Fans don't have cash: Headliners pulling tours as Trump's economy squeezes budgets

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during the White House Faith Office Luncheon at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 14, 2025. REUTERS Nathan Howard

Adam Lynch

May 06, 2026 

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump’s economy appears to be touching every aspect of U.S. life — even canceling entertainment venues in states that voted for him in 2024.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a Milwaukee festival will now have one less headline act at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater for 2026 as the reunited Pussycat Dolls become yet another band to cancel its North American tour amid U.S. economic concerns.

“After taking an honest look at the North American run, we’ve made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to cancel all but one of the North America dates,” the band announced on social media.

The Sentinel reports “this is the second major North American tour with a Milwaukee date this summer to be canceled” and one of five Summerfest 2026 acts that have pulled themselves from the lineup, including Dolls' planned openers Lil' Kim and Mya.

Across the nation, artists have been blaming “logistics, timing and wellbeing” for pulling shows, but the UK Times reports empty seats on venue maps show demand is not keeping pace with price as patrons pull entertainment budgets in favor of necessities.

“In recent weeks big-name artists including Meghan Trainor, Zayn Malik, Post Malone and the Pussycat Dolls have cancelled performances or entire tours,” reports the Times. “Only the Pussycat Dolls referenced disappointing ticket sales as a reason for the cancellations, but fans believe they all represent a case of “blue dot fever.”

The phrase “blue dot fever” takes its meaning from the symbols for empty seats on the Ticketmaster website, signifying unsold tickets. “Now, amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty,” the Times reports there are signs that consumer tolerance” for entertainment expenditures is breaking and a correction is taking place.

But few artists are stating the obvious: fans don’t have cash.

“The rapper Post Malone cancelled six tour dates last week, claiming he needed more time to work on new music. For the opening night of his tour at the Bank of America Stadium in North Carolina on June 9, blue dots populate all sections of the venue,” reports the Times.

Wisconsin, which supported Trump’s return to the White House in 2024, is just one more example of a state with less expendable income as Trump’s hugely unpopular war with Iran rages on, hiking fuel and grocery prices.

Vance torn apart for insulting his own wife — and a billion other people

Second Lady Usha Vance listens during the St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Washington, U.S., March 17, 2026. Roberto Schmidt/Pool via REUTERS

Matthew Rozsa

May 07, 2026  

ALTERNET

An anti-woke WSJ columnist is taking issue with President Donald Trump’s vice president, JD Vance's demeaning attacks on his own wife Usha Vance and roughly a billion other Hindus all over the world.

“Vice President JD Vance caused an uproar this past fall when he expressed his wish that his wife, Usha, a practicing Hindu, would one day follow his spiritual path,” Avatans Kumar, president and trustee of the nonprofit INDICA, wrote Thursday. “Many in the billion-strong global Hindu community were outraged at his declared hope that Mrs. Vance would convert to Catholicism.”

Kumar is still stinging months later, however, complaining that while the so-called religious freedom movement advocates for proselytizing religions like Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, it seems to deprioritize faiths that do not focus on converts.

“The root of this general dismissal of nonproselytizing religions is the dominance of Christianity and Islam,” Kumar explained. “The former is known for promoting evangelism, as seen in Jesus’ directive in Mark 16:15: ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’ Islam emphasizes dawah, instructing Muslims to invite people to Islam. Muslims ruled large parts of India from the early 13th to the 19th century, and during this era Muslim preachers and Sufi mystics actively proselytized for Islam. The pattern of seeking converts is manifested in the missionary work of both Christianity and Islam.”

He added, “As these forms of faith came down to the present day, they tended to ignore the strain of religions that are mostly nonproselytizing—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto and tribal indigenous traditions. In these nonproselytizing religions, actively seeking new converts serves no theological purpose.”

From there Kumar asserted that Americans who wish to promote religious freedom should not zero in on the conversion-focused faiths to the neglect of others. Not only did this leave certain individuals feeling excluded, but it reeks of the West’s imperialist past.

“Colonialism is closely linked to religious conversion, as British missionaries sought to convert Hindus,” Kumar wrote. “Many British Christians believed their religion was more advanced and enlightened than those of the people they ruled, motivating their missionary activities.”

