People Truly Can't Believe How Donald Trump Decorated His New Rose Garden Patio
It went from looking like this:
To this:
Related:
He even included American flag sewer drains (right next to the presidential seal...hmmm)!
As this person says, "It looks like a food court. During Covid."
Well, he's added more patio furniture and umbrellas!
Related:
Here it is:
And another angle:
A quick search would show that those umbrellas appear to be the same ones he has in Mar-a-Lago:
Related:
He's truly turning the White House into his own mini Mar-a-Lago.
People have a lot to say about this one.
brianglenntv/Twitter: @brianglenntv
This person said, "It looks like every local New Jersey town pool."
Another person said it reminded them of a Cheesecake Factory.
Related:
We have lots of comparisons to picnic areas at water parks.
Another person said it was "giving museum cafe."
And this person compared it to "the outdoor seating of a college campus panera bread."
'Order 36? Number 36? Roast beef on ciabatta? Order 36!'
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24 minutes ago
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College endowment tax is leading to hiring freezes and could mean cuts in financial aid
A big increase in the tax on university endowments is adding to financial uncertainty for the wealthiest colleges in the U.S., leading several already to lay off staff or implement hiring freezes. Spending more endowment money on taxes could also lead colleges to reduce financial aid, cutting off access to elite institutions for lower-income students, colleges and industry experts have warned. President Donald Trump signed the tax increase into law last month as part of his signature spending bill. The new tax rates take effect in 2026, but colleges such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford already are citing the tax as one of many reasons for making cuts across their universities. Each will be on the hook to pay hundreds of millions more in taxes, while also navigating reductions in research grants and other threats to funding by the Trump administration. A tax on college endowments was introduced during Trump's first administration, collecting 1.4% of wealthy universities' investment earnings. The law signed by Trump last month creates a new tiered system that taxes the richest schools at the highest rates. The new tax will charge an 8% rate at schools with $2 million or more in assets for each enrolled student. Schools with $750,000 to $2 million will be charged 4%, and schools with $500,000 to $750,000 will continue to be charged the 1.4% rate. The tax applies only to private colleges and universities with at least 3,000 students, up from the previous cutoff of 500 students. 'The tax now will really solely apply to private research universities,' said Steven Bloom, assistant vice president of government relations for the American Council on Education. 'It's going to mean that these schools are going to have to spend more money under the tax, taking it away from what they primarily use their endowment assets for — financial aid.' This small group of wealthy colleges faces a tax increase The law will increase the endowment tax for about a dozen universities, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are expected to pay the 8% rate next year. The schools facing the 4% rate include Notre Dame, Dartmouth College, Rice University, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis and Vanderbilt University. Some universities are on the edge of the law's parameters. Both Duke and Emory, for instance, were shy of the $750,000-per-student endowment threshold based on last fiscal year. Endowments are made up of donations to the college, which are invested to maintain the money over time. Colleges often spend about 5% of their investment earnings every year to put toward their budgets. Much of it goes toward scholarships for students, along with costs such as research or endowed faculty positions. Despite the colleges' wealth, the tax will drastically impact their budgets, said Phillip Levine, an economist and professor at Wellesley College. 'They're looking for savings wherever possible,' Levine said, which could impact financial aid. 'One of the most important things they do with their endowment is lower the cost of education for lower- and middle-income students. The institutions paying the highest tax are also the ones charging these students the least amount of money to attend.' For example, at Rice University in Houston, officials anticipate the college will need to pay $6.4 million more in taxes. That equates to more than 100 student financial aid packages, the university said, but Rice officials will explore all other options to avoid cutting that support. How colleges are adjusting to financial pressures In the meantime, some universities are going forward with staff cuts. Yale University says it will have to pay an estimated $280 million in total endowment taxes, citing the tax in a campus message implementing a hiring freeze. Stanford University announced plans to reduce its operating budget by $140 million this upcoming school year, which included 363 layoffs and an ongoing hiring freeze. The university spent months trying to determine where to reduce its budget, but said it would continue to support undergraduate financial aid and funding for Ph.D. students. Research universities are under increasing financial pressure from reductions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies. No university knows this pressure better than Harvard, the country's wealthiest college. Its $53 billion endowment puts it at the top of the list for the new tax, but it's also seeing massive portions of research funding under threat in its ongoing battle with the White House. The federal government has frozen $2.6 billion in Harvard's research grants in connection with civil rights investigations focused on antisemitism and Harvard's efforts to promote diversity on campus. But the impact of other administration policies on the university could approach $1 billion annually, Harvard said in a statement. 