In 2025, President Donald Trump's makeover of the White House has taken on two different forms: (1) tearing down the historic East Wing to make way for a lavish new ballroom, and (2) redecorating parts of the West Wing in a distinctly Trumpian fashion.

The New York Times' Sam Sifton, in a newsletter published on Christmas Eve Day 2025, describes Trump's Oval Office makeover — which, the reporter notes, is so extensive that "he's almost out of wall space."

"He has made it an extravagant room," Sifton observes. "Gold is everywhere: on picture frames and gilded carvings, on seals and antiques and finials. The metal covers about a third of the walls…. Flags are abundant. There are five times as many as most other presidents displayed. A gold-framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hangs to the right of the Resolute Desk."

Sifton's newsletter is accompanied by two photos from the Times' Doug Mills — one showing Joe Biden in the Oval Office during his presidency, the other showing the Oval Office since Trump's return to the White House. And the latter has a lot more gold, which Sifton notes, is "a metaphor the president uses to telegraph his success."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Times, "He's a maximalist."

Some Trump critics, however, are alleging that the gold in the Oval Office may not be real gold.

Sifton explains, "All the gold — on those mirrors, on the frames of the portraits beside them, in the inlaid seal on the coffee table — has led to rumors that they're just cheap plastic, painted gold. Trump denies it, and a White House official told The Times that while the underlying materials are made of plaster or metal, they are covered in real gold leaf. I dug this detail: A craftsman from Florida regularly travels to the White House to gild parts of the Oval Office by hand, often when the president is away on weekends."

Read Sam Sifton's full New York Times newsletter is available at this link (subscription required).

President Donald Trump has behaved so erratically and flip-flopped on important issues like war and affordability so often that experts often wonder why millions of Americans continue to support him regardless.

Now Sarah Longwell, a political consultant at the conservative website The Bulwark, shed light on that by exploring why millions of Trump supporters continued to back him even after he attempted a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election.

After explaining how an alternate right-wing media ecosystem existed for roughly two decades before Trump became president, and based on the presumption that there is a pervasive liberal media bias, Longwell described how she tried to explore the influence of this ecosystem in her own research.

"At first, Trump voters—even ones who’d supported him twice—were genuinely shaken," Longwell wrote. "I did a couple of focus groups six days after January 6, 2021, in the aftermath of Trump supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump told them had been rigged."

"One group was with women who voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and another was with women who’d voted for Trump in 2016 and then switched to Biden. In the two-time-Trump-voter group, Jamie from Pennsylvania said she was 'appalled' and 'shocked' by what she saw," Longwell wrote. “I realized, but yet I didn’t, if that makes any sense, that there are people out there that could do that.”

Longwell proceeded to quote various survey subjects.

"Audra from Arizona said, 'I think the reason he should be impeached is really just so that he can’t run ever again,'" Longwell reported. "Trump was impeached the next day. The Trump-to-Biden group was similarly harsh. Like Tina from Pennsylvania: 'The windows were being cracked, people were being killed, I don’t understand how this happened like this. And if he’s behind it, they really should impeach him, get rid of it and that’s it.' For a brief moment, reality was undeniable, and people’s opinions of Trump became soft and changeable."

But from there, Longwell had bad news.

"Then the Republican Triangle of Doom kicked in—the toxic and symbiotic relationship between Republican voters, elected officials, and the right-wing infotainment media," Longwell wrote. "The voters who were horrified got bombarded with whitewashing spin almost instantly."

She described how everyone from conservative influencers to former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) sold out the truth about Trump's insurrection in order to validate the biases of Trump supporters.

"Now, some Trump voters understood what happened and never came back," Longwell observed. "But the majority of them had spent four years defending Trump—online, at the dinner table, at work. They’d lost friendships over him. So when right-wing media offered them an alternative explanation, they took it. And then their opinions started to harden. Like cement."