Kumar’s advocacy of Hindu representation arguably conflicts with his previous opposition to what he described in India Currents as “wokeism.” In his 2024 editorial, he argued that supposed “woke” culture contributed to President Donald Trump’s reelection that year.

“The Democrats, the U.S. legacy media, and wokeism have become synonymous with each other over the past few years,” Kumar wrote. “When the 2024 US election results came out, they all ended up on the losing side, individually and collectively. The thrashing was so comprehensive that it left the Democrats and their surrogates in US media, as well as the out-of-touch Hollywood celebrities, in a state of shock.”

Like Kumar, the Second Lady has publicly associated with right-leaning views. As The Verge’s Gaby Del Valle reported in April, Vance’s recent podcast “Storytime with the Second Lady” seemed to subtly reaffirm conservative gender roles.

“She’s … the latest conservative spouse to pivot to content creation,” Del Valle wrote. “It’s a new front of the ongoing culture wars: Instead of trying to win back supposedly liberal institutions, the right is hell-bent on creating its own. And if these institutions reinforce conservative gender norms, that’s all the better.”

SATANISTS DONT PROSELTYZE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

MAGA believes 'God has anointed' Trump to 'defeat' the Pope: religious scholar

Nick Hilden

May 07, 2026 

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump has raised no shortage of eyebrows amidst his ongoing feud with the Pope, most recently declaring that the Pontiff “thinks it's just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon” and that “he's endangering a lot of Catholics.” For his part, Pope Leo keeps arguing that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them” while calling on Americans “to work for peace and to reject war always.”

“Trump is flailing around on this,” said Sarah Posner, a scholar of religion who spoke with the New Republic’s Greg Sargent about the president’s latest rhetorical assault against the Vatican. “He’s trying to find a way to contest Pope Leo’s message of peace, so he’s coming back at him with this ridiculous claim… If Trump felt confident that he was winning this war of words with Pope Leo, he would not feel compelled to flail around on a right-wing radio show and claim that Catholics were being endangered by their own pope.”

While politicians are normally careful to avoid alienating religious leaders and their followers, Trump has shown no such restraint. This, according to Posner, is because his MAGA supporters have spent years suggesting his divinity and providing fodder for his narcissism.

“He has been told for well over a decade by his most loyal base that God has anointed him to lead America,” she explained. “The idea that Pope Leo is a moral voice for the world — or for Americans in particular — is anathema to Trump. That’s part of his narcissistic personality: because he’s been anointed by God, in his view, somebody else cannot be speaking on moral or ethical issues to Catholics and to non-Catholics around the world.” And because his supporters quite literally view him as a religious figure, “he felt emboldened to portray himself as Jesus in that post a few weeks ago.”

Posner asserted that Trump has also fallen short of the Pope in practical areas beyond the spiritual.


“He’s out of touch with what’s going on in the temporal realm,” she said. “Pope Leo understands what’s going on in the temporal realm more than Trump does. [Trump] seems to not know what’s going on at all with regard to the war, anything that’s going on domestically, the economy and so forth. He leans on the idea that God has anointed him, that he can magically fix America’s problems and America’s standing in the world. And that has become more important to him as he’s lost more control of the politics of the situation and what’s going on with his own administration.”

Evidence of his political floundering, she said, can be found in his growing disapproval among conservative Catholics. While Catholics made up an important part of his 2024 voting base, he has increasingly alienated them with his recent statements about religion and the war.

“You’ve got to figure that the Pope Leo thing is playing a role here,” noted Posner.


At the same time, the president’s support among evangelical Christians has remained strong at 64 percent (even if that is a 5 percent drop since late January).

“For them,” Posner explained, “Trump is a moral and spiritual savior of the Christian nation. These are ideas that resonate far more with white evangelicals than they do with Catholics. What we’re seeing here is: Where do people stand when you have what you believe to be your spiritual leader? In this case, for evangelicals, it’s Trump. And for Catholics, it’s Pope Leo.”

Despite the religious overtones, Posner argued that this fight largely comes down to MAGA’s long-held animosity toward anything perceived as “woke.”


