public banking

During a Wednesday press conference, President Donald Trump could not wait to announce that crews will begin refilling the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after spending over a month resurfacing it with "American flag blue" sealant.

But what caught hecklers was the moment Trump pulled out a poster in the Oval Office comparing the size of the reflecting pool to that of some of the largest buildings in the U.S., as if the investment he put on U.S. taxpayers’ had done anything to extend the length of the pool—or that a rectangular water-filled hole could compare to the girders, architecture and design that goes into the Empire State Building of the World Trade Center.

“He has to pump up those rookie numbers,” offered on critic on X, who posted an augmented graph containing a much longer, red bar labeled “My gas bill” alongside Trump’s blue reflecting pool.

“Most un-math graph ever!” quipped another critic.

Many others included simple “head slap” emojis, while another said on X “This is the chart you make when you’re gunning for that MQ and need to prove you’re better than your peers (but you’ve been shamming).”

The worst MAGA X users could muster in response was splitting hairs with CBS reporters for referring to the blue sealant as “paint.”

Trump’s Reflecting Pool renovation is already brimming with accusations of corruption and of enrichment of the president’s allies. Trump was already flip-flopping on the controversy of who he hired to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

“President Trump previously said he had personally chosen the contractor to fix the Reflecting Pool, because of the good work they did on his golf club's swimming pools,” The New York Times’ David A. Farenthold posted on X. “Now, Trump says does not know them.”

Farenthold posted his comment after he and fellow New York Times journalist Maxine Joselow ran a Tuesday piece reporting that “Interior Dept. staffers have raised questions about the quality and speed of the work being done to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to documents.”

Meanwhile, Trump is diverting “at least $60 million” from million from a National Park Service (NPS) entrance fee fund to pay for his various pet projects around Washington. DC,” reported The Hill’s Rachel Frazin.

An additional $13 million from the fund is going toward Trump’s renovations on the National Mall Reflecting Pool. That last allocation, Frazin added, is not listed in the federal database of NPS projects, which raises questions about how it is being funded. All that is known for sure is that $7 million is coming from park fees.

President Donald Trump told a reporter on Wednesday that the January 6th insurrection, which Trump instigated to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, was conducted by people who “went there with love.”

After CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins asked Trump to confirm that his $1.8 billion slush fund to insurrectionists is indeed dead, Trump said he’d need to check with his lawyers before attacking the people behind the fund.

“As far as I'm concerned, it was a beautiful thing,” Trump told Collins. “It was something I was — I didn't make it, but I was — I heard that — I thought that was the greatest thing, because people like you have abused our people so badly. The fake news, like CNN, like the New York Times, and like others, have abused our people.”

After telling the assembled journalists to be quiet, Trump claimed that they “have abused our people so badly, and you should be ashamed of yourself. You. You used to be a conservative. She was a conservative from Alabama — can you believe it? But CNN in particular — CNN does such false reporting. But now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. I doubt it, but it's hard to straighten garbage out.”

Trump’s reference to CNN’s “new ownership” involves David and Larry Ellison, the billionaire Oracle founder and his son, who have reportedly promised Trump they would fire journalists he dislikes much as they allegedly have gutted CBS News at his behest.

“These are people that are great people, that would — destroy their families, have been destroyed, many suicides,” Trump wrote. “They committed suicide, people that went there with love. They went there with love.”

He added, “You know, when I made that speech earlier in the day — tremendous crowd. I hate to say it because they'll say, ‘Oh, I was wrong on the number,’ but I believe it's the largest crowd I've ever spoken to, by — by twice. The biggest crowd, I think, bigger than the inaugurations, bigger than anything. And there was so much love and friendship. It was the most amazing thing. People were crying.”

After again insisting that he be allowed to finish, Trump concluded that “those people have been abused by you, and by others, and by the politicians, by the Democrats, and dumb people. They want to have open borders. They want to have transgender utilization of your children. They want to have men playing in women's sports. They want to have high taxes. They turn down — you know, they fought us on the tax bill, and they fought us because they want people to pay high taxes. Because they're crazy. There's something wrong with them. There's something wrong with you. It's a shame.”

