TIMELAPSE: Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool refills with water after Trump paint job

The Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial is once again filled with water following President Donald Trump's renovations.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/timelapse-lincoln-memorial-reflecting-pool-refills-with-water-after-trump-paint-job

#TopNews #News #Trump #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool #theLincolnMemorial

Friday Reads: Trump Is Not a Manly Man. Manly Men are Not Obsessed With Redecorating

Good Morning!!

It’s Friday, and I’m filling in for Dakinikat. I had another one of my sleepless nights last night, so please forgive me if this post is a little weird.

I know this isn’t politically correct, but I’ve always thought that Trump was a bit effeminate–in his looks and his behavior. How many “manly men” are obsessed with interior decoration even in the middle of a war?

Not to mention that he’s in an apparently loveless marriage. His wife doesn’t sleep with him or even live with him, and reportedly has to be paid to appear in public with him. Maybe Melania is just a beard.

It seems that I’m not alone. Ashley Parker of The Atlantic agrees with me (gift article): The King of Queens. President Trump loves “handsome” men, especially the muscular ones.

President Trump delights in playing what he calls “the gay national anthem” whenever he wants to rev up a crowd. He’s obsessed with Elton John, was once friendly with Liza Minnelli, and has a Liberace-esque flair for gilded interiors. One of his favorite sports to watch—mixed martial arts—is basically sweaty, semi-naked dudes. And he is a deep and vocal admirer of the physique of fellow men, often announcing which ones he would cast in a movie: “They’re perfect specimens,” he said last year of the military pilots who had visited him in the Oval Office; “He looks like the Marlboro Man,” he cooed about a former Iowa state senator; “Young, handsome guy. It’s always nice to be young and handsome,” he complimented the president of Paraguay.

Some of Trump’s allies note that years before gay marriage was legalized, Trump had gay friends, took pro-gay stances, and allowed gay people to join his private club in Palm Beach starting in the mid-1990s. Ric Grenell became the first openly gay person to hold a Cabinet position when Trump appointed him acting director of national intelligence. Grenell, who is now the president’s envoy for special missions, once called Trump “the most pro-gay president in American history,” a title that Trump said he was honored to have.

Trump “dancing” to YMCA.

To be clear: Trump says he is attracted only to women and, in fact, has been married to three of them. He once hosted the Miss Universe pageant, was caught on tape saying that he loves to grab women “by the pussy,” and was found civilly liable for sexually abusing a woman. Loads more have accused him of sexual misconduct. (Trump has denied the accusations.) “Women—I like. Men—no, I don’t have any interest,” Trump affirmed at a Board of Peace meeting earlier this year.

But there’s also little doubt that Trump has unabashedly embraced the aesthetic—the je ne sais quoi—of a certain kind of gay man. Some who are sympathetic to the president have gone even further. Blaze Media, a conservative outlet started by the talk-radio host Glenn Beck, ran a story in 2024 headlined “Donald Trump: Our First Gay President,” much in the way people talked about Bill Clinton as having been the first Black one. The story notes, in a section titled “Queen of Queens”: “He blows kisses to Hulk Hogan, weighs in on Fashion Week (‘used to be so glamorous and exciting! No stars, no fun—just boring’), and his rivalry with lesbian Rosie O’Donnell remains a gem of the catty naughties social feuds.” Pod Save America, a liberal podcast started by former aides to President Obama, declared that Trump would be a gay icon, if only he had “liberal social values.” The president, the episode’s title observes, “DEMANDS a Ballroom at the White House, Loves Musicals, & Wears Make-up.”

James Kirchick, the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, told me that Trump’s personal story, a guy from Queens making it big in Manhattan, tracks with the “typical gay story” of men of his era. In another life, he continued, the 79-year-old could be a classic aging gay, “living in Wilton Manors, sitting at a bar, making bitchy comments to everyone who comes in.” (Of course, Trump’s perch from the Oval Office confers much more power than a bar stool does, and his comments have moved markets and sent allies reeling.) “It’s a gay man frozen in amber in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before AIDS,” Kirchick said, referring to the type of gay man he believes Trump would embody. “It’s a certain age and a certain era. It’s very campy.”

