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Trump told an architect “I am the code” when warned his White House ballroom could become a death trap. JD Vance was the anonymous source behind one of the stories the White House cited to justify banning Politico. The New Hampshire Libertarian Party posted on social media that it supports the assassination of every elected Democrat in the state. And Texas just discovered that an unknown number of voter registrations were never processed, six weeks before the midterms.
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The man who builds cathedrals quit because the president wanted a tomb.
Last October, architect James McCrery II quit Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project after repeatedly warning that the president’s design didn’t include enough emergency exits or fire containment measures. McCrery, who runs a small firm that designs Catholic cathedrals, told Trump the plans violated building safety codes.
Trump told McCrery that no building codes apply to the White House. When pressed further, Trump reportedly said: “I am the code.”
The president had been personally marking up blueprints with a black Sharpie, scratching out service corridors and two sets of service stairs to make the ballroom bigger. His notes expanded McCrery’s original design of 640 seats to extend the entire width of the second floor.
In other notes, Trump asked for Corinthian columns and millions of dollars worth of gold leaf. The papers were then placed in a box in the White House labeled “Docs bearing POTUS’s mark.”
The ballroom plans were to be finalized by June 2026, but officials said as of late August, Trump was still tweaking the design.
Every office has a guy who eats your lunch from the fridge and then helps you look for it.
The unnamed “senior administration official” behind a June 2026 Politico story on the chances of an Iran peace deal was Vice President JD Vance. The story was one of six Trump cited as having “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods” when he barred Politico from the White House grounds last week.
Vance had spoken to reporters from several outlets about the Iran negotiations and was granted anonymity in exchange for the information, which the outlets agreed to before he spoke. He told them the odds of a preliminary deal to end the war with Iran were between 80 and 85 percent.
On Monday, Vance told reporters he supported the ban, calling it “totally appropriate.” He said that anyone doing an “objective analysis” would see that Politico is supposedly as biased against Trump as Breitbart was against Obama.
Politico, along with CNN and MS NOW, filed a federal lawsuit against the White House on Monday, arguing that the ban violates their First Amendment rights. Trump-appointed federal Judge Timothy J. Kelly heard emergency arguments Wednesday and said without ruling that legal precedent “wasn’t followed here.”
If you think that’s an exaggeration, it’s actually a direct quote.
This week, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party used its official social media account to call for the killing of elected Democrats in the state. The office of the state attorney general said it was aware of the posts, but has taken no action.
On Tuesday, the party’s official X account posted: “We openly support the assassination of basically every elected Democrat in New Hampshire. But if you don’t have the balls to do that then you should probably vote GOP.”
The same account in 2024 endorsed the assassination of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The group also posted earlier this year that it was “perfectly permissible to kill” a former member of the state Executive Council for proposing a state income tax.
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office told NHPR on Wednesday that it is aware of the posts but would not comment further. No charges have been filed, and it’s unclear if they will be.
The national Libertarian Party voted 15 to 2 to eject the New Hampshire chapter in May over years of racist and threatening social media posts. It also cited the chapter’s endorsement of Trump for president in 2024.
The Democratic leader of the New Hampshire House, Rep. Alexis Simpson, said she reached out to the security office at the State House and the attorney general to monitor and investigate the posts. Raymond Buckley, the state Democratic Party chairman, denounced the post and called on leading Republicans to do the same. As of writing, they have not.
Texas found a new way to stop people from voting, and this time they’re calling it a glitch.
An unknown number of Texans who registered to vote through the state’s driver’s license website were never actually registered. The Texas Department of Public Safety didn’t forward their applications to county election officials, and the secretary of state’s office said it only found out about the problem last week.
State officials said they would begin sending the backed-up applications to counties overnight, but many were incomplete. Texas’ registration deadline is October 5, and some counties may be processing applications for the next two weeks.
The office of the secretary of state said voters who registered through the DPS website but don’t show up on the rolls can still cast a provisional ballot. Election officials can verify the registration with DPS after the fact, and the provisional vote will be counted if the voter did register.
Texas officials have not explained how a system used by almost six million people between 2020 and 2024 failed to get applications to the counties that needed them. They did say the problem was detected last week, six weeks before a midterm election that polls show their party is losing.
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** Trump’s Approval Has Plunged Into the 20s, and Republicans Are Giving Up. **A new poll has found Trump’s approval rating at 29 percent, an 18-point drop from the start of his second term and a record low for his entire political career. The Iran war and his handling of the economy are fueling the decline, and now costing him support in his own party, where approval fell from 85 percent to 76 percent in one month over the summer. His numbers are worse than Biden’s were at this stage of his presidency and worse than Trump’s own heading into the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost the House. Polls now suggest Democrats could take both chambers in November.
** Iowa Judge Throws Out Trump’s Lawsuit Against the Des Moines Register.** Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register, its parent company, and retired pollster J. Ann Selzer on Wednesday. Trump had sued in December 2024, accusing them of fraudulently publishing inaccurate poll results that showed Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa just before Election Day. The judge wrote that Trump’s claims sought to “turn speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.” Selzer said the ruling “reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.” She also noted, for anyone who needed to hear it, that “polling is a social science, not clairvoyance.”
Senators From Both Parties Demand New Rules for AI-Powered Surveillance Cameras. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held its first congressional hearing Wednesday on AI-powered license plate reader networks, focusing on Flock Safety. Republican Senator Josh Hawley, the subcommittee chair who opened a formal investigation into Flock in August, said the cameras represent mass surveillance of Americans who have done nothing wrong. The Washington Post and 404Media have reported on cases of police officers using the camera footage to stalk people, including former partners. Florida and Texas already have banned the cameras on state roads and at least four bipartisan bills have been introduced in the House to regulate the technology.
** Ottawa Votes to Rename Trump Avenue.** The Ottawa City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to start the process of removing Donald Trump’s name from a residential street in the city’s Central Park neighborhood. Councilor Riley Brockington introduced the motion, saying Trump does not deserve the honor for his repeated threats against Canada, including tariffs and his executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The street’s name comes from a late-1990s development that named surrounding roads after New York City, including Bloomingdale Street and Staten Way. An attempt to rename the street in 2021 resulted in a 21-21 tie vote among residents. There was no opposition this time