'It's not like Harvard is going to go from one of the best institutions in the world to just a mediocre institution. That's probably not going to happen," Levine said. 'But that doesn't mean it's not going to be a bad thing — that there won't be pain and that students won't suffer.' ___ Mumphrey reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Sharon Lurye in Philadelphia contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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John Cornyn enters critical window to change trajectory of Texas Senate primary against Ken Paxton
With the Senate shutting down for the month, Sen. John Cornyn jetted from Washington to Texas for the 22nd August recess in his career last weekend, trying to ensure it's not one of his last. The interlude is the last prolonged break in the Senate calendar before the end of the year, creating a critical window for Cornyn, locked in a battle for his political survival, to make up ground in his primary against Attorney General Ken Paxton. Voters throughout the state are now seeing millions of dollars worth of positive Cornyn ads from allied groups as the might of the Cornyn machine — including the Republican establishment in Washington — kicks into gear. Cornyn's campaign is testing the theory that Paxton's polling lead — a double-digit margin in most public surveys — can be closed through making voters aware of Paxton's legal and ethical baggage. The eyes of the GOP apparatus will be on Texas this summer as he puts that plan in motion ahead of a December filing deadline and early March primary — the first in the nation. It's not just voters that Cornyn hopes to move. While the contest will be decided by the millions of Republicans who go to the polls in March, both candidates — as well as Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, who is considering entering the race — have in many ways been competing for an audience of one. The specter of an endorsement from President Donald Trump, whose imprimatur is perhaps the most powerful tool in GOP politics, has loomed over the primary from the outset. Trump has yet to weigh in, but is reportedly following the race closely. Cornyn is one of just three sitting Republican senators who have announced reelection campaigns and have yet to draw the president's endorsement. Down in the polls, numerous operatives said Cornyn and his allies need to show Trump he can narrow his deficit. Cornyn himself has acknowledged as much, saying he hopes Trump will be ready to back him once his advertising blitz helps tighten the race. Paxton, a longtime Trump ally who challenged the 2020 election results on his behalf, is aggressively pursuing the president's endorsement as well, according to a source in his camp. 'All I know is, [Trump's] not ready to make one,' Cornyn said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. 'In fairness, we've got some work to do, and we're doing what we need to do.' Groups supporting Cornyn have spent about $8 million on advertising thus far, in both Texas and Washington, with a wave of ads displaying Cornyn and Trump together and promoting Cornyn as Trump's loyal partner in the Senate. 'They're not doing it to try to win voters over,' an unaffiliated GOP consultant said. 'They're trying to do it to, frankly, keep the White House and the president from throwing Cornyn overboard.' Both men have embraced Trump in an attempt to appeal to the GOP base. Pro-Cornyn ads have heavily featured the president and noted the senator's record of voting with Trump's stated position 99% of the time, while Paxton recently went as far as a Scottish golf course in search of time with Trump, CNN reported. Cornyn, drawing on his decades-long history in the state, is consolidating the Republican establishment, rolling out a series of endorsements from Texas institutions like the National Border Patrol Council, Texas Alliance for Life, a coalition of agriculture groups like the Texas Farm Bureau, and former Gov. Rick Perry. And while groups affiliated with Senate Republicans always protect their own, the level of vitriol that the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the Senate GOP's campaign arm — has unleashed against Paxton has been notably intense. The NRSC, fearing Paxton could put the seat in play for Democrats or at least redirect funds away from other states, has gone after the attorney general over everything from his wife's recent divorce filing to mortgage fraud allegations to his European travel. Paxton, a MAGA darling who has gone to war with the Texas GOP old guard, lacks institutional support but has a polling lead to work with. And his camp believes Cornyn's reputation among Trump's core base is damaged beyond repair. Paxton has attacked Cornyn over his support for a bipartisan gun safety bill in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting and comments casting doubt on Trump's electability ahead of the 2024 presidential contest. 