She added, "Six months later, the narrative had completely shifted. I did focus groups in July, and Republicans had flipped completely from where they’d been on January 12. Annette, a 2020 Trump voter from Arizona, told me it was '100 percent orchestrated from Antifa.' Robert, a two-time Trump voter from Alaska, said, 'It’s been shown that they purposely let those people in the building.' He added that January 6th was 'all set up by the Democrat Party to make those people look bad.'"

Longwell concluded, "Without trusted messengers to help them make sense of what’s happening, voters are vulnerable to whoever gets there first with a compelling story. In our communications environment, public opinion can harden in days or even hours. If you don’t know where or how to talk to people, then you are going to miss every one of those persuasion opportunities."

Speaking to AlterNet in August, Dr. Steven Hassan — cult expert and author of "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump" — also argued, as did Longwell, that Trump supporters choose a biased information ecosystem to validate their cult-like support for the president.

"I talk about cults being spread across the entire continuum," Hassan told AlterNet. "There are a lot of cultish groups, but they give informed consent and encourage people to follow their conscience — they don't tell people what they can and can't read, et cetera — all the way to authoritarianism. And I see the people following Trump as largely being mind-controlled through information: through their social media posts, whether on Facebook, Telegram or WhatsApp, or through Fox News."

Hassan added, "So, going back to your initial question about how people are voting against their self-interest — it really comes down to what information sources they're relying on and who their network is that they identify with. So if they really love Joe Rogan, they're going to follow a lot of his views. And consequently, when he turns against Trump, Trump loses a lot of followers. What I'm trying to convey is that we're living in an age of digital manipulation that's never been seen before, with people's personal data being used to silo information — to drive them further left if they're already progressive-leaning, or further right if they're already Republican or conservative-leaning. And it's quite strategic in its use of algorithms. So it's not simply about looking at personality type, Matthew — the disposition of a person who becomes a Trump follower — but the social and information environment people are being subjected to."

In August, Hassan even described why so many Trump supporters receive the specific plastic surgery practice known as "Mar-a-Lago face" in order to show their loyalty to the aforementioned cult.

"My work is to really try to illuminate the mind and how undue influence can be exerted and the whole idea of cults all along the continuum from ethical tight-knit groups where there's freedom to think and question and leave without fear or harassment," Dr. Hassan argued at the time.

"... [W]e were talking about how so many MAGA people are getting plastic surgery, and they all look alike," he said, adding that if an individual is "in a mind control cult, you want to look the right way to fit in [with] that idyllic image of Christian white nationalists."

Aaron Simon, owner of Farm to Fork meat processing, told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that President Donald Trump’s policies are hitting him at every level and putting his and other businesses in jeopardy.

The higher cost of livestock due to Trump’s inflation was driving up his retail prices as well as the company’s wholesale pricing for restaurants. Worse, Americans facing higher costs at grocery stores and gas pumps are having a more difficult time justifying the purchase of expensive proteins like beef.

Economists blame rising costs in flood and fuel on Trump’s unilateral war with Iran and his ongoing trade wars with U.S. economic partners

The higher costs, Simon added, are also discouraging livestock owners from “bringing in as many animals to have processed.”

“It's definitely a real issue,” Simon told Tapper on Tuesday. “We've had to lay off people. We've also had to raise our retail costs. You know, we're selling, for example, burger today at significantly more than it was a year ago today. And we're just trying to keep up with the high input costs, even though we're making less and less on it. There has to be a happy, a happy [medium] somewhere where people can still access good local fresh food and fresh meat. And at the same time, farmers and producers being paid fairly and treated square. But these high prices make that very difficult.”

In addition to livestock, Simon said Trump’s tariffs are causing “a big increase over the past year on our packaging materials, including plastic vacuum sealed bags and seasonings and spices” used in a variety of products.

“And there's also surcharges on the shipping,” complained Simon, whose company is based in Ripley, West Virginia. “Something that might use to be a $500 minimum order is now a $1,000 minimum order. And that's definitely adding a lot to the increased costs.”