“They see it as a proxy war against wokeism. If you recall, back last year when Leo first became pope… Laura Loomer tweeted ‘woke Marxist pope.’ For the denizens of Trumpian Twitter, that is how they see Leo: that he represents wokeism. Not that he represents Catholics — that he represents this ideology which to them is anathema to Trump and to a white Christian America and all of that. So they have gone so far around the bend that they don’t even really necessarily see it as a religious spat as much as an ideological one in which their guy has to be the victor.”

“His propagandists and his biggest cheerleaders out there in MAGA world want a battle between Trump and the Pope, and they want Trump to defeat him,” said Sargent. “I think Trump is unable to get that the Pope might be seen as a more honest and more pious figure than him.”

Americans are 'extremely uncomfortable' with how Trump uses religion

Donald Trump joins the White House Faith Office in prayer, March 19 2025. Photo credit: The White House / Flickr (PD)

Nick Hilden

May 06, 2026 

ALTERNET

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s unexpected confrontation with the Pope, a new poll reveals how Americans feel about the Commander-in-Chief’s statements regarding religion — and they don’t like it.

According to polling by the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos, a whopping 87 percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post bearing an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. At the same time, 69 percent say they dislike Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s prayer for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

This appears to be one of the few issues where Americans are firmly in agreement. While there is typically a stark political divide, 79 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of Trump’s 2024 voters disapproved of his Jesus post, with more than 40 percent of both groups disapproving of Hegseth’s prayer.


As Kimberly Chopin, a 57-year-old Catholic who voted for Trump, explained, “There is only one Jesus. I found the posts to be inappropriate and offensive. Humility is at the core of being Jesus.” She also noted that Hegseth’s comments made her “extremely uncomfortable. That kind of language sounds like the language of al-Qaeda.”

Trump has spent a decade portraying himself as a “champion of the deeply religious,” and garnered “broad support from White Christians, some of whom compare him with biblical heroes.” While his backing remains strong among this group, Trump’s recent battles with religious leaders have complicated that support.


According to the Washington Post, “While 9 in 10 white evangelical Protestants — the most pro-Trump religious bloc of Americans — have a negative view of Trump posting the Jesus-like image, the vast majority of that group — about 7 out of 10 — still approved of Trump’s overall performance as president. That is a drop of 10 percentage points from his approval rating among White evangelicals in a poll in February 2025… Trump won the white Catholic vote by a more than 20-point margin in the 2024 presidential election. But his approval rating with that group is down in the new poll, at 49 percent, compared with 63 percent in February 2025. His approval rate stands at 38 percent for all Catholics, a 10-point drop since then.”

The poll also looked at how Americans view the Pope, whose criticism of American military and deportation efforts prompted Trump to lash out repeatedly. This has not only pushed the Pope to become more persistent with his critiques of the Trump administration, but has drawn the Pontiff broad support from Americans. “In the poll, 2 of 3 Americans react positively to Leo asking Americans to contact Congress to work for peace and reject war. Nearly 6 in 10 have a negative reaction to Trump’s false claim about the pope saying ‘it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.’”

Chopin once again expressed how many of her faith are feeling, saying, “Catholics make up the largest Christian denomination in the country, why wouldn’t you at least want to engage in a positive way? Here’s the leader of the Catholic church, a respected one and the first American! I just felt there should be discussion.” In the end, she said that Trump’s criticisms of the Pope, “left a bad taste in my mouth.”

This world leader's belittling proved Trump is way out of his depth

Michaelangelo Signorile,

 The Signorile Report
May 8, 2026 


U.S. President Donald Trump gestures next to first lady Melania Trump as they attend the FIFA Club World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S., July 13, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In the middle of the most unpopular war in over 75 years—one that has created a political disaster for the Trump administration—the White House had to use the precious time of its Secretary of State to send him to the Vatican yesterday to do damage control.

Think about that. The Vatican isn’t a country with a military, nor is it some massive trading partner with the U.S. It’s a tiny nation-state.

But its leader nonetheless has influence on people around the world and on millions of Americans, and is currently very popular. He’s not someone you want to mess with, even if he criticizes your policies—you just politely, very respectfully ignore him as presidents have done for generations—because he’s a global spiritual leader and you’re out of your league.