Users on X immediately blasted Trump’s statements.

Nothing says "love" like poop on Pelosi's desk, a Capitol Police Officer getting his eye gouged, and a bespoke guillotine for the VP," posted one critic on X, immediately after Trump's claim went live.

Similarly, another critic posted “a day of love” next to a GIF of the insurrectionists breaking down Capitol doors, and @JumboElliott76 posted: “Bragging about an attempted insurrection. We're in the stupidest time.”

While Trump claims that his $1.8 billion slush fund no longer exists, insiders are skeptical. Trump created the fund by suing his own IRS for $10 billion and then having his own Justice Department, which was assigned to defend the IRS, reach a settlement with him. They rushed to do so before May 20th because the presiding judge demanded they appear before her by that date in order to make sure the deal was legal.

“You only need to look at Donald Trump's long history of lies… to disbelieve the notion that the settlement fund and everything associated with it is going to vanish,” Norm Eisen, co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action, said in a statement. “We are fighting to erase the slush fund. It's a disgrace.” Eisen added that forbidding the IRS from investigating Trump or his family is “the worst example of corruption in the history of the American presidency.”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

President Donald Trump has close ties to Silicon Valley billionaires, relying on them to shape policy on everything from waging war against Iran and deregulating cryptocurrency to paving the way for rampant AI in American society.

“Multiple candidates backed heavily by Big Tech executives floundered in Tuesday’s primary elections, as concerns about the corrosive effects of new technologies such as artificial intelligence tools continue to mount,” reported MS NOW’s Ja’han Jones on Wednesday. “The clearest examples came in California, where tech executives spent ungodly amounts of money attempting to make sure their chosen candidates emerged victorious.”

Jones listed examples of how this happened including in the California gubernatorial primary, during which San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan went down to humiliating defeat despite being funded by tech executives like Google co-founder Sergey Brin and pro-Trump Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Jones also cited Ethan Agarwal, a tech investor who challenged Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) after being funded by pro-Trump Silicon Valley executive Marc Andreessen in large part by opposing Khanna’s proposed one-time 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires.

“The results bring to mind a discussion MS NOW hosts Michael Steele and Stephanie Ruhle had on primary election night, about the massive amounts of money Big Tech executives are shoveling out to reshape American politics,” Jones wrote. “Indeed, the issue of money in American politics is one that shouldn’t be ignored. At the same time, Tuesday’s losses by billionaire-backed candidates are a reminder that candidate quality and policy positions still matter to voters, who can (for now) outmatch deep-pocketed donors looking to put their thumb on the scale.”

Since returning to power in 2025, Trump has assiduously courted Silicon Valley’s most powerful billionaires, who have returned the favor by donating generously to Trump’s various causes and to pro-Trump candidates.

“As the historian Richard Hofstadter noted, a fierce anti-intellectual spirit has long animated American culture, but it has typically targeted the knowledge elite from below,” The Nation's Elizabeth Spiers, a digital media strategist and writer living in Brooklyn, explained in April. “What’s striking about today’s brand of anti-intellectualism is that it infuses the American knowledge elite; it stems from the bedrock conviction among tech oligarchs that they have mastered everything and have nothing left to learn. In this cloistered vision of tech-driven learning, they believe that deep intellectual work—the kind you do when you author a complex piece of music, for example—has little or no inherent value.”

Spiers added, “Their disdain for it has fueled their attacks on higher education, the humanities, and learning for its own sake, which they believe has no purpose beyond its inevitable digitization and monetization.” She cited, as one example, Andreessen himself among others.

“The examples are everywhere” of their anti-intellectual tendencies, Spiers wrote. “[Palantir co-founder] Peter Thiel’s crusade against college attendance and his program that subsidizes high school students who want to forgo it, [venture capitalist] Marc Andreessen’s boasts that he actively avoids introspection, the gleeful prediction of Thiel’s Palantir colleague Alex Karp that AI will hurt educated women the most.”

Spiers added, “That all of these scourges of learning for learning’s sake are themselves beneficiaries of privileged educations doesn’t matter: As ardent monopolists, they’ve managed to believe they’ve cornered the market on critical thinking. Everyone else needn’t be troubled by the rigors of learning, since they exist solely to serve as drones in the tech regimes of the future.”