West Virginia voted for Trump in the last election, with the race having been called early on Election Day and at a comfortable margin. But now Simon says Trump needs to have “boots on the ground” to hear the desperate pleas of ailing American growers and processors in the Trump economy.

“And you need to have people meeting with small meat processing facilities and producers like myself, as well as farmers and ranchers to work together to come up with a plan because you have to know what the issue is to allow you to build the framework to fix the issue,” said Simon.

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At a time when the Republican Party is fighting for life under an unpopular president, an economic analysis reveals the red state of Missouri is looking at serious problems as President Donald Trump escalates his prolonged trade war between the U.S. and Canada, according to the Kansas City Star.

Trump may have tried to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in his latest sleight to Canada, but there’s nothing symbolic about the impact of the 50 percent tariffs the Trump administration levied on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. There’s also nothing symbolic about the pain of the retaliatory tariffs Canada plans to impose on roughly 700 American products beginning Sept. 8.

“The Kansas City metro area exports about $4 billion in goods to Canada annually, including vehicles, plastics, chemicals and agricultural products," according to a 2025 study by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“Any variation in tariffs may be sensitive,” said Ariel Dvoskin, who studies trade theory and teaches economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City, “and the [50 percent] variation that we are talking about right now … would substantially affect the exports from KC.”

Dvoskin pointed out that a whopping 37 percent of Kansas City’s exported goods go to Canada, which puts this Trump-voting state in a nasty bullseye. “When you increase tariffs, of course, those who suffer first are workers because prices go up and their real wages go down," Dvoskin said.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce study identified Kansas City as one of the U.S. cities that would take the hardest hit in a trade war between the North American allies, with Kansas City the third-most vulnerable city in a prolonged trade dispute because of its dependence on Canadian demand.

The info was based on 2023 data, but Andrew DiCapua, the chamber’s principal economist and the study’s author, told the Star that the results still apply today.

“Kansas City really is at the center of this trade war,” DiCapua said. “ … It raises costs for businesses. I mean, someone needs to pay for this. Even if it’s not passed on to consumers right away, someone still needs to pay for the tariffs. So smaller businesses that rely on these supply chains are going to have to eat those costs.”

Frank Lenk, director of economic research at the Mid-America Regional Council, told the Star that Kansas City’s auto industry is among the clearest targets because vehicles are one of the region’s largest exports and much of that trade is tied to Canada. Lenk added that Trump’s trade war can also hike manufacturing costs for companies like Ford and General Motors because parts and materials move back and forth across the border before final assembly.

They can either absorb those costs and threaten their financial integrity and workers or pass the costs down to customers in a colossal wallop.

President Donald Trump's war in Iran has long been derided by defense experts for being unsustainable, yet the Republican continues to insist that the war is "small potatoes" and working out in his favor. Yet according to a recent report, the last week alone contained so much bad news from the conflict that it's impossible for Trump to wave it off.

"In this week alone, 13 separate incidents in the Middle East prove this is not the ghost war the president is trying to convince his MAGA base it is," The Daily Beast's David Gardner reported on Sunday. "This isn’t TV reality. It’s the real thing. Trump’s biggest bluff didn’t work. He should have folded. Instead, he twisted. Into knots. And now he is trying to pretend it never happened."

Noting that 18 American soldiers have been killed and 820 have been wounded since the conflict started, Gardner elaborated on just a handful of the violent incidents that have recently occurred which prove the Iran war is a bigger deal than Trump is making it out to be.

"Overnight Iranian attacks on Tuesday also hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, damaging as many as nine U.S. aircraft," Gardner wrote. "Missiles 'struck the maintenance, preparation, and deployment sites of F-35, F-16, and F-15 fighter jets, as well as their shelters, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy,' claimed the IRGC."

He added, "In Kuwait this week, Iran claimed it attacked America’s Ali Al Salem Air Base with bombs and drones and struck the rooms of a U.S. commander. Off the coast, more details emerged about a 19-year-old sailor who tried to jump to his death from the rusting USS Lincoln as Patriot missile stockpiles were depleted and diesel prices hit an all-time high of $6 a gallon on Friday."