But Donald Trump created a massive self-inflicted wound by attacking Pope Leo to the point where Marco Rubio begged for an audience with the pope to try to smooth it over while at the same time trying not to anger Trump by caving to Leo’s message of peace. As I’ve written, the rift goes back a long time, and included Trump first using the Pentagon to threaten the Vatican, before he ultimately began attacking Leo outright on Truth Social.

Rubio had a lot of mending to do. And didn’t work. By seeking to meet the pope, the administration was already admitting defeat. Trump’s polling is tanking, including among Christians, and the GOP, already weighed down by all of Trump’s other reckless and unpopular actions, cannot afford even minor slippage among the radical Christian base. But they are beginning to hemorrhage.

We’ve believed for a long time that Trump and the Christian nationalist base—which includes evangelicals and conservative MAGA Catholics—had an impenetrable bond. The evangelical leaders are a band of Christian hypocrites who’d made a deal with the devil in their obsessive quest to stop abortion and strip the rights of LGBTQ people. The religious extremists had no problem with the adulterer-in-chief saying he grabs women “by the pussy,” nor being accused of sexual assault and found liable for rape. They stayed loyal as he assaulted the poor and pushed vicious racism.

No, none of that mattered. But it took an image of Trump as Jesus—which he posted after attacking Pope Leo, the Vicar of Christ—to jolt them suddenly.

Trump’s approval has dropped 15% among evangelical Christians and equally significantly among Catholics. And an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll this week landed like a bomb, as Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump holding himself up as Jesus and Pete Hegseth using Christianity to promote the war in Iran:

Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislike Hegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.

And Leo is very popular, unlike Trump, with a 25-point net favorable margin among Americans overall, which grows to 47 points among Catholics.

So the White House has a big problem, and they thought sending Rubio, who was raised a Catholic until age eight, then baptized a Mormon, only to return to the Catholic church at 12 or 13, but who also attends a Baptist church, to the Vatican. Not exactly a stellar example of a consistent and loyal Catholic, but the Catholic convert JD Vance is now damaged goods, because he’d joined in on Trump’s attacks on the pope while Rubio remained relatively silent. And Rubio had visited Leo twice before, so maybe they thought he had the magic.

But the pope was not about to be smoothed over—or silenced. As Christopher Hale at Letters for Leo writes: “The Vatican’s 120-word readout described what passed between Leo and Rubio as an exchange of views — the formula Rome reaches for when a meeting failed to find common ground.” Leo apparently repeated his stance on the war in Iran, immigration, Gaza, and other issues on which he’s criticized the U.S. government.

Rubio’s gift to the pope also backfired, a crystal football paperweight with the state department’s insignia which Rubio apparently gives everyone on trips—cold and impersonal. (The pope literally give a Rubio an olive branch—encased in wood, with an inscription describing it as “the plant of peace.”)

Again, Rubio’s task was to repair a rift while not bowing in any way and sticking with Trump’s message. That is impossible, and Rubio and the administration likely know that. The best they could get was a good photo-op that gave the appearance of having patched things up.


Fox dutifully covered the meeting and then had the MAGA right-wing Cardinal Dolan—pushed out by Leo as New York’s archbishop and now co-chief chaplain of the New York City Police Department—on to talk about what a great job Rubio did.

But as far as the non-MAGA media, the coverage just brought more attention to Trump’s attacks on the pope, which had continued just hours before Rubio got to Rome, when he told radio host Hugh Hewitt that the pope was “endangering” Catholics by not supporting his war in Iran.

Trump cannot help himself. And just as on every other issue, he’s tearing down a GOP that is deathly afraid of standing up to him, while helping build the Democrats’ wave for the midterms.

Marco Rubio torn apart for bizarre gift he gave Pope Leo

Pope Leo XIV meets U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Vatican, May 7, 2026. Vatican Media/Simone Risoluti/Handout via Reuters

Alex Henderson

May 07, 2026 

ALTERNET

During a time of considerable tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and Pope Leo the 14th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the Vatican on Thursday morning, May 7 and met with the Pope — who has been an outspoken critic of Trump's war against Iran. State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott told the New York Times that Rubio and Pope Leo discussed "the situation in the Middle East and topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere."

According to Democratic insider Christopher Hale — who focused on Catholic outreach for former President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign and now publishes Letters From Leo — Rubio had a gift for Leo: a small crystal football.

