Saturday, November 08, 2025

While Trump Posts Marble Bathrooms, Americans Go Hungry

Trump plasters his social media with a floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom remodel while families across America wonder how they can keep their children from starving.


US President Donald Trump shared this image of a remodeled Lincoln Bathroom on October 31, 2025.
(Photo by Donald Trump/Truth Social)


Emese Ilyés
Nov 08, 2025
Common Dreams

I know what it means to be starved by those in power. As a little girl, if not for my grandparents’ ancient walnut tree that fed us, and not for my grandma’s beloved chickens who laid eggs and now and then were a very special Sunday soup, if not for my sister—just a few years older than me—standing in line at dawn to fight adults for bread, I would have been significantly malnourished. I would watch my sister come home exhausted from those pre-dawn battles with full-grown adults, clutching a loaf of bread that meant we might be a little less hungry than we were the day before.

I never thought I’d see that kind of chosen starvation—the kind that Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu was notorious for—in America. I was wrong.
Trump is Choosing to Starve Americans





With Food Aid Suspended for Millions of Families, Trump Brags of ‘Statuary Marble’ Bathroom Makeover



Failures of Trumponomics Glaring as Prices, Consumer Anxiety Climb Higher

On November 3, day 33 of a government shutdown, President Donald Trump’s administration said it would provide only partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamp benefits for November. This has a devastating impact on millions of Americans. And, this is after two federal judges ordered the administration to tap into emergency funds to cover food assistance. What’s worse is this partial aid Trump is willing to concede to give might not reach these families for months.

And what was Trump doing as families wondered how they’d feed their children? Posting 24 photos on social media of his newly renovated Lincoln Bedroom bathroom—covered floor to ceiling in black and white marble with (surprise, surprise) gold fixtures—as he headed to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend. He has already golfed multiple times during this shutdown and traveled internationally, something other presidents would have refused in order to focus on ending the shutdown that is devastating the country. Millions are unsure about what they’ll eat tonight, and Trump posts about the luxury renovations and packs his golf clubs while the government remains shut down.

Trump wants us to watch him build monuments to himself. Fine. We’re watching. And we’re remembering.

Ceauşescu was similarly fond of gold and glitz while the people starved. Like this Romanian dictator, Trump is demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House to build an over $300 million ballroom, removing commemorative magnolia trees planted in the 1940s for Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to White House aides, Trump spends hours obsessing over marble choices and column styles, even fidgeting with 3D-printed models of the ballroom during tense moments. Watch me, he seems to say. Watch me build monuments to myself while you starve.

Ceauşescu built his lavish palaces that included a golden bathroom with gold plated fixtures while my sister, a child, stood in line to fight for a half a loaf of bread to feed her family. Trump plasters his social media with a floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom remodel while families across America wonder how they can keep their children from starving.
The Policy Behind the Cruelty

Yes, by now we know full well, the cruelty is the point, it’s policy. The “big beautiful bill” Republicans passed earlier this year delivers massive tax breaks to the ultra wealthy: Starting in 2029, those making $30,000 or less would see a tax increase, while the top 0.1% would receive an average $309,000 tax cut annually, more than three times what a typical American household earns in an entire year. Sixty percent of the tax cuts go to the top 20% of earners, while the bill is coupled with cuts to Medicaid and SNAP that leave low-income Americans worse off on net.

The bill kicks more than 15 million people off health insurance, makes the largest cuts to nutrition assistance in history, and makes higher education less affordable. Congressional Budget Office analysis shows this bill adds over $4 trillion to the national debt while worsening inequality.
Masked Agents, Militarized Enforcement

Meanwhile, billions of dollars are being poured into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, with masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles conducting workplace sweeps and detaining our neighbors outside courthouses, with more than 75% of those booked into ICE custody in fiscal year 2025 having no criminal conviction other than immigration or traffic-related offenses. Trump is choosing to continue to fund, and even increase the funding, for the modern-day Gestapo, ensuring masked ICE agents can continue to brutalize our communities. But we do not have to look at other places to understand what is happening before our eyes. In the 1850s in the United States, the federal government enforced a policy to hunt down and “return” what the government dubbed to be “fugitive slaves,“ people who were formerly and brutally enslaved and who had escaped captivity to flee north. No, we do not have to look at Nazi Germany to understand what ICE is doing, we have to look at our own history.

