‘A political poison pill': Republican Senators plow ahead with Trump's deeply unpopular bill
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Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Donald Trump is reshaping Washington, D.C., in his image
U.S. President Donald Trump is presiding over one of the most dramatic transformations of Washington, D.C., in a generation, as he makes monumental changes to the historic White House complex, federalizes local police as part of a "beautification" campaign, takes over the district's performing arts centre and dictates what should be on display in the national museums. Trump is taking a more hands-on approach to district issues than any of his recent predecessors as he tries to remake the capital in his image, all while rooting out what he calls "wokesters," homeless people, hardened criminals, illegal migrants and others. In Trump's D.C., there will be no more "savagery, filth and scum," he said. As he tightens his grip on the federal district he says has been badly managed for decades, Trump has flatly ruled out granting D.C. statehood. It's something residents have long demanded, and it would stymie his efforts to exert more control over what happens in this city of 700,000 people. "What we want to do is make Washington, D.C., the greatest, most beautiful, safest capital anywhere in the world, and that's going to happen," Trump told reporters at an event on Wednesday. "Already they're saying, 'He's a dictator,'" he said of his Democrat critics. But Trump insisted D.C. "is going to hell. We've got to stop it." This week, federal agents have been out on patrol in parts of the district, arresting dozens of suspected criminals in the first few days of the Trump operation. The city's Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, initially called the deployment "unsettling." But she has been largely deferential to Trump, saying she's powerless to stop his efforts and that more officers on the streets "may be a positive." Barbara Perry, co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia and a board member of the White House Historical Association, told CBC News that Trump's D.C. intervention is truly unprecedented. "No other president has taken such an interest in all the different facets of Washington, D.C.," Perry said. "Most presidents usually have a lot more on their plate than worrying about redesigning the White House. And crime and law enforcement — those have long been thought of as local issues," she said, especially after the district was given home rule in the 1970s. New ballroom At the centre of Trump's ambitious plan to spruce up the capital is a massive new ballroom on the White House grounds. While there are strict guidelines for what can be built on that revered site on Pennsylvania Avenue — smaller changes in the past have taken months or even years to study and approve — Trump officials have already said construction on the hulking space will get underway in September. Trump is pitching a $200-million US, 90,000-square-foot structure expected to subsume the existing East Wing and some of the property's green space — a legacy piece for the former real estate mogul. The proposed building is nearly double the size of the existing structure. PHOTOS | Trump's proposed ballroom at the White House: "Part of his real estate developer persona is plastering the name of Trump over anything that he ever owned or wanted to own," Perry said. "He sees himself as a businessman and a developer and the desire to build something like this giant ballroom — it's right in his strike zone." The plan has drawn fierce criticism from architectural purists but praise from others who say the current building is too small for large state functions. His defenders say Trump is right that unsightly tents have to be rolled out onto the lawn when more than 250 people are invited to a formal event. Stephen Ayers, the interim CEO of the American Institute for Architects, which was entrusted by president Theodore Roosevelt more than a century ago to be the "perpetual guardian" of the White House's architectural integrity, urges caution. "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the people's house, a national treasure and an enduring symbol of our democracy. Any modifications to it — especially modifications of this magnitude — should reflect the importance, scale and symbolic weight of the White House itself," Ayers said. Trump's proposed structure "raises concerns regarding scale and balance," he said, and any additions should be adjusted so that they align with "the White House's historic character." Others have been more blunt, calling the planned addition "hideous," "ugly," "dumb" and gaudy given the liberal use of gold. "I can see where this ballroom would be helpful and needed. We struggled with guests lists when I was there," said Anita McBride, the former chief of staff to ex-first lady Laura Bush, who helped plan social events. "With tented events, you really can't say you're having dinner at the White House, because you're not. You're on the lawn. It's not as attractive, in my mind." There hasn't been much structural change to the place since the post-Second World War period — and even then it was a comparatively minor addition, as then-president Harry Truman added a balcony to the second floor of the executive residence. Truman also gutted the interior after decades of neglect. Roosevelt knocked down pre-Civil War greenhouses to build the West Wing in 1902. His distant cousin, former president Franklin Roosevelt, added the Oval Office as it's known today in 1934. McBride, who also worked in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, said it's the president's prerogative to do what he wants with the place — with some limits, of course. "The building has evolved over 233 years. It's been through changes before and with many of them there were strong feelings on both sides, but we ultimately adapted," she said. "It will take some getting used to." The ballroom project follows Trump's recent decision to pave over part of Jacqueline Kennedy's Rose Garden to install new tiles for an outdoor patio and put two towering flag poles on either side of the White House to boldly fly the Stars and Stripes. In a nod to his Trump Tower apartment, the president has placed gold detailing all over the Oval Office and other interior spaces in a building that was much more modest when it first opened in 1800. "The White House was built by our founding fathers, particularly George Washington, to not be like the palaces of Europe. But I'm not sure they could have envisioned the kind of world we live in today," McBride said. "It's the personal preference of this president. Maybe it's not to everybody's taste, but it is Trump's. While he's there, this is how he wants it." Crime crackdown, Kennedy Center takeover Beyond the White House gates, Trump is promising an ambitious campaign to fix the district's parks, roads and medians, because he said the current setup is "embarrassing" when world leaders come to see him. Bowser, the D.C. mayor, has pushed back on Trump's narrative, saying the city is already more beautiful and safe than it was — tourism numbers are up and business activity has improved after a post-COVID slump. But Trump described the city in dystopian terms as