'Republican primary voters are smart enough to know in Texas that just because every six years Cornyn comes and gets real conservative for a year and a half, he has a 30-year record,' a Paxton strategist said. But Cornyn's team believes the primary is a matter of educating voters — on Cornyn's conservative voting record and Paxton's ethical liabilities — and that they have the resources to do it. As Cornyn allies batter the airwaves, the coming months will serve as a test of that theory. 'I need to remind people about what I've done in my record, and we also need to remind people about my opponent's record,' Cornyn said. 'And if we do that successfully, which is going to entail paid media, then we'll win.' The Cornyn offensive Outside groups backing Cornyn have begun deploying their war chests in recent weeks. Through the end of July, One Nation, a group affiliated with Senate Republican leadership, had spent over $4 million in advertising. Texans for a Conservative Majority, a pro-Cornyn super PAC, has pumped another $3.2 million in, while another Cornyn outside group, Conservative Majority Project, has added about $500,000. Nearly $3.7 million of that money has been spent on pro-Cornyn broadcast and cable television ads. The Cornyn campaign itself has only spent about $250,000, likely holding its powder for the run-up to the primary, when TV stations offer discounted rates to campaigns, but not PACs or outside groups. A national GOP operative backing Cornyn acknowledged that Paxton has a floor of diehard supporters, but believes there is a large enough universe of undecided voters to power a Cornyn win. The senior senator has appeared on Texas statewide ballots seven times, always emerging victorious. 'Voters who may not be supporting Cornyn right now have voted for Cornyn in the past and very well could vote for Cornyn again, as long as they are convinced that they don't like Ken Paxton more,' the operative said. Neither Paxton's campaign nor the main super PAC supporting him — Lone Star Liberty PAC — have gone up on the air yet. From their perspective, spending now, when primary voters are not paying close attention, would be a waste. 'Unlike Cornyn and Hunt, we don't have to spend and waste money in July of an off year to try to raise our name ID or improve our image,' said the Paxton strategist, who noted that Paxton has high favorability ratings and near-universal name recognition with Republican primary voters. In ads, Cornyn and his allies have attacked Paxton over an array of moral, ethical and political issues, including his wife Sen. Angela Paxton's recent divorce filing, an alleged extramarital affair and allegations of mortgage fraud. Cornyn has also accused Ken Paxton of not being aggressive enough toward Texas Democrats who recently left the state to block a GOP redistricting effort. Despite those liabilities, voters have twice returned Paxton to his statewide post. He was most recently reelected in 2022 by a 10-point margin, amid felony securities fraud charges and an FBI investigation that have since been dropped or fizzled. Many of those charges were laid out publicly — including Paxton's alleged infidelity — in his 2023 impeachment trial, after which he was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Texas Senate. Cornyn's team believes the bulk of GOP primary voters are still unaware of his challenger's record. 'Really highly engaged people, people that work in politics, know some or a lot of these things,' a source close to Cornyn said. 'We think most voters don't. And the reason we think that is that Paxton's never had a TV ad or radio ad or a mail piece run against him that's negative at scale on a statewide basis. Obviously, this will be the first race where that's the case.' In addition, some Paxton scandals — like his claiming multiple homes as his primary residence on mortgage records, first reported by The Associated Press — are new. But the notion of him being dogged by ethics issues is not. And some Republican operatives think Paxton's scandals are already priced in — and he's leading regardless. Shelby Williams, the former GOP chair in Paxton's native Collin County, noted this was one of the contentions during Paxton's impeachment trial: that voters already knew about his alleged wrongdoing and elected him regardless. 'For the most part, it's already baked into the cake,' said Williams, who is running for a county commissioners court seat and staying neutral in the Senate primary. To the extent there are portions of the electorate unaware of Paxton's record, Williams said, those same voters may also not be up to date on charges from Paxton and other right-wing activists — including those in the state GOP organization — that Cornyn is insufficiently conservative. 'That goes both ways as well,' Williams said. 'There are people within the Republican Party of Texas who are trying to educate people about Senator Cornyn's voting record, which they may take exception to.' GOP establishment goes nuclear In Washington, Senate Republican leaders have deployed their two biggest political organizations to aggressively boost Cornyn, who is a former member of Senate GOP leadership and the upper chamber's fifth-most senior Republican. The National Republican Senatorial Committee's communications director Joanna Rodriguez has excoriated Paxton in a series of public statements. After news of his wife's divorce filing broke, Rodriguez said, 'What Ken Paxton has put his family through is repulsive and disgusting.' On the mortgage fraud allegations, she said, 'A lot of people who trust Ken Paxton get lied to.' And the NRSC has repeatedly referred to Paxton's 'incompetence' on issues including his response