Monkey

 

Trump's failed China trip

Key takeaways from Trump's China trip

By Tamara Keith, Jennifer Pak

After wrapping up his two-day visit to China, President Trump called the trip "incredible," but while it was big on pageantry, it fell short on concrete agreements.

Still, Trump hailed business deals for American companies and farmers while Chinese leader Xi Jinping touted a new era for the stability of China-U.S. relations.

Trump headed back to the U.S. after having lunch with Xi at Zhongnanhai, a rare visit to the Beijing compound where top Chinese officials live and work.

"I think a lot of good has come from [this visit]. We've made some fantastic trade deals, good for both countries," Trump said, sitting next to Xi with ornate tapestries as a backdrop.

Beans and Boeing

The White House hasn't released a detailed account of the agreements in writing, but Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News said China would be buying lots of soybeans and Boeing aircraft.

Trump announced China had agreed to order 200 jets – before equivocating.

"I sort of, I think it was a commitment. I mean, you know, it was sort of like a statement, but I think it was a commitment," Trump added. "It's a great thing. It's a lot of jobs."

China has yet to confirm these purchases.

This isn't the first time Trump has announced trade deals with China, only to have them fall short.

China has not said whether it extracted specific deals from the U.S. side either but that is not unusual given that China sees a leaders' meeting as a way to set the parameters for future discussions, according to Wu Xinbo, director of Fudan University's Center for American Studies in Shanghai.

"They don't necessarily go issue by issue," Wu said.

The success of this trip for either side could take some time to come into focus.

Taiwan

China did bring up what it considers a red line – Taiwan, a self governing island Beijing claims as its own territory.

In a Chinese statement on the visit, Xi stressed that if the Taiwan question is mishandled by America it could put the stability of China-U.S. relations in "jeopardy."

The U.S. readout did not mention Taiwan. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with NBC that Ü.S. policy on Taiwan remained "unchanged."

He also said it would be a "terrible mistake" for China to take Taiwan by force.

Trump said Xi asked during his trip if the U.S. would defend Taiwan.

"I said I don't talk about that," he told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back to the U.S.

Iran war

Both the U.S. and China say they discussed the conflict in the Middle East, though Trump went into more detail.

"We feel very similar about [how] we want it to end. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open," he said Friday.

Personal relationships

Throughout his visit Trump praised his Chinese counterpart, describing him in warm terms. Trump's effusiveness, however, was not matched by Xi, whose public remarks stuck to the long-term relationship between the nations.

Trump even paid Xi one of his most classic compliments, describing him as being straight out of "central casting."

"If you went to Hollywood and you looked for a leader of China to play a role in a movie…you couldn't find a guy like him," Trump said of Xi during his interview with Hannity. "Even as his physical features, you know, he's tall, very tall, and, especially for this country because they tend to be a little bit shorter."

For Trump, diplomacy is all about personal relationships, getting eye to eye with a leader and reaching an understanding or making a deal. It's all part of Trump's approach. He leads with his gut.

That couldn't be more different from the Chinese approach, which is deliberate and meticulously planned.

"I think Xi is less effusive than Trump because he wants to be seen as having the upper hand," said Dennis Wilder, a professor at Georgetown University, who was a top advisor on China to President George W. Bush.

Fudan University's Wu noted personal relationships can only go so far.

"The most important thing is they respected [each other's] national interests and also the responsibilities for both China and the United States to the rest of the world," he said.

Garden diplomacy

At their last meeting on Friday the two leaders toured the gardens at Zhongnanhai, with Trump admiring the roses.

"These are the most beautiful roses anyone's ever seen," Trump said.

Xi said he would share some Chinese rose seeds for Trump to have planted in the White House Rose Garden.

Although many world leaders have traveled to Beijing in recent weeks, it's unusual for them to go to the compound.

Xi said it was meant to reciprocate Trump's hosting him at Mar-a-Lago during his first term.

"It means that [China attaches] great importance to this visit by President Trump to China," said Wu. "It also reflects the positive personal relationship between [the] two leaders."

Big on pageantry short on details

Many analysts had low expectations for this trip since Trump slapped sky high tariffs on Chinese exports last year when he returned to office.

But pageantry matters to the Chinese. And it is something Trump has made no secret about wanting.

Trump was feted with three ceremonies featuring choreographed flag waving from Chinese youth, brass band performances and soldiers in formation. Then there was a tour of the Temple of Heaven.