All of us Americans, who love our neighbors, who care for our families, who love our cities and our country, should see Trump for who he is. He is making a choice. This is a choice about who gets to have resources and who gets to suffer. This is about billionaires running the government and watching the people who actually make this country run—the workers, the families, the communities—go hungry while they build their ballrooms.

When the wealthy choose to watch their neighbors starve, when they fund masked agents to terrorize communities while slashing food assistance, this isn’t leadership. This is corruption masquerading as governance. Ceauşescu did it. Now Trump is doing it. Sending social media messages from his golden toilet while we the people go hungry.
The Walnut Tree Didn’t Ask Permission

They want us to be too hungry, too tired, too scared to fight back. They want us watching marble-bathroom reveals while we worry about our own children’s empty stomachs.

We won’t give them that satisfaction.

Every community that’s ever survived oppression has known this truth: We have to take care of our beloved communities. You share what you have. You build networks of care that the powerful can’t dismantle because they’re not built on their permission.

Start a community fridge in your neighborhood, like many of us did during the pandemic. Organize a weekly soup kitchen. Form a food co-op. Create a network of families who share meals and resources. This is how we survive, this is how we resist.

And then, fed and strong, we organize politically. We vote out every representative who voted to starve their constituents to feed the rich. We primary the ones who won’t fight. We run our own people, people who remember what it’s like to be hungry, to watch your sister fight for bread, to rely on a grandparent’s walnut tree.

Trump wants us to watch him build monuments to himself. Fine. We’re watching. And we’re remembering. Every marble tile laid while children went hungry. Every gold fixture installed while families lost food assistance. Every historic symbol of American’s greatness lying in rubble while more Americans lost access to healthcare.

But we’re not just watching. We need to be building too. Building the mutual aid networks, the political power, the community resilience that will outlast any administration’s cruelty.

The walnut tree that saved my life didn’t ask permission to grow. Neither will we.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Emese Ilyés
Emese Ilyés is a critical social psychologist and participatory action researcher whose work examines community resistance and collective survival in the face of authoritarianism. Her research focuses on grassroots movements and mutual aid networks.
Full Bio >

Trump’s White House Ballroom Is Being Bankrolled by Genocide and ICE Profiteers

The ballroom donor list also includes Wall Street and cryptocurrency firms that benefit from the president’s agenda.
November 6, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump displays a rendering of his proposed $250 million White House ballroom as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on October 22, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Alex Wong / Getty Images

Money has always distorted U.S. politics, but the current Trump regime has entered new territory with an unabashed pay-to-play setup that’s stuffing the president’s political coffers while enriching him and his family.

Donald Trump’s coldly transactional dealings have been on full display as he’s tapped billionaire allies and major corporations to shower his administration with donations to pay for his latest vanity project: a 90,000-square-foot, $300 million ballroom set to be erected over the rubble of the White House’s now-demolished East Wing.

Trump has wined and dined dozens of corporate executives and mega-billionaires across industries, from cryptocurrency to fossil fuels and telecoms to tech, as he’s solicited donations for the ballroom. Many corporate donors have been disclosed; others have sought to remain hidden. For all, the game is clear. Many donors have direct business interests that Trump’s decisions will impact. Together, the ballroom donors benefit from at least $279 billion in federal contracts.

Together, the ballroom donors benefit from at least $279 billion in federal contracts.

What’s less apparent is that key donors are paying for Trump’s ballroom with profits culled from enabling the detention and deportation machinery of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Israel’s apparatus of occupation and genocide against Palestinians.