The comedian and podcaster Caleb Hearon deemed Trump to be of the “old-school-gay” era, “because, you know, gay guys used to be mean before media training,” he said in an interview with Ziwe Fumudoh on her YouTube comedy show. The president, Hearon continued, should have become “a red-carpet fashion adviser,” the sort who would say things like: “That dress, honey. I don’t think so!” “That would have been amazing. I would have watched every night,” he said. “Instead, he ran for office on a platform of mass deportation, so that’s where things got tricky, obviously.”

A little bit more:

Trump’s continued patter about men’s bodies has also drawn attention. As my colleague Marie-Rose Sheinerman and I dug into examples of these corporeal appraisals, we were surprised by their sheer quantity and just how much Trump seems to delight in complimenting other men. He has given the compliment of “handsome” at least 68 times so far in his second term—or 69 times, if we count the two Thanksgiving turkeys he also collectively described as such. He is unapologetic in his preference for Cabinet members and administration officials who seem to come out of “central casting”; he praised Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is gay, for his Hollywood-worthy bona fides, before appreciatively noting that “under that beautiful exterior is a killer.”

He can almost never resist commenting on the physique of brawny men: “Look at the muscles on this guy!” he said, gazing upon a young cadet while delivering the commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy last week. Two days later, he took pains to praise the New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart, calling him a “beautiful guy” and waxing poetic about his “legs like tree trunks.” And speaking about the golfer Arnold Palmer in 2024, Trump managed to both reassert his preference for women while also remarking on the legend’s masculinity: “I love women, but this guy—this guy—this is a guy that was all man.” (He also noted Palmer’s powerful swing with “stiff-shafted clubs,” and his, um, alleged other assets: “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there—they said, Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.”)

I wonder if Trump would have acted on his attraction to men if he had grown up in a less repressed era? Check this out:

Paul Baker, the author of Camp!: The Story of the Attitude That Conquered the World, told me over email that when it comes to Trump, making the distinction between camp and campy is important. The latter is the more self-conscious, ironic adoption of camp. But Trump is “the original, pure form—it’s when someone’s behaviour is outrageous, excessive, subversive and unintentionally funny,” he said. “The person doesn’t realise they’re funny or that they’re camp. They’re just being themselves.”

OK, I’d better not quote any more of that article.

This piece is by Julie Sidivy at Politico, dated October 25, 2016: Donald Trump Talks Like a Woman.

In the 2016 presidential contest, there has been one thing that supporters and detractors of Donald Trump have agreed on. The chest-pounding real estate mogul from New York has emerged as the quintessentially masculine candidate. Love him or loathe him, Trump’s campaign has been defined by the ways he has asserted his maleness—mocking his opponents for their low energy, bullying his critics, sneering at perceived weakness, boasting of his sexual prowess, vowing to hit back twice as hard as he’s been hit.

But academic research has picked up something that thousands of hours of campaign punditry has missed completely: Donald Trump talks like a woman. He might be preoccupied with grading women’s looks, penis size and “locker room talk,” but the way he speaks and the actual words he uses make for a distinctly feminine style. In fact, his speaking style is more feminine by far than any other candidate in the 2016 cycle, more feminine than any other presidential candidate since 2004.

More than just a comical curiosity, this fact about Trump’s mode of communication might help explain how a candidate who has been so extensively rebuked for his mean-spirited attacks on immigrants, women, the disabled and even prisoners of war has managed to attract support from millions of voters who adore the way he says openly what they feel. To some, Trump’s ascent is evidence that society still prizes the masculine over the feminine, but what’s happening is more complex, and Trump’s style has qualities that go beyond mere blustery aggression. Research has shown that the more feminine a speaker’s style, the more likable and trustworthy he seems. For Trump, who has been derided for his multiple contradictions and outright lies, that advantage might well have persuaded his supporters to listen to him and not the chorus of media fact checkers.

It’s not just a lazy stereotype that men and women speak differently. In fact, researchers who have sifted through thousands of language samples from men and women have identified clear statistical differences. Some of these differences are exactly what you’d expect—men are more likely to swear and use words that signal aggression, while women are more likely to use tentative language (words like maybe, seems or perhaps) and emotion-laden words (beautiful, despise). But other patterns are far from obvious. For example, contrary to the common stereotype that men can’t resist talking about themselves, women are heavier users than men of the pronoun “I” whereas the reverse is true for the pronoun “we”; women produce more common verbs (are, start, went) and auxiliary verbs (am, don’t, will), while men utter more articles (a, the) and prepositions (to, with, above); women use fewer long words than men when speaking or writing across a broad range of contexts.