"The pomp and circumstance that the Chinese delegation prepared served … to indulge Trump's belief that he is a leader of historical consequence, thereby making him further inclined to override advisors who advocate a more confrontational approach towards China," said Ali Wyne at the International Crisis Group.

He said it also shows Trump how China's power and confidence have grown since he visited almost a decade earlier.

Trump was also treated to a state banquet that included Beijing roast duck and pan-fried pork buns.

Wu, who attended the dinner banquet, said the food was delicious – though he didn't see Trump eat much.

"He kept talking all the time [to Xi]," he said, adding that this is the warmest he's seen U.S.-China relations in years. "I could tell [Trump] really enjoyed his exchanges with President Xi."

Shit Show

Chaos erupts behind the scenes of Trump’s China trip — including trampled White House aide

By Emily Goodin

President Trump’s much-anticipated summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been marred by multiple physical altercations just offstage.

Among the incidents that took place Thursday:

The chaos was all captured by a cameraman accompanying “Rush Hour” director Brett Ratner as he prepares to shoot a fourth installment of the beloved feature film franchise.

The dust-ups with the Chinese caused frustrations to boil over on the American side, with one member of the US delegation overheard calling it a “shittshow.”

As part of an effort by Chinese officials to keep a tight hold of their American guests and dictate coverage of a global news event, US reporters have been subject to strict controls — including limited access to bathrooms and the confiscation of water bottles.

Trump impressed by grand greeting in China, tells XI the children stole the show

Chinese officials held American reporters in a side room and tried to prevent them from joining President Trump.

No other hydration was provided to the American press despite bright sunshine and temperatures topping 80 degrees in the Chinese capital.

However, that proved a minor issue compared to three major flashpoints.

The first incident came when an aggressive Chinese press pack charged into Trump’s morning bilateral meeting with Xi, knocking down and then stepping on a White House advance team member.

The aide was bruised and shaken, though not seriously injured, and the incident caused her colleagues to loudly protest the Chinese media’s behavior.

The next confrontation came in the afternoon at the Temple of Heaven, when Chinese officials refused to admit a Secret Service agent accompanying the presidential press pool into the secure area because the agent was carrying a firearm — standard practice for the protective agency.

The Chinese version of a Mexican standoff ensued, with the press pool and American delegation refusing to move forward without the agent and Beijing officials determined to take his sidearm. 

After a 30-minute delay and many arguments, another Secret Service agent who had already been cleared to proceed was summoned to escort reporters inside while the first agent stayed behind.

Makes him look stupid and weak...

Jinping in China with 'massive insult' before meeting

Story by Callum Hoare

Donald Trump was "humiliated" by Chinese leader Xi Jinping on his arrival in China, according to political commentators.

The US President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing this afternoon, marking the first visit to China by a sitting American president in nearly a decade.

Flanked by a high-powered delegation that includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and tech heavyweights like Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla's Elon Musk, Trump was greeted at the airport with a formal red-carpet ceremony, military guard, and a welcoming crowd of chanting students.

But many have pointed out that Xi opted not to join in with the airport welcome.

"Xi Jinping did not greet him at the airport. Instead, the US Ambassador, China's Vice President, and two foreign ministry officials.

"The White House is calling it 'red carpet treatment'. The same summit that was downgraded to a low-impact meeting before it started.

"China is treating the United States like a third-world country."

His comments have been echoed by many others online, who questioned the move.

Others have also shared videos online of Xi Jinping meeting North Korean leader Kim Jon-Un at the airport during his 2018 visit.

Unlike the celebratory "state visit-plus" of his 2017 trip, the choreography for Trump's visit is noticeably scaled back, reflecting the deep geopolitical distrust built over years of intense tariff disputes and technological competition.

Political analyst Yoon Ju-heon also highlighted that sending Han Zheng, who is eighth in China's power hierarchy and lacks substantial policymaking power, was a calculated, symbolic move that revealed China's underlying diplomatic strategy.

"I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to 'open up' China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People's Republic to an even higher level," Trump says in a post on social media.

Trump says that will be his "very first request" when he meets the Chinese leader.

"I have never seen or heard of any idea that would be more beneficial to our incredible Countries," he says.

Too stupid to know he was humiliated.........

A humiliated Trump will be played by China

Sam Kiley

Donald Trump had expected a “big fat hug” from China when he visits Xi Jinping this week in thanks for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

He won’t get one, though, because he’s failed to end the throttling of Beijing’s oil supplies. Good news for China because Trump is indifferent to his own failure.

