The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The DC circuit just told the Trump administration that, no, it cannot duct-tape TRUMP back onto the side of the Kennedy Center while it appeals a lower court ruling. The White House was trying to undo Judge Christopher Cooper’s order that not only stripped Trump’s name off the facade and signage, but also blocked his brilliant plan to shutter the country’s flagship performing arts center for two years of “renovations” starting on 4 July. Because nothing says patriotism like boarding up the Kennedy Center on Independence Day.

Team Trump claimed that removing his name would devastate fundraising and trigger some kind of donor apocalypse, via a freshly minted “Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation” that apparently exists mostly as a legal prop. The appeals court responded with the judicial equivalent of an eye-roll, noting the administration hadn’t provided any actual evidence that donors were weeping into their checkbooks over the missing gold letters. The panel — two Obama judges and one Trump appointee from his first term — also barred the administration from pretending the new foundation will have to send money back if the building isn’t re-Trumpified.

So for now, the Kennedy Center remains merely the Kennedy Center, not a branded pop-up in the Trump property portfolio, and the administration has to keep its renovation-and-rebranding fantasy on pause. The appeal can still go forward, of course, because this White House never met a public institution it didn’t want to rename, defund, or quietly turn into a family business opportunity.

Donald Trump has discovered a new arena to corrupt: international soccer. The president personally called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to get US star Folarin Balogun’s red card overturned, because why wouldn’t the leader of a nuclear power be spending his time lobbying a Swiss sports bureaucracy about a striker’s suspension. The call worked, the red was controversially reversed, global football lost its mind, and Balogun was cleared to play against Belgium.

Then the US promptly got smoked 4–1 and crashed out of their best World Cup run in decades. Incredible work from the self-proclaimed King of Winning, who has now weaponized his loser aura across every sport he touches: the Knicks’ hot streak dies the night he shows up (and naps) at the Finals, the Commanders get obliterated in the first regular-season NFL game a president has bothered to attend in half a century, the Daytona 500 turns into a rain-delay hostage situation whenever he’s grand marshal, Europe steals the Ryder Cup on US soil with Trump front and center, and college football and MLB both have receipts from the Curse of Don.

Trump keeps telling the country, "We’re winning so much we don’t know what to do about it." The data suggest what to do is simple: keep him at least 500 miles away from any competitive event. Or, if you’re playing against a Trump-endorsed team, relax. Statistically speaking, you’ve already won.

The Atlantic decided to celebrate America's 250th birthday by republishing JD Vance's 10-year-old essay where he correctly diagnosed Donald Trump as "cultural heroin" and "the needle in America's collective vein"—before he decided to open a franchise and start dealing the product himself. Back then, Vance warned that Trump offered "an easy escape from the pain" with fake solutions and no details, and predicted supporters would one day realize he couldn't fix what ails them. Fast-forward a decade and he's standing next to Trump at Arlington, saluting like a man hoping no one remembers he used to call the boss "America's Hitler."

The essay is going viral now, just as Trump's approval ratings crater under the weight of his mass deportation campaign, his failure to lower prices, and that pesky little war in Iran he helped launch after promising no more foreign adventures. While Trump rants about a "golden age" and a "communist menace" because democratic socialists keep winning elections, his vice-president is busy pretending his entire public record before 2022 was performance art. The guy who once said Trump was "leading the white working class to a very dark place" now wants to inherit the keys to the bunker.

Vance's journey from "never Trump guy" to Trump-backed Senate candidate to vice-president and aspiring 2028 heir apparent is less a political evolution and more a live demonstration of what happens when ambition hits the off switch on moral limits. As David Frum politely put it, Vance told everyone where his line was, then "walked across it." He didn't just cross the Rubicon; he set up a merch table on the far bank and started selling MAGA-branded life jackets to the people he once warned were drowning.

The Trump administration has announced that babies born in the U.S. from July 2 through December 31 will receive “limited-edition” Social Security cards branded with the Freedom 250 logo, because nothing says “strong social insurance program” like turning it into a collectible trading card. Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano dutifully declared that this somehow proves Trump is “strengthening Social Security,” which is an interesting way to describe putting a marketing logo on the thing you keep in a drawer and never look at again.

