even for most egoistic presidents to put their own names on things.”
Trump has often pointed to name changes as being someone else’s idea. With the Trump-Kennedy center, he said it was the board who decided it. After removing all 18 members of the board, he handpicked members to fill the seats and installed himself as the chairman.
“He has made it very clear that the way to power and influence in his administration is to praise and compliment him,” said Engel. “So of course the people he appoints are going to do that.”
Trump has said the $400 million White House ballroom, which is being financed by private donors and American companies, is expected to be completed by 2028, before he leaves office.
So far, the president has not revealed what the 90,000-square-foot addition he has championed would be named if it clears legal obstacles.
Asked if he had any guesses, Engel said: “I would bet my mortgage that the word Trump is in the name of the ballroom somewhere.”
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY.You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal.
The president has proposed the arch, which would rise on a Washington roundabout across from the Lincoln Memorial, as a way to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
Listen · 2:37 min
A rendering released by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts of plans for a 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington.Credit…U.S. Commission of Fine Arts
The Trump administration on Friday released its latest plan for a 250-foot triumphal arch that would stand off one end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge by the Potomac River, the president’s latest step to leave his permanent mark on Washington.
The drawings were submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal design panel that President Trump has stacked with allies. It will consider the project’s design at its meeting next week.
The president has proposed the arch, which would rise on a Washington roundabout near the border with Virginia, across the river from the Lincoln Memorial, as a way to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary and cement his legacy as president.
The renderings show the arch bearing two eagles and a golden, winged angel on top, somewhat resembling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The words “One Nation Under God” appear above the arch on one side, and “Liberty and Justice for All” on the other, the only text visible in the design. The drawings of the arch were credited to Harrison Design, an architecture firm with an office in Washington.
Mr. Trump displayed models of the proposed arch at a White House fund-raising dinner in October for another of his projects to reshape Washington’s map, the planned $400 million White House ballroom. The president said the angel on top of the models was Lady Liberty.
“Small, medium and large — whichever one, they look good,” Mr. Trump said at the dinner, holding out the models. “I happen to think the larger one looks, by far, the best.”
Mr. Trump has taken a number of actions to remake Washington in his image and remodel the White House, including covering the Oval Office in gold and paving the grass of the Rose Garden. The president is also planning a National Garden of American Heroes with 250 statues.
But the most dramatic step was his sudden demolition last fall of the White House’s East Wing to make way for his planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The unveiling of the arch design on Friday came as Democrats rebuked the president over the acceptance of foreign donations for the ballroom. A federal judge has ordered that project halted unless approved by Congress, and the Trump administration has appealed the ruling.
A group of Vietnam War veterans has sued to stop the arch’s construction as well, citing congressional authority and arguing the arch would obstruct the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