Jennifer Jones, a doctoral candidate of political psychology at the University of California at Irvine, has combined these statistics into an index capturing the ratio of “feminine” to “masculine” words, and applied it to the language of 35 political candidates over the past decade. Hillary Clinton’s language falls above the average on this index—more feminine than George W. Bush’s, but less so than Barack Obama’s.

But Donald Trump is a stunning outlier. His linguistic style is startlingly feminine, so much so that the chasm between Trump and the next most feminine speaker, Ben Carson, is about as great as the difference between Carson and the least feminine candidate, Jim Webb. And Trump earns his ranking not just because he talks a lot about himself or avoids big words (both of which are true); according to Jones, he also shows feminine patterns on the more subtle measures, such as his use of prepositions and articles. The key then is not what Trump talks about—making Mexico pay for the wall or bombing the hell out of ISIL—but rather how he says it.

There’s much more at the Politico link.

Here we are in the middle of a war that Trump started, and he seems much more interested in his decorating projects than what is going on in his conflict in the Middle East. Some examples:

Dan Diamond at The Washington Post: Trump fumes at Congress and courts for holding up his ballroom.

President Donald Trump has made little secret that his planned White House ballroom is a top priority, invoking the project more frequently than most other issues. And in recent weeks he has raged at anyone — including a federal judge, a Senate official and a local historian — whose actions threaten to slow construction.

On Monday, the president shared on social media a copy of a legal filing that closely resembled his own words and contended that the weekend’s shooting outside the White House campus proved the need for a ballroom.

Trump at the ballroom construction site.

“Without the construction of this great Project, the President cannot safely conduct the business of the United States,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche and two other senior Justice Department officials lawyers wrote, urging a federal judge to dissolve his order that could soon halt construction. “This is a terrible, tremendously harmful case to the United States of America, and all it stands for!”

The filing also mocked the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to halt the project, claiming that the group had been “defunded by Congress due to a total lack of respect for them.” Trump posted all six pages of the filing on his Truth Social platform.

Trump’s ballroom project has embodied executive power and its limitations.

The president was able to rapidly bulldoze the East Wing last year, clearing space for his planned 90,000-square-foot addition.Trump has remade independent federalcommissions — firing holdovers and installing loyalists, including his executive assistant — that have swiftly approved his project.He’s raised vast sums of money that he says can be put toward the ballroom’s estimated $400 million cost.

But so far,he has been constrained — barely — by the courts and Congress.

And it’s obvious that the ballroom means much more to him than the war or the struggling US economy.

Tiago Ventura at Time: House Democrats to Introduce Bill to Block Trump’s Triumphal Arch Amid Backlash Over ‘Vanity’ Projects.

House Democrats are set to introduce legislation aimed at blocking the construction of President Donald Trump’s planned 250-ft triumphal arch nearby Arlington National Cemetery.

“Trump’s vanity project would waste taxpayer money, brazenly violate existing law, and become yet another vehicle for his corruption,” Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said in a statement Wednesday. “The Administration has also given no consideration to potential harmful effects on the region including impacts on air safety and traffic on major roadways.”’

Trump holds up a model of his Arc de Trump.

Alongside Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, Beyer plans to introduce what has been tentatively titled the “‘Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act” on Friday, just days after the designs were approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a panel made up of Trump appointees.

The bill seeks to prohibit the construction of the arch and the use of any federal funds for the project. Additionally, it would prohibit the construction of any triumphal arch exceeding 50-feet on any National Park Service lands within the capital region “except by express authorization of Congress.”

Democrats have argued that the proposed arch, which is set to include a public viewing deck, is an unnecessary financial expenditure, especially given the ongoing affordability crisis impacting many Americans.

“As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch,” said Titus. “While destroying historical monuments and artefacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself.”

Unfortunately, Trump couldn’t care less about the public good. He only cares about building memorials to himself.

Trump dreams up new renovation projects nearly every day. Here are the latest ones we’ve heard about:

Will Weissert and Michelle L Price at AP, via ABC News: Trump plays mayor at Cabinet meeting, showcasing his DC renovations.

He boasted of fixing city fountains and power-washing a local pool — making careful distinctions between sandblasting versus pebble-blasting — and detailing efforts to repair brick walkways in a public park.