he moved to deploy the D.C. National Guard to the streets of the capital. His D.C. takeover doesn't stop there. Trump commandeered the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts's board of trustees, who then installed him as its chair. He dropped some purportedly progressive programming and promoted a summer schedule of the play Les Misérables, which just finished a five-week sold-out run on his watch. Now, Trump will personally host the centre's annual awards ceremony and give prizes to hand-picked celebrity recipients in a bid to drive up TV ratings. He is leading renovation efforts to that space, too, recently convincing Republicans in Congress to allocate $257 million for an overhaul. Some of his congressional allies are pushing for the building's opera house to be renamed after First Lady Melania Trump. And then there's the Smithsonian, which earlier this year removed a reference to Trump's first-term impeachments from a display in the Museum of American History — it later returned with a modified text. This week, White House officials urged the museum's top administrator to reevaluate what's put on display as the country approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026. The White House wants visitors to see displays that "celebrate American exceptionalism." "There is nothing traditional about the way Trump wants to get things done," McBride said. "He's getting things done his own way — the way he's used to."
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Newsom's decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party. Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried. Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump's increasingly authoritarian impulses? That's essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign. As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California's own congressional districts to favor Democrats. His goal: counter Trump's drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own. It's a boundary-pushing gamble that will undoubtedly supercharge Newsom's political star in the short-term. The long-game glory could be even grander, but only if he pulls it off. A ballot-box flop would be brutal for both Newsom and his party. The charismatic California governor is termed out of office in 2026 and has made no secret of his 2028 presidential ambitions. But the distinct scent of his home state will be hard to completely slough off in parts of the country where California is synonymous with loony lefties, business-killing regulation and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. To say nothing of Newsom's ill-fated dinner at an elite Napa restaurant in violation of COVID-19 protocols — a misstep that energized a failed recall attempt and still haunts the governor's national reputation. The redistricting gambit is the kind of big play that could redefine how voters across the country see Newsom. The strategy could be a boon for Newsom's 2028 ambitions during a moment when Democrats are hungry for leaders, said Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio. But it's also a massive roll of the dice for both Newsom and the state he leads. 'It's great politics for him if this passes,' Maviglio said. 'If it fails, he's dead in the water.' The path forward — which could determine control of Congress in 2026 — is hardly a straight shot. The 'Election Rigging Response Act,' as Newsom has named his ballot measure, would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state's voter-approved independent redistricting commission. Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans while bolstering vulnerable Democratic incumbent Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, which would save the party millions of dollars in costly reelection fights. But first the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot and then it must be approved by voters. If passed, the initiative would have a 'trigger,' meaning the redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own gerrymandering effort. 'I think what Governor Newsom and other Democrats are doing here is exactly the right thing we need to do,' Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said Thursday. 'We're not bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We're going to bring a bazooka to a knife fight, right? This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party,' Martin said, adding that they shouldn't be the only ones playing by a set of rules that no longer exist. For Democrats like Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who appeared alongside Newsom to kick off the effort, there is "some heartbreak" to temporarily shelving their commitment to independent redistricting. But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president "willing to rig the election midstream," she said. Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground. "The response that I get is, 'Finally, we're fighting. We have a way to fight back that's tangible,'" Friedman recounted. Still, despite the state's Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs. A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state. (Newsom's press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.) California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state's congressional districts, however. While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a "life and death" battle against "Trumpism" and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California's Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective. "Wake up, America," Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. "Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people." Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself. Much of Liao's group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom's digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice account on the social media site X. The missives have largely mimicked the president's own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the 'caps lock' key. "DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER 'HOT.' FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS 'STEP,' " one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself. Some messages have also ended with Newsom's initials (a riff on Trump's signature "DJT" signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase 'Liberation Day,' or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom's smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month. Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed. Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president's first term and move away from his party's prior "resistance" brand. Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom's embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes' participation in women's sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy. Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump's victory in November. However, there was the unmistakable whiff of an ambitious politician trying to broaden his national appeal by inching away from his reputation as a West Coast liberal. Newsom's reluctance to readopt the Trump resistance mantle ended after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles amid immigration sweeps and ensuing protests in June. Those actions revealed Trump's unchecked vindictiveness and abject lack of morals and honor, Newsom said. Of late, Newsom has defended the juvenile tone of his press aides' posts mocking Trump's own all-caps screeds, and questioned why critics would excoriate his parody and not the president's own unhinged social media utterances. "If you've got issues with what I'm putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he's putting out as president," Newsom said last week. "So to the extent it's gotten some attention, I'm pleased." In an attention-deficit economy where standing out is half the battle, the posts sparkle with unapologetic swagger. And they make clear that Newsom is in on the joke. 'To a certain set of folks who operated under the old rules, this could be seen as, 'Wow, this is really outlandish.' But I think they are making the calculation that Democrats want folks that are going to play under this new set of rules that Trump has established,' Liao said. At a moment when the Democratic party is still occupied with post-defeat recriminations and what's-next vision boarding, Newsom has emerged from the bog with something resembling a plan. And he's betting the house on his deep-blue state's willingness to fight fire with fire. Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura Nelson contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
an hour ago
California Democrats' push for redistricting faces a tight legislative deadline
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California Democrats are making a partisan push to draw new congressional districts and reshape the state's U.S. House representation in their favor, but to pull it off, lawmakers returning to the Capitol on Monday face a tight deadline and must still win voters' approval. Limits on federal immigration raids and advancing racial justice efforts are also among the hundreds of proposals the Legislature will vote on before the session ends in September. Here's a look at what's ahead for lawmakers in their last month in session: Lawmakers are expected to spend the first week back after summer break advancing the new congressional map at the urging of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The new map aims at winning Democrats five more U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterms and is a direct response to President Donald Trump's efforts to redraw Texas' map to help Republicans retain their control of the U.S. House. So far, California is the only state beyond Texas that has officially waded into the redistricting fight, although others have signaled they might launch their own efforts. California Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, unveiled the new map Friday. State lawmakers in both houses will hold hearings on the map and vote to put it to voters in a special election in November. If voters agree, the new map would replace the one drawn by an independent commission that took effect in 2022. The new map would only take effect if Texas or another Republican-led state moves forward with their own mid-decade redistricting and would remain through the 2030 elections. Democrats said they will return the map-making power to the commission after the next census. The current effort is to save democracy and counter Trump's agenda, they said. State Republicans vowed to legally challenge the effort, arguing that voters in 2010 already voted to remove partisan influence from how maps are drawn. State lawmakers are contending with how to balance meeting the state's climate goals with lowering utility and gas prices. Those discussions have been colored by the planned closures of two oil refineries that account for nearly 18% of the state's refining capacity, according to air regulators. The Legislature will have to respond to those concerns when it debates whether to reauthorize the state's cap-and-trade program, which is set to expire in 2030. The program allows large greenhouse gas emitters to buy allowances from the state equivalent to what they plan to emit. Over time, fewer allowances are made available with the goal of spurring companies to pollute less. A large portion of revenues from the program goes into a fund that helps pay for climate, affordable housing and transportation projects. The program also funds a credit that Californians receive twice a year on their utility bills. Newsom wants lawmakers to extend the program through 2045, commit $1 billion annually from the fund for the state's long-delayed high-speed rail project and set aside $1.5 billion a year for state fire response. Many environmental groups want the state to update the program by ending free allowances for industrial emitters, ensuring low-income households receive a higher credit on their utility bills, and ending or strengthening an offset program that helps companies comply by supporting projects aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions. Lawmakers will vote on a host of proposals introduced in response to the escalation of federal immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles and across the state. That includes legislation that would make it a misdemeanor for local, state and federal law enforcement officers to cover their faces while conducting official business. The proposal makes exceptions for officers wearing a medical grade mask, coverings designed to protect against exposure to smoke during a wildfire, and other protective gear used by SWAT officers while performing their duties. Proponents said the measure would boost transparency and public trust in law enforcement while also preventing people from trying to impersonate law enforcement. Opponents, including law enforcement, said the bill would disrupt local undercover operations without addressing the issue because California doesn't have authority over federal agents. Another proposal would require law enforcement to identify themselves during official business. State Democrats are also championing several proposals that would limit immigration agents without warrants from entering school campuses, hospitals and homeless or domestic violence shelters. A first-in-the-nation state task force released a report in 2023 with more than 100 recommendations for how the state should repair historic wrongdoings against Black Californians descended from enslaved people. The California Legislative Black Caucus introduced a reparations package last year inspired by that work, but the measures did not include direct payments for descendants, and the most ambitious proposals were blocked. The caucus introduced another package this year aimed at offering redress to Black Californians. One of the bills would authorize universities to give admissions priority to descendants of enslaved people. Another would ensure 10% of funds from a state program providing loans to first-time homebuyers goes to descendants. A third would allow the state to set aside $6 million to fund research by California State University on how to confirm residents' eligibility for any reparations programs. Some reparations advocates say the proposals fall short. They say many of the measures are ways to delay implementing one of the task force's key recommendations: direct compensation to descendants of slavery.