Other donors are among the most powerful Wall Street firms and their billionaire executives that are directly benefiting from Trump’s imperial posturing and his deregulatory agenda that’s opening up the retirement funds of tens of millions of workers to private equity profiteers.


UN Expert Exposes Companies Aiding Israel’s Genocide, Occupation in Palestine
Amazon, BlackRock, and Keller Williams LLC are some of the companies named in the report. 
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout July 1, 2025


Wall Street

Two Wall Street powerhouses have been identified as ballroom donors, and both are cashing in from their ongoing relationship with the Trump administration.

One is BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and a universal top shareholder of corporate capitalism. BlackRock’s assets under management recently hit a record $13.5 trillion, more than the combined GDP of Germany, Japan, and India.

In recent years, BlackRock has intensified its private capital spending spree, looking to gobble up data centers, utilities, and other critical infrastructure across the world.

In 2024, BlackRock acquired Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a massive private equity infrastructure firm led by Adebayo Ogunlesi, who sits on the board of OpenAI and, until recently, led the board of Goldman Sachs.

BlackRock and GIP made headlines in March 2025 when they struck a deal to acquire a huge global portfolio of shipping ports that included two Panama Canal ports. Referring to the acquisition, Trump boasted to Congress that his administration “will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it.”

The deal was a mutual victory for both Trump, who’s focused on reasserting U.S. imperial power across the Americas, and BlackRock, which snagged a chain of critical global infrastructure while entering Trump’s good graces.

Cozying up to Trump and MAGA conservatives appears to be a priority for BlackRock and its powerful billionaire co-founder and CEO, Larry Fink.

For a time, BlackRock became a poster child for the conservative backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and against environmental, social, and governance in corporate America. In 2024, for example, Texas pulled billions out of BlackRock funds.

But since then, BlackRock and Fink have retreated from past postures of corporate responsibility, dropping diversity goals and pulling back from climate commitments. At a March fossil industry conference, Fink sported a “Make Energy Great Again” bracelet.

On November 3, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) sent Fink a letter demanding more information surrounding BlackRock’s donation to Trump’s ballroom, which the White House did not originally disclose.

Another big Wall Street donor to the ballroom is Stephen Schwarzman, one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires and the co-founder and head of Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm. Schwarzman is a longtime Trump ally and donor who chaired Trump’s CEO Council during his first term.

Stephen Schwarzman, one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires, once compared Barack Obama’s support for raising the carried interest tax rate to the Nazis invading Poland.

Schwarzman and Blackstone are major beneficiaries of Trump’s agenda of corporate tax cuts and financial deregulation, especially in two ways.

First, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” preserved the carried interest tax loophole, which allows private equity barons to avoid billions in tax payments. In fact, Schwarzman, who owns luxurious mansions and estates across the world, once compared Barack Obama’s support for raising the carried interest tax rate to the Nazis invading Poland.

Even more, Trump delivered a major boon to Blackstone and private equity firms in August by giving them access to trillions of dollars’ worth of 401(K) funds, a move that could supercharge risk and weaken oversight of savings for retirees.

Investors in private equity funds are mostly wealthy individuals and large institutions like universities and foundations that have resources to gauge investment prospects and can weather greater risks, unlike many ordinary retirees. Whereas government regulations previously put safeguards between private equity firms and millions of 401(K)s, Trump’s new policy dissolves that boundary.

Beyond Wall Street, cryptocurrency firms, which also populate the White House ballroom donor list, benefit from this regulation.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) recently sounded the alarm over Trump’s new policies that push “risky private market funds and cryptocurrencies into Americans’ retirement plans,” according to a press release.


ICE Profiteers




Major corporate interests that rake in profits through enabling ICE’s deportation machine are also bankrolling Trump’s ballroom.

One major ballroom donor is Palantir Technologies, the data management company overseen by billionaires Peter Thiel and Alex Karp that sits at the core of ICE’s surveillance apparatus.

Major corporate interests that rake in profits through enabling ICE’s deportation machine are bankrolling Trump’s ballroom.