to Democratic legislators fleeing the state. The NRSC could find itself in the awkward spot of having to boost Paxton's candidacy next fall if he emerges from next year's primary. But half a dozen operatives told the Tribune that the group is rightfully motivated by fears of Paxton's general election liabilities, which they argued would put Texas' Senate seat in play for Democrats. Those strategists pointed to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz's narrow margin of victory in 2018 — 2.6 percentage points — the last midterm election during a Trump presidency. Paxton was reelected as attorney general that year by 3.6 points, a tighter margin than in most other statewide contests. Even among those who believe Paxton would win — just by a smaller margin than Cornyn — the fear is that outside Republican groups would need to spend significant money in Texas to hold the seat. Republicans will be defending an open Senate seat in North Carolina and the one held by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, both of which are expected to be competitive. They are also looking to target vulnerable Democratic Senate seats in Michigan and Georgia, contests expected to generate massive spending. The specter of Trump The biggest looming question in the primary is when Trump puts his thumb on the scale — if he does at all — and for whom. Cornyn, Paxton and Hunt have each run ads outside Texas, hoping to get the attention of a certain viewer in Washington and Palm Beach. 'They're both friends of mine,' Trump told reporters in April. 'They're both good men. We don't know who else is running, but these two — Ken, John — they're both friends of mine. So I'll make a determination at the right time.' Multiple Republicans familiar with the race have said Trump is waiting to see how things develop. Cornyn told NBC News in mid-July that he hopes Trump will be ready to weigh in once Cornyn's campaign begins advertising and closing the polling gap. 'The president's obviously very apt at understanding the political environment and that polling can change pretty quickly,' a GOP strategist involved in the Senate race said. 'A lot of polling we've seen shows that there's ample room for the primary electorate to move around.' Potential dark horse candidates Hunt and Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, have also spoken to White House aides about the primary, according to sources familiar with the meetings. The White House declined to comment on the president's thoughts surrounding a possible endorsement. Paxton has long been an ally of Trump, who rewarded the attorney general's loyalty with an endorsement in Paxton's 2022 primary. But an unaffiliated GOP consultant said Trump's silence on the race indicates his political operation is aware of Senate Republicans' hang-ups about Paxton. 'That just speaks to everything about where the White House is,' the operative said. 'If they wanted to see Paxton as the nominee, the easy time to get behind him was when he was up 18 points and before Cornyn and the D.C. establishment started spending millions.' Disclosure: Texas Farm Bureau has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. The lineup for The Texas Tribune Festival continues to grow! Be there when all-star leaders, innovators and newsmakers take the stage in downtown Austin, Nov. 13–15. The newest additions include comedian, actor and writer John Mulaney; Dallas mayor Eric Johnson; U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota; New York Media Editor-at-Large Kara Swisher; and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso. Get your tickets today! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
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Fact Check: This Democratic US House district in Texas is real, but it was drawn by Republicans
Claim: Images on social media accurately show a map of a "stolen house seat," represented by a Democrat, in Texas' 35th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rating: Context: While the map is accurate, the House seat was not "stolen" by Democrats — the district was drawn by the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature. On June 9, 2025, The New York Times reported that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was pushing the state of Texas to redraw its federal congressional district maps, in an attempt to maintain a thin Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The maps, which were last drawn in 2021, generally last for a decade, and redrawing them without a legal challenge is incredibly rare. Over the next two months, that plan was slowly implemented, despite immense backlash from members of the public and state Democrats at hearings. California and Illinois Govs. Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker openly described the plan as an effort to "steal" U.S. House seats. But as the Texas process moved forward, posts appeared on social media sites like X claiming that the Republican-led state legislators currently redrawing the maps weren't the ones to blame. According to one post, it was Democrats who were "fighting to save gerrymandering," the practice of drawing district maps to favor one party over another. Another post, showing a map of Texas' 35th congressional district, currently represented by Democrat Greg Casar, called the district an example of "what a stolen house seat actually looks like." (X user @RealJessica05) The map of Texas' 35th congressional district in the posts is accurate. However, the House seat wasn't "stolen" by Democrats in any sense of the word. In 26 states, including Texas, the state legislature is responsible for drawing the decade's congressional district maps. According to Ballotpedia, Republicans have controlled both chambers of the state legislature continuously since 2003. Therefore, a Republican-led commission drew the map featured in the post, meaning if the House seat had truly been "stolen" by Democrats, the Republican majority in the legislature let it happen. In fact, Republicans almost certainly drew the district knowing that Democrats would win as part of an effort to gerrymander the state. The practice has been around for about as long as the country has — the word "gerrymander" comes from a particularly salamander-shaped state Senate district in Massachusetts signed into law in 1812 by then-Gov. Eldridge Gerry. Gerrymandering solely on partisan grounds isn't actually illegal, according to PBS. In a 5-4 2019 Supreme Court case, Chief Justice John Roberts held that gerrymandering solely on partisan grounds couldn't be judged by a federal court. There are two basic techniques in gerrymandering: "cracking" and "packing." Using a basic example, let's say a state has a green party and a yellow party, and the green party has the power to draw new district lines. "Cracking" involves splitting up regions of yellow-party supporters across different districts and ensuring that each of those districts has enough green-party voters to overpower the yellow party voters. As a real life example, Illinois' 2021 congressional district map features several districts split between deep blue Chicago and more rural exurbs, creating a lot of thin, snaky districts that reliably vote for Democrats. "Packing," meanwhile, does the exact opposite — cramming as many yellow-party supporters into as few districts as possible. Even though the green party will lose those heavily concentrated districts, every other district will have significantly fewer yellow party voters. The district featured in the claim, Texas' 35th, is a perfect example of packing. It contains downtown San Antonio, a few suburbs and a thin strip of land running about 80 miles northeast that captures half of Austin, and votes for Democrats occur in large margins while several of its surrounding districts vote Republican. According to NPR, a district court did find Texas' 35th district unconstitutional in 2017, because Republicans considered race while drawing the lines. Texas appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision in 2018, allowing the district to stand in a 5-4 ruling. Its boundaries weren't significantly changed in the 2021 redistricting. This isn't the first time Texas Republicans have attempted a redistricting in the middle of the decade. In 2003, the first time the party held the governor's office and both legislative houses, they passed a redistricting bill aiming to strengthen Republican control over the state. State Democrats boycotted the vote by traveling outside of Texas to break the legislature's quorum, the same strategy being used more than 20 years later. In that case, the redistricting bill did eventually pass. 7971 and 206. Gerrymandering Explained | Brennan Center for Justice. 24 Apr. 2025, Astudillo, By Colleen DeGuzman, Graphics by Carla. "Texas House Redistricting Committee's Houston Hearing Draws Criticism over Absence of Maps." The Texas Tribune, 26 Jul. 2025, Astudillo, By Gabby Birenbaum and Eleanor Klibanoff, Graphics by Carla. "Texas House Republicans Unveil New Congressional Map That Looks to Pick up Five GOP Seats." The Texas Tribune, 30 Jul. 2025, Blumenthal, Ralph. "State Senate Democrats Return to Texas." The New York Times, 12 Sep. 2003, Crawley, Mike. "What's up in Texas? Trump's Gerrymandering Push, Explained." CBC News, 6 Aug. 2025. Dahlkamp, By Owen. "Texas Republicans, Including Gov. Abbott, Were Reluctant to Redraw the State's Congressional Maps. Then Trump Got Involved." The Texas Tribune, 22 Jul. 2025, "Former Lawmaker Who Broke Quorum in 2003 Says Texas Democrats' Walkout Echoes the Past." 3 Aug. 2025, Fortinsky, Sarah. "Pritzker: Trump 'Trying to Steal 5 Seats from the People.'" The Hill, 6 Aug. 2025, "Gerrymandering." Ballotpedia, Accessed 6 Aug. 2025. Gerrymandering | Definition, Litigation, & Facts | Britannica. 4 Aug. 2025, Goodman, J. David, and Shane Goldmacher. "White House Pushes Texas to Redistrict, Hoping to Blunt Democratic Gains." The New York Times, 9 Jun. 2025, "Is Political Gerrymandering Illegal? 6 Things to Know as Texas Dispute Carries On." PBS News, 4 Aug. 2025, Klibanoff, By Eleanor. "Texans, Democrats Condemn GOP Redistricting Plans at First Public Hearing." The Texas Tribune, 24 Jul. 2025, Marecki, Patrick. "Mid-Decade Congressional Redistricting In a Red and Blue Nation." Vanderbilt Law Review, vol. 57, no. 5, Oct. 2004, p. 1935, "National Overview." All About Redistricting, Accessed 6 Aug. 2025. "Party Control of Texas State Government." Ballotpedia, Accessed 6 Aug. 2025. Prokop, Andrew. "Sotomayor: Supreme Court Racial Gerrymandering Ruling Comes at 'Serious Costs to Our Democracy.'" Vox, 25 Jun. 2018, These Are the Worst Examples of Congressional Gerrymandering - The Fulcrum. Accessed 6 Aug. 2025. Tribune, By Owen Dahlkamp, The Texas Tribune, and Natalia Contreras, Votebeat and The Texas. "Trump Aides Want Texas to Redraw Its Congressional Maps to Boost the GOP. What Would That Mean?" The Texas Tribune, 11 Jun. 2025, Wamsley, Laurel. "Federal Court Rules Three Texas Congressional Districts Illegally Drawn." NPR, 11 Mar. 2017. NPR, "Where Are the Lines Drawn?" All About Redistricting, Accessed 6 Aug. 2025.