Bad news for Taiwan. Bad news for the West. Bad news for US allies around the world. Bad news for democracies in general.

The US president will arrive for his summit with China exasperated that he has achieved none of his many and varied war aims in Iran. He will arrive having been humiliated by a weaker but dogged regime that survives in Tehran.

The results are likely to be a sudden shift in the tectonic plates of geopolitics to China’s advantage and Beijing has done almost nothing to deliver it.

The key to understand this lies in Trump’s psychology. Vain and peevish, he has blundered, alongside Israel, into a war with Iran that had obvious dangerous consequences, and now has to find a way to get out of it without looking weak.

He has threatened to reinforce failure with a genocidal threat to wipe out a whole civilisation.

But when he is in the room with Xi, it is membership of the club that Trump wants – needs – most. He needs to feel that he is an equal, or a first among equals, among the world’s most powerful and unhindered authoritarian leaders and he’ll do almost anything to win their approval.

“Trump looks at people who are, you know, frankly in charge of everything, who have basically the bling… And that’s what he wants to be. And he believes that he is elevated in everybody’s minds, by their association, by being in their company,” Fiona Hill, a former national security adviser to Trump now with the Brookings Institute, told the World of Trouble podcast.

“What this is really about is Trump himself wanting to be recognised by absolutely everybody who matters. And that’s a very small group of people… And he only gets that [when he gets the approval of] of people like President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, the royal families of here, there and everywhere… That’s the coin of the realm for him,” she explained.

The Chinese president is likely to slip Trump the gold sovereign of “Big Man” association in Beijing and it’s unlikely that Trump will extract any advantage for America from his membership of this gilded club.

Xi has helped arm Iran. China is Russia’s most important military supplier in its war against Ukraine. China controls most of the critical minerals that drive global technologies and is decades ahead of exploiting them in Africa.

China usually gets almost 50 per cent of its oil imports from vessels that sail through the Strait of Hormuz. By importing sanctioned oil from Venezuela, Iran and Russia it has also enjoyed a discount on prices.

The disaster that has been Iran’s response to the attacks by America – shutting the Strait and bombarding the Gulf – should be offset by Trump arm-twisting China into reducing its backing for Tehran and Moscow.

Xi is “somebody that needs oil. We don’t”, Trump said earlier this month and confessed that he’d asked China to stop sending weapons to Iran.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, was in Beijing last week, ahead of Trump’s visit. China called on both the US, which is blockading Iran, and Tehran, which has closed the Strait, to open the flow of oil and end the conflict. Beijing took a studiously balanced approach.

Trump, meanwhile, continues to threaten Iran while offering negotiations. His main option for getting out of the war without total loss of face may be in getting Iran to agree to send its nuclear materials to China for safe-keeping. This would appear to end Tehran’s ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.

That would be a bauble that China could offer a US president who, personally, wants to share the same space as Xi and Putin.

These men know how to play on Trump’s weakness for their power.

Xi may be able to get Iran to agree to terms that allow Trump to get out of his war. In return, though, Beijing is likely to want to see the $11bn (£8.1bn) military aid programme for Taiwan, which it claims as Chinese territory, go away.

China would like free rein to continue its longstanding extensions of its claimed territory in the South China Sea, where it has been building artificial islands. It wants to own that sea which, oddly enough, is a potential choke point of global trade.

These concessions would give China unlimited powers in its region, just as the deliberate weakening of Ukraine gives Russia a strategic boost in the realms that Moscow has traditionally dominated in Tsarist and Soviet times.

Trump’s Big Man mission is, he has repeatedly said, to see the world carved up into spheres of influence, with the US dominating the western hemisphere, China the east and Russia the middle, with its western fault line running through Ukraine.

That means ceding US power in these regions. Weakening the US global reach suits Xi and Putin just fine.

Xi will throw his arm around Trump and walk him through gilded halls and make sure that the US president feels very much part of the gang of three who can rule the world.

For now.

Ship is seized and another is sunk... Hey the war is over......

Tensions flare near Strait of Hormuz as a ship is seized and another is sunk

By The Associated Press

A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz.

It wasn't immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country's claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.

In Hormuz deadlock, U.S. and Iran refuse to back down

The turmoil in the strait, which a fifth of the world's oil passed through before the war, has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the U.S. and Iran to end the conflict. Iran's grip on the vital waterway has jolted the world economy and spiked fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.

The ongoing instability in the region comes as U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. The White House said both sides had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.