Hale, in a May 7 thread for X, formerly Twitter, explained, "Pope Leo XIV gifted Marco Rubio a plant of peace. In return, Marco Rubio gave the pope a crystal football. The pope's response? 'Wow. Okay.'"

Hale, in his biting but humorous thread, posted video of Rubio's meeting with the Pope. The crystal gift was a replica of an American-style football, not a soccer ball.

Hale found Rubio's gift odd, commenting, "Why in God's name did Marco Rubio give the pope a crystal football?.... I'm dedicating myself to ensuring the next Democratic president gives Leo XIV a thoughtful, tasteful, and relevant gift."

Chicago native Robert Francis Prevost, AKA Pope Leo the 14th, is the first American pope in the history of the Catholic church. After Trump ordered military strikes against Iran in late February, Pope Leo voiced strong criticism of the operation.

Pope Leo XIV has emerged as a significant moral voice in global affairs since his election in 2024.

The Chicago-born pontiff, whose given name is Robert Francis Prevost, made history as the first American pope. His papacy has been marked by vocal advocacy for peaceful diplomacy and humanitarian concerns, particularly regarding U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Following Trump's February military strikes against Iran, Pope Leo publicly condemned the escalation, citing Catholic teaching on just war theory and the sanctity of human life.

The Vatican under his leadership has increasingly positioned itself as an independent voice critical of unilateral military action, straining the traditionally close relationship between the American presidency and the Holy See that many conservative Catholics had cultivated.

Trump officials flood red state with deadly 'suicide' neurotoxin


Adam Lynch

April 30, 2026

ALTERNET

Paraquat is a herbicide banned in more than 70 countries, including China, Brazil, and throughout the European Union. President Donald Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency warns that “one sip can kill,” and MS NOW reports that it is often used in suicides because it’s cheap and fatal. The stuff is so virally toxic that even wearing special gear and respirators doesn’t fully protect applicators from exposure.

The chemical hits particularly hard in many agricultural states that tend to vote Republican. This includes Mississippi, where one county saw high rates of Parkinson’s disease deaths, in the top 7 percent of all U.S. counties that reported Parkinson’s deaths between 2018 and 2024.

“Troves of evidence have long linked paraquat to Parkinson’s, the world’s fastest-growing – and incurable – neurodegenerative disease,” reports MS Today, adding that a Sipcam Agro plant that processes the toxic herbicide sits within that county and is the “largest single emitter of paraquat.”


“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we’re all victims of our environment,” said Ashton Pearson Sr., a life-long Mississippi resident who was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013, at 58 years old.

“Since 2018, three facilities across the country have reported releasing paraquat into the air to the EPA: the Sipcam plant in Mississippi, a Syngenta subsidiary in Georgia and a hazardous waste facility in East Chicago, Indiana,” reports MS Today. “The Georgia plant, which is owned by Syngenta subsidiary Adama in Tifton, released 10 pounds into the air in 2020. The Indiana waste site, which has been penalized for improper storage, reported releasing one pound of paraquat into the air in 2023.”

When it was owned by Odom Industries, the Mississippi plant’s paraquat air emissions hovered around 500 pounds per year, said MS NOW, growing to 1,500 pounds in 2022. But they spiked massively in 2023, when Sipcam Agro took over the facility and announced plans to expand – thanks in part to tax credits provided by the Mississippi Development Authority.”

By 2024, under Sipcam Agro, airborne emissions soared to over 47,000 pounds.

But the revolving door between industry and the Trump administration “threatens to undermine” state efforts to restrict the poison, reports MS NOW.

“Kelsey Barnes, current senior adviser to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, is a former manager of federal government relations for Syngenta. Language introduced in the Farm Bill would pre-empt state bills and prevent state and local bodies from regulating chemicals like paraquat. Organizers’ efforts to remove the language earlier this year were unsuccessful.”

“We’re very concerned,” said Andi Fristedt, executive vice president with the Parkinson’s Foundation. Fristedt added that restraints on state-level regulation are extra concerning when the federal government has continued to resist taking action.

“The most important thing is pushing the EPA to ban paraquat,” said Fristedt. “They could end paraquat use tomorrow.”

Trump is losing his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters, the health-conscious predominantly female coalition that, largely due to Trump's lax take on banning dangerous pesticides.