The journalist concluded, "All this in a week that Donald Trump was seeking to convince a midterm convention in Dallas that Iran was handled. We may not like to think about it, but this war is far from over. And it could get a hell of a lot worse."

Trump's invasion of Iran is so controversial that parents of children who died in the conflict are speaking out.

"Jim Khork, along with his wife, Stacey, sat down for an exclusive interview with CBS News to share more about their grief, but also, their frustrations about what they consider is a lack of accountability for military shortcomings ahead of the deadly attack," CBS News' Jonah Kaplan reported on Thursday. "The Army confirmed to the Khorks and CBS News that its probe into the deadly Iranian attack was completed in early July, but they have yet to release it."

In April, an economist outlined the long-term damage the war is causing the US economy.

“I would guess that yes, destruction of Iranian (and some other) energy facilities in the Persian Gulf area will have at least a medium-term effect keeping prices for crude oil and chemical fertilizer high, and that in turn means gasoline prices may come down only slowly,” Dr. Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, told AlterNet. “Same for other petroleum-based products such as plastics, skin creams, and so on. The high potential of conflict also adds risk premiums to shipping and other costs.”

He added, “Longer-term, lots of open questions. One is whether the administration will really concede that Iran has a right to close the Strait of Hormuz and assess tolls on shipping passing through it. That would make the smaller Gulf monarchies and to some extent Iraq reliant on Iranian good will for all of their exports. Likewise, Asian countries are the main buyers of Persian Gulf energy, and their supplies would be much less secure.”

The Washington Post reports U.S. states with some of the most competitive congressional races in the nation are now “caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney,” and the GOP senators are flummoxed.

While the average American may not feel the tariffs, key industries in places like Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania are likely to feel the added costs, said the Post, and this appears to be complicating Republicans running in competitive House and Senate races in those states, according to GOP analysts.

“Donald Trump was elected in part to bring down inflation and juice the economy,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant in Washington. “Anything that works opposite of those goals is not helpful for any Republican running this year.”

Brent Buchanan, founder of the Republican polling firm Cygnal, said Trump’s trade war is giving Republican candidates further reason to separate themselves from the president, whose approval ratings have dropped as gas prices have risen as a result of his war with Iran.

“With this being so salient to the states closer to the Canadian border, it’s a way for them to say, ‘I’m standing up for you — above the president, above Congress, above Canada, above anybody,’” said Buchanan.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin) claims Canada has been “jamming our dairy industry for a long period of time,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is fighting hard to ward off a Democratic takeover of her seat in a state that is steadily getting more critical of Trump.

Collins has called Trump’s trade war with neighboring Canada a “mistake,”

Meanwhile several Michigan auto suppliers and Maine lumber companies have locations on both sides of the border, reports the Post. Iowa has close agricultural trade ties with Canada, including exports of farm machinery.

Trump amped up the trade war between the two ally nations in July, when he announced that he would impose 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian goods. The new 50 percent tariffs took effect late last month after negotiations between the two countries collapsed, with alcohol, dairy products and a list of other Canadian imports getting hit with new fees for U.S. consumers. Then Canada retaliated on Sept. 8 with new tariffs on U.S. goods, including aluminum, dairy, agricultural equipment, plastics, paper products and appliances.

Trump later announced new bans on the import of some Canadian alcohol, motorcycles, molasses and other products beginning Sept. 29.

But Michigan did more than $66 billion in trade with Canada last year, according to the Post, and it has a “closely intertwined manufacturing sector” that regularly exchanges products with neighboring Ontario. This means Canadian tariffs on American steel and aluminum, nuts and bolts, rods for steering wheels and other small parts will boost costs for manufacturers who are “already worn out after years of supply chain disruptions from the covid-19 pandemic and changing federal policy on electric vehicles.”

“I think we reached fatigue about a month ago,” said Glenn Stevens, executive director of MichAuto, an advocacy group for the state’s auto industry, speaking with the Post. “It’s a difficult business.”