But this wasn’t a small-town mayor assuring a few dozen community members at a town hall that municipal improvement efforts would be completed in time for Little League season.

This was President Donald Trump — channeling his decades as a high-profile real estate developer — regaling his assembled Cabinet and a nationally televised audience on Wednesday with the ins and outs of beautification projects around Washington.

“I love construction. It’s very exciting,” Trump said, maintaining that the face-lift he’s helped oversee to the nation’s capital means “D.C. is looking beautiful.”

His aside lasted 10 minutes and was far more comprehensive than anything said about the other major issues discussed during the meeting, including the war in Iran. There were also only passing references to gas prices nationwide that have spiked and fears about a weakening economy that could hurt Trump’s Republican Party in its push to retain control of Congress after November’s midterm elections….

The president also said that, under his watch, construction crews were working to improve 28 fountains, then bragged about a push to renovate the “reflecting lake” or “reflecting pond” — actually the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — which he said had been steam-cleaned, fumigated and coated with “American flag blue” paint.

“Over the years, I built hundreds of pools,” Trump said, recalling his days as a construction mogul in 1970s and ’80s New York. “I always like to build Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

The president noted that, as part of the revamp, cleaning crews had removed “more than 10 dumpsters of garbage.”

More projects described at the link.

Sarah Ewall-Wice at The Daily Beast: Trump Reveals Latest Vanity Project in Unhinged Pool Rant.

President Donald Trump wants to paint the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., blue after slapping blue paint on the Reflecting Pool.

Trump, 79, revealed the latest memorial he wants to get his hands on during a nearly 10-minute rant about renovations he’s been focused on throughout the nation’s capital at the White House while surrounded by members of his Cabinet.

Trump says he wants to paint the fountain of the WWII Memorial as seen from the top of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 2, 2026.

“Now we’re looking at the World War II fountain because that’s also in pretty bad shape,” Trump declared.

He revealed he wanted to “duplicate” the fountain’s bottom with paint in a “slightly different color.”

“Actually, we’ll go with a lighter color, but Doug and I have a lot of fun doing it,” Trump told the room, referring to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

The WWII Memorial includes a series of stone and bronze sculptures surrounding a pool of water on the National Mall just down from the Reflecting Pool.

The president’s comment came after he rambled for several minutes about his administration slapping a fresh coat of paint on the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

Trump called it the “reflecting lake” and said “nobody has ever seen anything like it” while also giving it the wrong dimensions and claiming it was longer than the tallest building in the world, which it is not.

He is insane, utterly insane.

I just heard about this project yesterday. Anna Kramer at Notus: The Trump Administration Is Spending $5 Million to Coat Horse Statues in Gold.

Four massive bronze horses positioned along the roads surrounding the Lincoln Memorial still shine in the sun from their first restoration in the 1970s. But their gold-toned coating is faded and patchy, and their heavy stone bases are cracked and dirty.

The Trump administration wants them glittering with a fresh coat of gold in time for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. So in mid-April, the National Park Service handed a $5 million contract to a gilding studio in Maryland to repair the statues and cover them with a thick layer of 23.75-karat gold leaf.

It awarded the project without a full competition, according to NPS documents reviewed by NOTUS.

Four bronze horses surrounding the Lincoln Memorial are getting a glow-up for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. Kainaz Amaria, NOTUS

As Trump hurries to put his stamp on a city he’s long denigrated as crumbling and ugly, his administration has doled out tens of millions of dollars for contracts with short timelines and little oversight.

In total, the Interior Department is spending at least $95 million in taxpayer funds for new D.C. beautification projects, according to a NOTUS review of government spending data. All of the projects identified by NOTUS were initiated between December 2025 and April of this year. About $20 million in contracts, including the gilding of the four horses, have not previously been reported.

“It is within the realm of reason to say: It’s the 250th anniversary that’s coming up, and instead of spending a hundred million dollars we normally spend on the District of Columbia, we want to spend $250 million. That’s perfectly normal,” said one former General Services Administration official, making up the dollar amounts to illustrate their point. “What is not normal is the lack of transparency.”

In mid-April, the National Park Service hired The Gilders’ Studio in Maryland to restore the 80,000-pound statue pairs, known as the Arts of War and Arts of Peace. According to agency documentation, the gilding company is covering the statues in an unusually thick layer of nearly pure gold — heavier and purer than even the “extra-thick” gold the same studio used to refinish the exterior of the Wyoming state capital dome seven years ago.