The Democratic base is split on where they want the party to go — left, center, or stay put — but the majority can agree on their dissatisfaction with the party’s direction, says CNN data guru Harry Enten.

Fewer Democrats are currently satisfied with their party than they were after President Joe Biden’s debate performance that led to him dropping his reelection bid, Enten noted.

Democratic voters’ “p—— offness” Enten added on social media, “has never been higher with their own party in Congress.”

Noting that 46 percent of Democratic voters currently are satisfied with the Democratic Party, Enten reiterated that the majority are dissatisfied.

Looking specifically at Democrats’ net approval of congressional Democrats, Enten explained that after the shutdown in October of last year, congressional Democrats had a net approval rating of plus 22 percent.

“Today, though, look at that,” he said, pointing to a net approval rating of minus 9 points.

“That is an over 30 point drop, at the climb, right into the ocean, right there,” he said.

“And I will note it had never been negative. Democrats had always had a positive net approval rating of their own party in Congress in every Congress before this one.”

“Congressional Democrats are underwater with their own party, and that’s why I think these primaries are going to be so interesting, because they’re going to tell us, okay, which way do Democrats want their party to go?”

He said the “big problem” is “Democrats aren’t sure what direction they want their party to go.”

Nearly three in ten (28 percent) want the party to move to the left, he said. Less than one in five (18 percent) want the party to not move at all. And nearly half — 47 percent — want the party to move to the center.

“This is a party divided, where they’re not actually giving a clear message of where they want their party to go,” he noted.

Offering a note of caution to lawmakers in primary races, Enten said that “if all of a sudden, Democrats are actually going to move to the left — which is not what their party wants — that will actually upset the rest of the electorate.”

Enten said the “only thing” that unites the Democratic base right now is “they are very upset with Donald Trump, and I think the candidates who are able to actually capture that, that’s the candidates who are going to advance to the general election.”

Opinion contributor Max Burns tells the Hill that America’s 250th birthday should have been “a celebration to end all celebrations.” But in its place comes a frayed presentation of one injured man’s delicate feelings.

“The nation’s biggest birthday yet could have been an opportunity for both commemoration and recommitment, a festival marking a quarter millennium of democracy and a challenge to envision a bolder, better, brighter America for the generations to come,” writes Burns. “Instead, we got a canceled Vanilla Ice concert, a half-painted Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, and a massive UFC arena on the White House lawn.”

Few Americans appear excited about the America 250 celebration because it’s become President Donald Trump’s America 250 celebration — and people are weary of paying attention to Trum and his attempt to rebrand the nation into a party dedicated to himself.

“Given his talk of a MAGA rally on the National Mall and marking the nation’s big day with his own face on a new $250 bill, Trump’s bottomless ego has made it impossible for anyone who isn’t a die-hard supporter to enjoy what should be a shared cultural moment,” said Burns.

Making matters worse is the unravelling architecture of U.S. culture, with Burns pointing out a Fall 2025 Harvard Youth Poll finding that only one-third of young people believe Americans with different political views actually want what is best for the country. And just 17 percent of respondents say they believe the government will “do what is right,” according to the Pew Research Center.

“We increasingly view ourselves as surrounded by enemies and deceivers, lost in a media landscape that constantly tells us no one can be trusted,” said Burns. “… Trump built his political brand on feeding conspiracy theories that directed hate and suspicion toward everyone from scientists to school teachers to nonprofit organizations, windmills, Pope Leo XIV and even his own political party. Now those conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, to the point where Americans no longer see themselves as one culture but two, locked in deadly combat for the future of their nation.”

It’s a bad time to throw a party, said Burns, much less a party twisted into a celebration of “Trump worship,” or a “pep rally for the MAGA right.”

The president’s mighty celebration has fallen so pitiably to pieces with artists abandoning the farce that he dismissed his own idea as “overpriced” and “boring” before demanding it be canceled.