This leaves Michigan Senate candidates like Mike Rogers — who is running for an open seat against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed — tottering on the edge of embracing Trump while criticizing him for his disapproving voters. In August, Rogers wrote in a post on X that Trump “is right to put America First” but that “trade isn’t one-size-fits-all.” And he pledged to work with Trump “to broker a fair deal with Canada” that supports Michigan farms, automakers and manufacturing.

For Republican candidates, the chaotic trade war “injects an issue they probably thought they never had to deal with,” said John Truscott, founder of Michigan PR firm Truscott Rossman and who once served as a spokesperson for Michigan Gov. John Engler. “As a candidate, when you want to be on offense on things, this adds a vulnerability.”

President Donald Trump's ongoing war against Iran remains unpopular both with the American public and with the international community. Now a new report reveals that experts are convinced the president's "rinse and repeat" approach to handling the conflict reveals that he lacks either a plan to win or a means of gracefully exiting.

"Foreign policy experts say the latest round of hostilities point to a reality that has become increasingly clear of Mr. Trump’s handling of the war: He has run out of options," reported by The New York Times' Erica L. Green on Wednesday. Green proceeded to interview Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who worked in the State Department during Trump's first term.

“The strategy has been rinse and repeat, whether it’s rhetorical or kinetic action,” Bartlett told Green. “It’s been absolutely shocking how the United States has been exposed for a lack of a plan of engagement, and a lack of a plan to either win or exit this war.”

Bartlett also pointed out that Trump's repeatedly professed hope that the Iranian people might take over the government exposes the fact that he has no strategy for winning the conflict with the American military.

“When you get to the bottom,” he added, “you go back to the top of the ladder of engagement.”

In addition to Bartlett, a top think tank scholar pointed out that Trump's actions in Iran reveal that he planned on prevailing through the use of overwhelming raw power when the situation on the ground is more complicated.

“The U.S. has demonstrated its capacity, and that it continues to have one of the most effective militaries in the world,” Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told Green. “I think the challenge is this asymmetric warfare — where we do have the most effective military in the world, but smaller powers with far less capacity, strategically deployed, could still wreak havoc and make it difficult for us to achieve 100 percent of our objectives.”

Green elaborated on exactly how Trump's foreign policy moves in Iran have tipped his hand and revealed the weakness of the cards he is playing.

"The post followed a 24-hour stretch during which Mr. Trump’s by-now familiar playbook for the conflict was on full display," Green wrote. "The president went from boasting that Iran was defeated militarily, a 'failed nation' in economic disarray, to threatening an apocalyptic attack that would leave “very little left” of the country after it had defied his declarations and demands."

She added, "By Wednesday morning, as Iran and the United States assessed the damage of the most recent attacks, Mr. Trump was back to trolling the country on social media, asking his followers whether the United States should name the Strait of Hormuz the 'Trump Strait.' Foreign policy experts say the latest round of hostilities point to a reality that has become increasingly clear of Mr. Trump’s handling of the war: He has run out of options."

Speaking to AlterNet in April, an expert economist noted that the ongoing war is exerting pressure on the American people because — by closing the Strait of Hormuz — Iran has exacerbated America's pre-existing inflation problem.

“I would guess that yes, destruction of Iranian (and some other) energy facilities in the Persian Gulf area will have at least a medium-term effect keeping prices for crude oil and chemical fertilizer high, and that in turn means gasoline prices may come down only slowly,” Dr. Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, told AlterNet. “Same for other petroleum-based products such as plastics, skin creams, and so on. The high potential of conflict also adds risk premiums to shipping and other costs.”

He continued, “Longer-term, lots of open questions. One is whether the administration will really concede that Iran has a right to close the Strait of Hormuz and assess tolls on shipping passing through it. That would make the smaller Gulf monarchies and to some extent Iraq reliant on Iranian good will for all of their exports. Likewise, Asian countries are the main buyers of Persian Gulf energy, and their supplies would be much less secure.”