Republican says it's 'pretty clear' Trump is on team Putin

U.S. President Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., August 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Adam Lynch

May 02, 2026 

ALTERNET


President Donald Trump rarely faces dissent from his Republican Party members in the House and Senate — but this is an election year, and Trump’s polls are doing big damage to his GOP buddies.

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) is one such Republican who does not represent a "safe" seat in a bruising 2026 midterm. Bacon holds a highly competitive swing seat in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes the urban area of Omaha. He managed to nab a narrow 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent victory in 2024 largely thanks to suburban support.

That razor-thin line may be one of the reasons Huffington Post writer Igor Bobic is posting Bacon’s Saturday takedown of Trump as an ally to Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin.

“Speaking at the Sedona forum … Bacon says Trump is “totally failing” on confronting Russia right now,” Bobic posted to X. “It’s pretty clear the president and his team favor Putin over [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskyy.”

Bacon may have additional insight into what he feels is Trump’s comparably robust friendship with the Russian strongman and accused assassin. Recently Bacon joined a bipartisan effort to introduce the Countering Russia’s War On Faith Act, complaining that Putin’s “brutal invasion of Ukraine is not only an attack on a country that seeks democracy, free markets, and alignment with the West, but also includes a deliberate campaign to suppress and persecute religious communities.”

“The Countering Russia’s War on Faith Act will ensure we fully document these abuses and hold those responsible accountable through sanctions. I’m pleased to join Rep. Wilson and my colleagues in this bipartisan effort to stand up for religious liberty and the Ukrainian people,” Bacon added.

Trump’s polling, meanwhile, is at his lowest of his two terms in office, and approval of his treatment of the U.S. economy is currently tipping beneath that of former president Jimmy Carter, who found himself the frequent butt of Trump’s jokes regarding popularity.

White House preservation group flattens lies in Trump’s ballroom court filing

A demolition crew takes apart the facade of the East Wing of the White House, where U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed ballroom is being built, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 21, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Sarah K. Burris

May 08, 2026  

ALTERNET

The National Trust for Historic Preservation submitted its response to a court filing from President Donald Trump demanding his ballroom as a necessary security measure after a gunman rushed law enforcement at the White House Correspondents' dinner.

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been demanding that a large, safe and secure Ballroom be built on the grounds of the White House” Trump wrote on the Sunday following the dinner. NBC News characterized the claim as “without evidence.”

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!” Trump added.


In a legal brief, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward made four major errors with falsehoods, the Trust wrote in its response filed late Thursday, according to national security expert Marcy Wheeler.

"The Defendants make multiple factual representations to the Court that the Defendants’ counsel know to be false," the filing explains.


First, the National Trust said the White House claimed they were “shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified and cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service.”

"This statement is false: The National Trust has never been shown non-public plans or specifications of any sort," the National Trust explained. They went further, citing the DOJ's filing, which claimed that doing so would compromise "the interests of national security."

The second falsehood the National Trust listed addresses the DOJ's claim that the National Trust was “asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built." It's outright false, the National Trust said.


Third, the DOJ claimed that “Congress has never dictated or tampered with the zoning, permitting or architectural aspects” of any White House project.

The National Trust called it false, but further pointed out that in a previous filing, the DOJ acknowledged that Congress “inject[ed] itself into White House architectural choices” during the 1949 renovation.

Finally, the DOJ made a bizarre assertion that the National Trust's case is claiming standing based on a woman "walking her dog in the vicinity of the White House."


In fact, the standing is a National Trust board member, "who is the former senior historian at the Historic American Buildings Survey of the National Park Service, the former Vice President of the D.C. Preservation League, the author of six books on American vernacular architecture and a regular visitor to President’s Park."

The filing goes on to say that the motion from Trump's team rushes "to undo an injunction they have never accepted, and which they have tried to misinterpret out of existence."

The Trump team is also acting as if the construction has somehow been stopped. The National Trust refutes that too saying, "to date — construction has continued unabated. Work at the East Wing site has not been paused for even a single minute, because the injunction has not yet gone into effect."

It also attacked the filing as "reckless" for claiming that the lawsuit makes the hyperbolic accusation that “endangers the lives of all Presidents, current and future.” It also alleges such a claim is "unprofessional" for the lawyer to have made.