“In Trump’s mind, the public can have him center stage for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration or it can have nothing. It has always been obvious that Trump had a hokey and low-class vision for the America 250 celebration; his interest in celebrating the country and its people never ran much deeper than the chance to slap his name on a few branded events,” said Burns. “What Trump doesn’t realize is that Americans would prefer nothing at all to another one of Trump’s self-glorifying publicity stunts. His record-low approval rating should make that painfully clear.

One of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics, Rep. Al Green (R-TX), triggered Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin in a heated exchange on Wednesday about the Trump administration’s racist policies.

“Racists take offense at peaceful protests,” Green told Mullin, referring to the administration’s policy of targeting immigrants from racial minority backgrounds. “A racist, Mr. Secretary, would do what happened to Ruby—”

Mullin shot back, “Are you calling me a racist?”

As Green attempted to reclaim his time from Mullin, the former Oklahoma senator continued to demand an answer as to whether he was being accused of racism. Green replied by telling him to “shut up” and insisting that it was Green’s time to talk, not Mullin’s.

“I’m not gonna let anybody call me a racist, chairman,” Mullin responded.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), the House Committee on Homeland Security Chair, had interjected previously when he complained that a different Democratic representative had pushed a “flat-out lie” behind him. When Green reiterated that he had not called Mullin a racist and that this was his time to speak, Garbarino told Green to “suspend” and allow Mullin to claim the time traditionally allotted to Green.

“No one will call me a racist,” Mullin said, pointing out that his family is part-Cherokee.

After Garbarino said that he suspended the clock and that Green would not lose time to speak because of Mullin’s interruptions, the Homeland Security Secretary insisted he was justified to cut off Green.

“I will continue to interrupt as long as someone’s … calling me a racist,” Mullin told Green and Garbarino.

“I agree,” Garbarino told Mullin, again seeming to side with him over Green. “As I said before there will be no addressing anyone’s character in a negative way. By the way, Mr. Green, when you’re speaking, I need you to speak into the microphone because I can’t hear you up here.”

Mullin then claimed Green lost his recent primary because of his rhetoric.

“Evidently, his constituents heard enough of him because they voted him out of office,” Mullin retorted.

Pleading for civility, Garbarino responded by saying, “Mr. Secretary, please.”

Despite Mullin implying that Green’s own actions cost him his House primary, in fact he lost to Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX) after both lawmakers’ districts were gerrymandered together by Republicans to shore up their chances of winning in 2016. Menefee had an advantage over Green because the cryptocurrency industry invested millions of dollars in his campaign.

"Rep. Green's defeat proves that anti-crypto hostility carries real electoral consequences, making him the first Democratic incumbent this cycle to lose his seat," Geoff Vetter, a spokesperson for the pro-cryptocurrency super PAC Fairshake, said in a statement about defeating Green. "Fairshake was the difference-maker in this race, and we will continue to aggressively back leaders like Rep. Menefee across the country."

When President Donald Trump came into office, he tasked the world's richest man with making significant budget cuts that are now causing a "real-life horror movie" to unfold.

A column by Ben Smilowitz, the founder of the Disaster Accountability Project and SmartResponse.org, warned that the situation with Ebola in Africa is growing worse by the day and it's due in part to the massive budget cuts to international public health funds.

This outbreak isn't the first, but former administrations dealt with it in dramatically different ways. When the outbreak began in 2014, the Obama administration deployed personnel to West Africa and built a coordinated response with countries around the world.

"Between 2014-2016, 11,000 people died across multiple West African countries after experiencing multiple organ failure and uncontrollable bleeding, vomiting, and diarrhea," wrote Smilowitz in "The Hill."

The new version of Ebloa is more deadly, he explained. There are already more than 900 suspected cases and at least 230 deaths. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that each infected person transmits the virus to 1.5 to 2.5 others. There is no cure.

It has been 18 months since the Trump administration "dismantled USAID, withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, fired thousands of skilled public health experts, and cut 615 of 770 identifiable USAID global health awards (totaling $12.7 billion) that funded disease surveillance, outbreak prevention, emergency response, and crisis operations," the column said.

All of the work that was done after the first Ebola outbreak to prevent such a disaster was "demolished," explained Smilowitz.