The $5 million contract includes more work than just the gold leafing, although the gold itself is certain to be a significant part of the cost, with the price of gold essentially doubling over the last several years.

And who is paying for all of Trump’s vanity project? Maxine Joselo and Andrea Fuller at The New York Times: National Park Entrance Fees Are Funding Trump’s D.C. Projects.

The National Park Service is using at least $67 million worth of park entrance fees to help fund President Trump’s beautification projects in Washington, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records.

Nearly $60 million in fees paid by visitors to national parks across the country is funding repairs to nine of the capital’s ornamental fountains, the analysis found. The government is putting another $7 million worth of entrance fees toward the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which costs $13.1 million overall, according to an internal Park Service document reviewed by The Times.

The National Park Service is spending millions in fees paid by visitors to parks across the country, like Yosemite National Park in California, to pay for restoration of nine ornamental fountains in Washington, D.C, AP

The analysis was based on a federal contracting database. The $7 million for the Reflecting Pool has not previously been reported.

Mr. Trump has proposed a host of initiatives to remake Washington in his own style and wants these projects completed by July 4, the 250th anniversary of American independence.

Some conservationists criticized the Trump administration for steering so much money to projects in Washington that appeared to be cosmetic fixes rather than urgent upgrades. National parks outside the capital have long maintenance backlogs, including repairs to deteriorating roads and water systems that threaten visitor safety.

“Our parks and public lands have been underfunded for decades, and there are many genuinely urgent projects in need of funding across the country,” said Aaron Weiss, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. “Instead, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is determined to divert millions of dollars to projects that President Trump can see out his window.”

The spending is legal. Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act of 2004, at least 80 percent of revenue from entrance fees must stay in the park where the fees were collected. But the other 20 percent can be used to improve sites that do not collect fees, such as the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington.

Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which includes the Park Service, did not respond to specific questions but defended the spending in general.

“The National Park Service has not only been focused on beautifying the district but has also been working on many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country,” Ms. Martin said in an email, adding that “we should all be grateful” for Mr. Trump’s focus on projects in Washington.

I for one am not grateful.

That’s my post for today. I hope it isn’t too weird. I just couldn’t spend time today reading about the war and elections.

Trump is going to fill the reflecting pool with concrete, isn't he.

"During a visit to the Reflecting Pool on the afternoon of May 27, the full length of the pool was covered in black, with trucks and machinery visible and making noise. The pool perimeter was encircled by black fencing."

#Politics #TrumpCrimeFamily #LincolnMemorial #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool #RepublicanDeathCult

https://www.wcvb.com/article/fact-check-trump-reflecting-pool-timeline-cost/71434077

25•47 NOW!

#RawStory

Trump hijacks Iran war cabinet meeting w/ 10-minute bonkers #ReflectingPool rant

#Trump spent roughly 10 minutes of a high-stakes cabinet meeting on Wednesday — convened amid delicate negotiations to end the US #war with #Iran — ranting about his efforts to renovate the #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool, falsely claiming predecessors wasted "hundreds of millions" on the landmark and repeatedly comparing it to a swimming pool

#25thAmendment #25_47

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-cabinet-reflecting-pool-rant/

Wednesday Reads

Good Day!!

I spent the last 3 days reading books and relaxing, and mostly avoiding watching or reading news social media. My RA pain had been pretty bad lately, and it has definitely improved as a result. I’ll have to see what happens after I engage with the news for this post, but at the moment I plan to go back on a news diet when I finish. I definitely think my health is improved by avoiding news about Trump.

Here’s what’s happening this morning:

Cable news Legend Ted Turner has died.

The New York Times (gift article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.

Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.

Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.

Ted Turner

Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.

As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.

In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world’s largest media companies.

Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.

“I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader’s Digest article in 1998. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.”

Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch — who once had his New York Post run the headline “Is Turner Insane?” — had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.

An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.

Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.

Of course the big story is still Trump’s war with Iran. It’s difficult to know what to believe about what’s going on, since Trump and Hegseth lie constantly.

CNN reports the Trump/Hegseth line: US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says.

The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum ⁠to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.

The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise, two administration officials told CNN while offering some skepticism about Pakistan’s optimism.