Beginning with the so-called “war on terror,” Palantir has benefited from lucrative government contracts across both Democratic and Republican administrations. ICE uses Palantir’s software to integrate and store data on immigrants, collected through a vast surveillance system, that’s wielded to monitor, seize, and deport people.

Palantir has been a top corporate beneficiary of Trump’s rule, snagging more $322 million in government contracts during the first half of 2025 alone. This included a $30 million ICE contract to develop its “ImmigrationOS” surveillance platform that will use artificial intelligence to hypersurveil immigrants, select targets for seizures and raids, and track “self-deportations.”

Organizers across the U.S. have protested Palantir over its contracts with ICE as well as the Israeli military.

Amazon also donated to Trump’s ballroom and attended his fundraiser dinner, while Amazon founder and mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos has placated Trump through gestures like shifting The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, to the right, and paying $40 million for a documentary about Melania Trump featured on Amazon Prime Video.

As the immigrant rights group Mijente reported back in 2018, Amazon provides critical data storage services for ICE through its Amazon Web Services cloud business. The MIT Technology Review went so far to call Amazon the “invisible backbone” of ICE’s attacks on immigrants.

Amazon, as well as ballroom donors like Microsoft and Alphabet (the parent company of Google), continue to benefit from contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, though these are typically transacted through third parties that use their cloud services. In July, Amazon bragged that Customs and Border Protection is “using cloud computing, generative AI and machine learning to secure US borders.”

Google, along with Apple, another ballroom donor, have also removed ICE-tracking apps from their online stores.

Taken together, these Big Tech ballroom donors help undergird what the Mijente report called the “cloud industrial complex,” the checkered alliance between Silicon Valley and the state, wedded by a massive ensemble of government contracts, that props up ICE’s digital surveillance and data storage operation that guides its daily raids.

Other ballroom donors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and Comcast also have ICE contracts.

Genocide’s Corporate Backers


In July, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese published a scathing report, titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” that named key players composing the “corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.”

The report shows that many of the same corporations enabling and profiting from occupation and genocide in Palestine are also bankrolling Trump’s White House ballroom.

These include Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon that provide cloud storage and computing for Israel’s occupation and surveillance of Palestinians through the $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract.

“Tech billionaires leading Google and Amazon are yet again currying favor with the Trump administration to ensure that their quest for profit and endless expansion of their monopoly power remains unchallenged by the federal government,” a spokesperson from No Tech for Apartheid, a campaign of Google and Amazon workers organizing against the Project Nimbus contract, said in a statement to Truthout.

Microsoft, which unsuccessfully bid for the Project Nimbus contract, has also provided technology for the massive surveillance operation that supports the Israeli military’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Albanese’s report also names other tech donors to Trump’s ballroom, including Palantir, with its long “tech collaboration” with the Israeli government and likely supplying of artificial intelligence systems and automatic predictive policing technology, and Hewlett Packard, which Albanese says has “long enabled the apartheid systems of Israel, supplying technology to the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the prison service and police.”

Additionally, Albanese’s report also named companies like Lockheed Martin, which supplies Israel’s military with weapons and aircraft, and Caterpillar, which sells Israel equipment to demolish Palestinian homes — both of which are donors to Trump’s ballroom.

The report also names BlackRock as a major purchaser of Israeli treasury bonds as well as a top shareholder in corporations like Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar. The report concludes that BlackRock ranks “among the largest investors in arms companies pivotal to the genocidal arsenal of Israel.”

It should also be noted that the Adelson Family Foundation — the philanthropic arm of mega-billionaire Miriam Adelson, an ardent and hawkish Zionist with influence over U.S. policy toward Israel — was disclosed as a donor to Trump’s ballroom.

News reports suggest that Adelson supports Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, and she has referred to protesters of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza as “our enemies.” Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson also influenced Trump’s 2017 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.















This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
, and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.



Derek Seidman
Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher and historian living in Buffalo, New York. He is a regular contributor for Truthout and a contributing writer for LittleSis.


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