He called on Congress to restore the public health infrastructure that would ensure "rapid testing, trained health workers, protective equipment, case isolation, safe transport, contact tracing, community trust, and international coordination."

The plan, Smilowitz said, begins with restoring funding specifically for the Ebola response. Second, he called for USAID and CDC to be restored and completely rebuilt. He also urged that the U.S. "reengage the World Health Organization" at the level that it once was. That includes the "technical working groups, emergency coordination, data-sharing, expert deployments and funding channels tied to outbreak response." Such a relationship could help ensure early-warning systems are in place and rapid response teams could be deployed.

Smilowitz also called on the U.S. to fund research into different Ebola strains, as well as research into developing vaccines and therapeutics. It would ensure that responses could be much faster in the future.

Finally, he said that the U.S. must step in to fund "groups on the ground, on the front-lines, working to treat individuals and prevent the spread of this deadly virus." They have basic needs that could easily be funded, like feeding health workers as well as the infected who are quarantining or even items like soap.

He closed by calling the matter a "dire warning" that Congress should act on, because the president doesn't have the best track record in navigating disease outbreaks.

"The Trump administration has proven its absolute disregard for public health preparedness. Congressional leadership is therefore needed to guide life-saving investments," wrote Smilowitz. "When the U.S. actively demonstrates its leadership and applies its technical expertise to stop outbreaks, infection rates and death rates plummet. ... Diseases don’t care about ideology or politics and will simply spread at faster and faster rates."

OK Magazine Executive Editor Rob Shuter says big acts are once again eyeing a return to the embattled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts now that President Donald Trump’s name mat soon be getting exorcised from the front of the building.

A federal judge recently ordered that Trump cannot rename the Kennedy Center, nor may he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations. And according to Shuter, big name artists are already chomping at the bit to raise the curtain. Leading the conversation, he said, are the producers of Hamilton.

“Hamilton would be the ultimate comeback,” one insider told Shuter. “It was the most high-profile withdrawal, and everyone knows what a return would symbolize.”

Shuter reports that the blockbuster musical famously “canceled its planned engagement amid the controversy surrounding the center’s leadership, becoming the most visible sign of the entertainment community’s backlash.”But it was not the only entertainer to pull out. Several actors, singers, bands, composers, comedians and other performers withdrew from show commitments after Trump insisted on plugging his name awkwardly before the name the building was constructed to eulogize. The president also made himself the chairman of the Kennedy Center board, fired several others on the board and replaced them with loyalists.

Artists soon abandoned the building en masse, and with a vacant lineup and empty seats Trump announced that the center would be closing for renovation. His announcement landed him merciless ridicule on social media.

But now, Shuter is pleased to report that “insiders say the mood is beginning to shift.” And it has everything to do with federal Judge Christopher Cooper’s recent Trump-ectomy of the building.

“A lot of artists never had a problem with the Kennedy Center itself,” Shuter reports another source close to the situation telling him. “Their issue was what it represented now under President Trump.”

Other big names now in discussion for return includes Issa Rae, Rhiannon Giddens, and Manuel Miranda, according to insiders. Additionally “several prominent arts organizations that previously pulled scheduled appearances.”

“There’s genuine interest in coming back,” another source told Shuter. “Many artists feel the Kennedy Center belongs to performers and audiences — not politicians.”

The way Shuter sees it, artists are seeing the return of the Kennedy Center as the victorious reclamation of art from a noxious cloud. He added that entertainment insiders expect “a wave of major bookings if the venue can restore stability and rebuild trust.”

“The first question everyone is asking is who returns first,” said another theater source to Shuter. “The second is whether Hamilton makes a triumphant comeback.”

“And in Washington, that could be the standing ovation everyone has been waiting for,” he said.

A prominent physician is calling for President Donald Trump’s doctor to hold a press conference to answer questions over what he says are “lingering concerns” about the president’s health.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at The George Washington University, and a CNN medical analyst, says that Trump’s recent seven-day absence from public view only served to heighten concerns.