From CentCom: Project Freedom at Strait of Hormuz

But a renewed diplomatic push has emerged in recent days, the regional source said. President Donald Trump appears to be simplifying issues in peace negotiations so moderates in the Iranian regime can come back to the negotiating table, the source added, with the aim being to tackle thornier issues later.

A one-page plan being floated internally contains provisions that have been at the heart of negotiations to end the conflict, a person familiar with the plan told CNN. The document would declare an end to the war while triggering a 30-day negotiation period on resolving sticking points, including on nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz, the person said.

Precise details of the plan couldn’t immediately be verified, but the source familiar said it would include discussion of a moratorium on uranium enrichment for a period of longer than 10 years. A previous US proposal had set it at 20 years.

The plan also requires Iran to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country, but details were still being negotiated.

News of positive movement from the Pakistanis helped spur Trump on Tuesday to announce a pause of “Project Freedom” – an operation to guide stranded ships out of the strait – citing progress in negotiations with Iran, the administration officials said. The pause came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had ended and that the administration’s full focus was on Project Freedom.

The regional source told CNN that the harder the US pushed its agenda of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury, the more the hardliners in Iran stood up and had a bigger voice.

The Guardian reports on Iran’s reaction: Middle East crisis live: US proposal to end war a ‘wishlist, not a reality’, warns Iranian official.

‘American wishlist, not a reality’: Iranian officials cast doubt on US proposal to end war.

Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesperson of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, has poured cold water on the Axios report claiming the US and Iran were nearing a one-page memorandum to end the war, saying it was an “American wishlist [and] not a reality”.

Ebrahim Rezaei

In a fiery statement on X, he said: “Americans will not gain in a lost war what they failed to achieve in face-to-face negotiations. Iran has its finger on the trigger and is ready; if they do not surrender and grant the necessary concessions, or if they or their lapdogs attempt any mischief, we will respond with a harsh and regrettable response.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also responded to the Axios report, telling the Iranian Isna news agency that the US proposal is still being reviewed by Tehran.

“Once Iran concludes its assessment, it will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Isna reported, adding that the US demands detailed in the Axios report “included excessive and unrealistic demands that have been strongly rejected by Iranian officials in recent days”.

Isna reported that the Iranian negotiating team is solely reviewing the “termination of the war” and the nuclear issue is not currently being discussed.

That doesn’t sound like an agreement is coming soon. And Trump is issuing threats.

AP: US and Iran appear to move closer to ending their war as Trump threatens more bombing.

The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.

Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.

“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.

Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.

Iran’s effective closure of the strait has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, rattled the global economy and put enormous economic pressure on countries, including major powers such as China.

China’s foreign minister called for a comprehensive ceasefire Wednesday after meeting in Beijing with Iran’s top envoy. Wang Yi said his country was “deeply distressed” by the conflict, which began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.

China’s close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence. The Trump administration is pressing China to use that relationship to urge the Islamic Republic to open the strait.

Meanwhile it appears that the Trump administration has been trying to conceal how much damage Iran has done to U.S. bases in the Middle East region.

The Washington Post (gift article): Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.

Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment atU.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks,fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.

The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.

Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, seven service members have died in strikes on U.S. facilities in the region — six in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia — and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries as of late April, the U.S. military said. While most of the wounded returned to duty within days, at least 12 suffered injuries that military officials classified as serious, according to U.S. officials who, among others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Satellite imagery of the Middle East is unusually difficult to acquire at present. Two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet, have complied with requests from the U.S. government — their biggest customer — to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing, making it difficult or impossible to assess Iran’s counterstrikes. Those restrictions began less than two weeks into the war.

Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have from the start regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on their social media accounts that claimed to document damage to U.S. sites.

Images of damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait, released and annotated by Iranian state-affiliated media. Washington Post illustration.

For this examination — one of the first comprehensive public accounts of the damage to U.S. facilities in the region — The Post reviewed more than 100 high-resolution Iranian-released satellite images. The Post verified the authenticity of 109 of the those images by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available. The Post excluded 19 Iranian images from the damage analysis because comparisons with the Copernicus imagery were inconclusive. No Iranian imagery was found to have been manipulated.

In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran. In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.

Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.

“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.

Read the rest and view more images using the gift link above. I wonder what it will take to repair the damage?

Here’s a bit of hopeful news from The Washington Post: Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth.