In their final paragraphs, the National Trust said that the filing might be great for the likes of Truth Social but that in a federal filing, such false accusations aren't permitted.

Trump’s other big project 'something more deranged' than just bad taste

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a model of an arch monument during a ballroom dinner in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Thomas Kika

May 08, 2026  

ALTERNET

The White House ballroom might be the giant, gaudy vanity project that is dominating President Donald Trump's mind the most, but it is far from the only one he is pursuing, and according to a new interview from the New York Times, that other project represents "something more deranged" than simply being in bad taste.

Alongside the $400 million (plus $1 billion) ballroom, the Trump administration is also forging ahead with the construction of a massive "triumphal arch," planned to be around 250 feet tall and 165 feet wide, and situated across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial. Like the ballroom, the arch has been thoroughly rejected by voters in poll after poll, while critics have warned that the giant structure would be hugely out of scale with the rest of the city's landmarks and would obscure the view of some of them.

Owen Hatherley is an author who has written multiple books about the cross-section of politics and architecture. On Friday, the Times published an interview with him conducted by opinion editor John Guida. In speaking about Trump's various vanity construction projects, he did not hold back.

"On some level, it’s a provocation, a deliberate assault on good taste and sensibilities," Hatherley said, about the ballroom in particular, later adding, "What Trump is proposing is a fake 21st-century neoclassical annex to a largely 20th-century building that is bolted onto an extremely heavily altered original that had to be substantially redesigned by Thomas Jefferson in the first place because it wasn’t very good."

While Hatherley, a Brit, admitted to ultimately not understanding the attachment Americans feel towards the White House, on the subject of the arch, he said that it was "something else, something more deranged, and here it’s impossible to extricate it from the current war and the nonsense that the administration throws out about it on a daily basis."

Guida pressed in response to that comment, asking if the "triumphal" arch could be seen as similar to former President George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner and speech about the war on terror in 2003.

"Something like that — the mission has not been and will not be accomplished," Hatherley agreed.

Ex-Trump official reveals buyer’s remorse among Wall Street insiders

U.S. President Donald Trump with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Thomas Kika

May 08, 2026 

ALTERNET

The worlds of business and high finance have been huge backers of President Donald Trump and his political agenda throughout the years, but as one former Trump official claimed to Bloomberg, many of them now "regret" giving him their vote as his second term has put the economy in a "very vulnerable state."

Anthony Scaramucci emerged as one of the most memorable alumni of Trump's first administration, both for his big personality and his minuscule time on the job, being fired as White House press secretary after just 10 days and spawning a half-joking measure for all other Trump firings. Since that brief and tumultuous time, he has emerged as an outspoken critic of Trump, making numerous media appearances to shred his chaotic agenda, while also backing Democrats in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

On Friday, Bloomberg published a new interview with Scaramucci, digging into his thoughts on the state of the country under Trump's second term and the blue wave suspected to be approaching in the midterms. While he agreed with most predictions about the House flipping to the Democrats in a big way, he stopped short of making the same call for the Senate, given the states in play on this year's map.

Scaramucci confirmed that he remains a registered Republican, despite the damage he believes that Trump has done to the party. When asked why he does not spend more time finding a replacement for Trump at the head of the GOP instead of backing Democrats, he said that it comes down to the threat that the president poses, and added that his friends on Wall Street are regretting their support for him.

"Trump is too dangerous. It’s funny, all my Wall Street buddies voted for him and now they’re regretting the fact," Scaramucci said, clarifying that "most of people are," when pressed about whether it was "all" of them, or just some.

Digging further into the situation, Scaramucci highlighted the economic ruin that Trump has brought about in his second term, despite the fact that some on Wall Street are doing well for themselves in spite of things.

"I’m of the belief that prices are higher. We have an oil crisis. He imposed illegal tariffs, which raised the pricing umbrella for all the lower-middle-income people that voted for him," Scaramucci explained. "He’s put us in a very vulnerable state as a country and an economy. If you want to make the case that the banks have record profits in the short term, sure — but he’s also suing some of the banking executives. You are losing the predictive capability of our justice system — what our civil rights are, what our free speech rights are. It’s very, very bad for business."