Last week, Trump — who is quickly approaching his 80th birthday — had his third annual checkup in 13 months, the fourth of his second term in office. He appeared in a televised Cabinet meeting last Wednesday, and then was not seen again until appearing in a podcast that was published Wednesday morning.

“I do physicals, because I just want, I think I have an obligation to do it, but I just came out with very, very good results, and I took a test, a cognitive test, and I got 100% on it. I got, as the expression goes, I aced it,” Trump said in the podcast.

“With lingering concerns following the president’s recent physical exam, and the president’s prolonged absence from the public eye, the White House should make available the president’s physician to answer questions from the press,” Dr. Reiner wrote.

Trump exacerbated those concerns when he appeared in the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast with what appeared to be a swollen right eye and his recurring swollen hand.

The White House Physician to the President, Captain Sean Barbabella, released notes from the president’s checkup that left many questions, critics say, including why the White House waited three days to release the memo.

Speaking about the delayed results, Dr. Reiner told CNN, “the only reason not to release a rosy report right away is that maybe it’s not so rosy, or this is some information you don’t want the public to hear.”

“I’ve read this report multiple times, and every time I read it, it actually seems to be thinner and thinner,” Reiner noted. “And I’m actually not sure what testing the president underwent last week.”

Reiner added that there were very few tests disclosed in Dr. Barbabella’s memo, “and what was confusing, to, you know, many of the physicians who reviewed these reports, is that it appeared that the president had underwent repeat testing, and I’m not sure that’s true.”

“But the president was at Walter Reed for three hours, so what actually was conducted there?” he asked.

He also noted that Barbabella’s report indicated the list of medications the president is taking “was shortened or abbreviated for readability and relevance.”

“I’m not sure what readability means,” Reiner added, “but every medication the president is taking is relevant, and they only released two cholesterol medicines and aspirin.”

President Donald Trump is losing support over his backing of $250 bills with his face on them, according to a recent survey.

“Over a quarter of President Trump's MAGA loyalists don't want the Treasury to print $250 bills with his countenance, according to a new YouGov poll,” reported Axios' Josephine Walker on Wednesday. “... Trump enjoys 91 percent approval overall among his most loyal base, but less than half of self-identified MAGA Republicans want to see Trump's face on cash.”

Walker added, “Roughly 26 percent of MAGA supporters oppose putting Trump's face on the currency, while 48 percent approve of the plan, according to the poll. Another 26 percent are unsure.” The survey polled 1,604 U.S. adults between May 29 - June 1 and has a margin for error of ± 3.5 percent.

Walker elaborated that even within Trump’s own Republican Party, 35 percent of respondents oppose Trump’s face on currency while only 40 percent approve and another 24 percent are unsure.

Even if Republicans overwhelmingly wanted Trump’s face on currency, however, the law may technically prevent him from putting it there.

“Congress passed a law prohibiting the depiction of a living person on currency notes, bonds or securities in 1866,” Walker wrote. “Another law specifies that currency is minted in $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 denominations. A $250 bill is not included.”

In response to the negative publicity surrounding Trump’s proposed $250 bill, Axios reported that “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a congressional committee Wednesday that the prototypes were an attempt to be ‘prepared in advance’ in case legislation authorizing the bill gained momentum.”

Bessent added, "That was in coordination with pending legislation in the Congress to change the requirement that a person must be deceased to be on the currency,” insisting that the Treasury Department will “follow the law.”

Trump has been pushing for putting his face on US currency since last year, when one of his chief congressional supporters insisted that he be honored with a distinction always previously conferred on deceased leaders. Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) said he would cosponsor legislation putting Trump's face on a $250 bill as a way to "reflect the courage of our Founders" and acknowledge politicians who "revived the American Dream."

"Let us honor the president who has made America great again," Barr explained. "A $250 bill bearing Donald J. Trump’s image is not only an appropriate tribute — it is a powerful reminder that America’s best days are still ahead."

Writing for the far-right Washington Reporter Substack newsletter, Barr described Trump as "the most historic president of our time." Later he claimed that “generations from now, when Americans hold that bill in their hands, they will be reminded that at a pivotal moment in our history, Donald J. Trump restored prosperity, security, and peace.”