Americans are deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a striking rebuke in a closely divided country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

The poll finds positive ratings for Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized U.S. actions on immigration andin Iran, drawing criticism from Trump that the president repeated on Tuesday.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislikeHegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.

“There is only one Jesus! I found the posts to be inappropriate and offensive. Humility is at the core of being Jesus,” said Kimberly Chopin, a 57-year-old Catholic who lives in suburban Baton Rouge and voted for Trump. She added that Hegseth’s prayer calling for violence made her “extremely uncomfortable. That kind of language sounds like the language of al-Qaeda.”

Interesting.

Of course Trump is much less interested in the war he started as a distraction from the Epstein files than remaking the White House and surrounding buildings and monuments in his own image. And his number one obsession is his insane ballroom.

Now Republicans in Congress are getting into the act. We were told that the ballroom project would be paid for with private money. Suddenly, we learn that taxpayers are expected to cover the growing price tag.

The New York Times: G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project.

Senate Republicans have inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.

The leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees on Monday released plans for the roughly $70 billion package, which would significantly bolster spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of Mr. Trump’s term using a party-line legislative process that can skirt a filibuster.

Trump’s proposed ballroom addition to the White House

A surprise addition to the measure was the $1 billion proposed by the Judiciary Committee for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.

While the president has previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through private donations, a spokesman on Tuesday said the White House applauded the proposed security funding for a “long overdue” project.

Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have escalated their efforts to defend the project after the attempted assault late last month at a journalism gala in Washington attended by the president.

The bill says the public money would be directed to “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” It also bars any of the funding being spent on “non-security elements.”

WTF?!

“Republicans are on a different planet than American families,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a post on social media. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”

Top Democrats also noted that consideration of the bill would put all senators on the record on a White House construction project that polls have shown to be unpopular.

“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said on social media.

Should the provision survive and be enacted into law, it could clear away legal obstacles to construction of the ballroom, which a federal judge has ruled requires congressional approval.

Republicans are advancing the legislation outside of normal congressional spending channels because Senate Democrats had blocked money for ICE and the border control in a dispute over the tactics and conduct of federal immigration officers. That fight shut down parts of the Department of Homeland Security for almost 80 days.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”

Trump is destroying our country and our Capitol. He has to be stopped. One more on this from NPR: The many ways Trump wants to change D.C., from buildings to statues to parks.

President Trump is looking to make his mark on the White House and Washington, D.C., and not just politically.

The longtime real estate developer has either announced or embarked on a number of construction and renovation projects across the nation’s capital.

“I have two jobs,” Trump said in late 2025, the presidency being just one of them. “I have a construction job, which is really like relaxation for me because I have been doing it my entire life.”

The White House ballroom, reflecting pool resurfacing, Kennedy Center renovations and a triumphal arch are among the many changes Trump wants to make in D.C.

Some of those changes are seemingly temporary, like the huge banners of Trump’s face hanging from the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture and other federal buildings. Several concern the decor and aesthetics of the White House, like the paved-over Rose Garden and gilded Oval Office. Others are matters of nomenclature, like the addition of Trump’s name to the signs on the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.

But many of the efforts in progress could reshape D.C.’s architectural landscape for decades to come.

Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says while Trump had aesthetic ambitions during his first term, his “insistence on making it so much about his own style and his own brand and wearing this glory of America’s past is distinct to this term.” Many of his initiatives are connected to the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary in July.

“They all sort of declare the glory of America rather than actually building any kind of growth or future for America,” Flanagan says. “If you’re trying to slash the science budget … at the same [as you’re] building these grand monuments, you’re not building a creative America, you’re wearing a great American past as a costume.”

The latest change was to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its gray bottom with a shade he described to reporters as “American flag blue.”

The 2,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.

It last underwent a major renovation from 2010 to 2012, both for structural fixes (to address decades of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic improvements (it was intentionally made shallower). But the Department of Interior says the wrong-size pipes were installed, resulting in the continued need for expensive refills (71 million additional gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).

Trump has been talking publicly about fixing the pool since at least November 2025, but ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints about the state of the landmark. He told reporters that he is working with one of his best “pool builders” from his real estate days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade “like in the Bahamas.”

Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the city itself, “like it’s his personal country club.”

“You get some pool guys and then they refinish it in a way that is more suitable to, basically, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago,” he adds.

That’s all I have for today. I can’t take anymore. \

Have a peaceful Wednesday.