This patriotic logo is courtesy of Freedom 250, the Trump-created outfit that just happens to exist alongside America250, the actual, congressionally created bipartisan commission that was supposed to handle the country’s 250th birthday. Freedom 250 insists it’s nonpartisan, while critics — and, awkwardly, House Democrats — note that donors were allegedly misled and the whole operation appears to be one long campaign-adjacent branding exercise wrapped in flags and fireworks.

It doesn’t stop at Social Security. Earlier this year, the State Department announced that Americans could order passports featuring an image of President Donald Trump on the inside cover, because every time you enter another country you should be reminded who turned U.S. documents into a personality-cult scrapbook. Between the Trump-branded passports and the Freedom 250 Social Security cards, the federal government is now a cross between the DMV and a merch table at a rally — except this time, the audience is literally newborns who can’t consent but can definitely be drafted into the aesthetic of the regime.

Joe Biden showed up at a Democratic fundraiser and did what most building inspectors in DC have been too polite to do: he called Donald Trump a "loser" and then cited the ballroom plans as supporting documentation. According to Biden, the sitting president is busy obsessing over a new White House ballroom and his personal reimagining of the Reflecting Pool, because why preserve a historic national monument when you can turn it into the world’s saddest resort amenity?

While normal presidents worry about things like national security and, say, not dismantling democracy in broad daylight, Trump is apparently locked into a Home Shopping Network mindset for federal property. Renovating the Reflecting Pool becomes just another "vanity project"—a phrase that, at this point, might as well be the official name of his administration. Biden’s attack wasn’t just name-calling; it was a reminder that the guy currently holding the nuclear codes is treating Washington like a tacky hotel he’s planning to flip.

So yes, Biden called him a loser. Trump, meanwhile, is reportedly hard at work proving the point by trying to turn the symbolic heart of American democracy into the backdrop for his next campaign gala. Government by HGTV fever dream continues.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge — a brand new, fully built, not-at-all-imaginary span between Detroit and Windsor — is just sitting there like a very expensive lawn ornament because Donald Trump decided on social media that it can’t open unless Canada gives the U.S. a piece of the action. Years of planning, billions in trade, the busiest land crossing in North America? All held up by a guy rage-posting about ownership stakes.

The bridge is jointly owned by Canada and Michigan, with Canada fronting construction costs and planning to recoup through tolls, which sounds suspiciously like a normal infrastructure agreement. That, of course, cannot stand. Enter Trump, demanding the U.S. get formal ownership or the bridge stays shut. The grand opening was scheduled, officials were literally on their way, and then — poof — canceled at the last minute because the president decided the border is now a bargaining chip.

Canadian politicians are politely pointing out that this sudden interest in bridge geopolitics might have something to do with the Moroun family, owners of the competing Ambassador Bridge, who’ve poured millions into Republican coffers and a Trump-aligned super PAC. So the busiest trade crossing on the continent is being kneecapped so a politically connected private bridge baron doesn’t face competition. Regulatory capture has evolved into physical capture of the actual bridge.

Truckers, manufacturers, and communities across the Midwest and Ontario are left watching a finished international bridge they aren’t allowed to use because the president is treating supply chains like a reality show prop. America First, sure — as long as “America” is defined as one billionaire family and whatever Trump posts before lunch.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool got the full MAGA home-renovation treatment: drained, repainted deep blue, lined with fancy polyurea, all at Trump's request so the 250th anniversary of the US could have a more on-brand backdrop for his reflection. Then came the algae bloom, peeling paint, and now, according to the National Park Service, someone apparently took a razor to the liner like it was the Constitution in a White House legal meeting.

Trump, never one to waste a crisis he possibly helped create, loudly blamed mysterious "vandals" for a "300-foot-long gash" and even suggested someone dumped fertilizer in the water, promising proof would emerge in court. The actual court filing? It confirms cuts to the foam sealant and liner and notes that about 70 fence post tops were tossed into the pool, but somehow fails to identify a culprit or even when it happened. What it does do is show up in a lawsuit from a nonprofit trying to stop Trump's little nationalist stage-design project.

So we now have a historic national monument functioning as a legal exhibit, a presidential ego pool, and a recurring construction project—all because a man who treats the federal government like a failing Atlantic City casino thought the Reflecting Pool needed to look more like a Fox News backdrop. The NPS will drain it again after July 4th to assess and repair the damage, presumably right after they finish hosing off the latest layer of algae, bird crap, and presidential spin.