Just last week, tensions flared in the strait when U.S. forces fired on and disabled Iranian oil tankers that it said were trying to breach its blockade of Iran's ports.

Seizures and attacks in Hormuz ongoing

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said it received reports that the ship seized Thursday was taken by unauthorized personnel while anchored 38 nautical miles (70 kilometers, 44 miles) northeast of the UAE port of Fujairah, an important oil export terminal that has been repeatedly attacked during the war with Iran.

The U.K. maritime center did not name the ship seized Thursday and said it is investigating. The British military said the vessel is heading toward Iranian waters.

Indian authorities said Thursday that an Indian-flagged cargo ship sank off the coast of Oman after an attack sparked a fire aboard the vessel while it was en route from Somalia to Sharjah, another UAE port. They did not say who attacked the ship.

The attack on the Indian-flagged cargo ship Haji Ali occurred Wednesday, according to Mukesh Mangal, a senior official in India's shipping ministry. He said all 14 Indian crew members were rescued by Oman's coast guard and were safe.

India's foreign ministry called the incident "unacceptable" and condemned continued attacks on commercial shipping and civilian mariners. The ministry did not identify who carried out the attack.

Seizures come at tense diplomatic moment

Iranian semiofficial news agencies reported that Chinese ships began passing through the strait Wednesday night under new Iranian protocols. According to the reports, Tehran agreed to facilitate the passage of several Chinese vessels after requests from China's foreign minister and Beijing's ambassador to Iran. The ships began their passage as Trump arrived in China.

The seizure of a ship off the coast of the UAE happened hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had quietly visited the country during the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran, though the UAE swiftly denied it.

The Gulf nation normalized relations with Israel in 2020. Iran has criticized that agreement and has repeatedly suggested over the years that Israel maintained a military and intelligence presence in the UAE.

Netanyahu's decision to go public with the sensitive meeting was likely an effort to drum up support for his flagging party ahead of Israeli elections, said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

"It's amazing, it's the deepest cooperation we've ever had … that during a war, Israel is defending an Arab state against Iran. It shows how complicated the Middle East is," he said.

The UAE is trying to highlight its cooperation with Israel but not with Netanyahu and his government, Guzansky said, because many in the UAE are against Israel's policies in Gaza.

"They're trying to differentiate between security cooperation and cooperating with this government," said Guzansky, who previously worked for the national security council within the Israeli prime minister's office.

Iran sets demands for new talks

Iran said it will not enter more talks with the United States unless five conditions are met, including paying reparations for the war and accepting Iran's sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency reported, citing an informed source.

The White House is again unlikely to accept those demands, which would essentially formalize Iran's control over a waterway that was open to international traffic before the war.

Iran's senior vice president, Mohammadreza Aref, said Thursday that the strait belongs to Iran and that Tehran would not give it up "at any price," state TV reported. "It has always been our property," Aref said.

Iran defends right to seize ships

Iran's judiciary spokesperson told the state-owned Iran Daily newspaper on Thursday that Iran has the legal and judicial right to seize oil tankers in the strait that are connected to the U.S. because the U.S. has violated international maritime laws and committed piracy. The spokesperson, Asghar Jahangir, did not explicitly refer to the tanker seized on Thursday.

Iran seized a number of ships, including a tanker identified as the Ocean Koi, last week, saying it was attempting to disrupt oil exports and Iranian interests, according to the official IRNA news agency. It said the tanker was seized in the Gulf of Oman and carrying Iranian oil when it was taken to Iran's southern coast.

The U.S. sanctioned the Ocean Koi in February as part of a "shadow fleet" transporting Iranian oil.

Top US military leader says Iran's threats impact shipping

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said Thursday he believes Iran's military capabilities have been "dramatically degraded," but its leaders are impacting shipping in the strait with rhetoric alone.

"Their voice is very loud, and the threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and the insurance industry," Adm. Brad Cooper told lawmakers in Congress.

He said the U.S. has the military power to permanently reopen the strait and escort ships. But he deferred to policymakers about the best path forward amid a "time of sensitive negotiations."

Like spoiled children......

Sam Altman Is Taking a Lot of Punches on the Witness Stand

Elon Musk’s team seems to have one main goal: make the OpenAI boss look like a liar.

Alex Nguyen

Can you trust Sam Altman?

That was one of the central themes at the high-profile trial between the OpenAI CEO and Elon Musk in California this week, as Musk’s lawyers peppered Altman with questions on his work relationships, including his temporary ouster from OpenAI three years ago by a mistrustful board of directors. Steven Molo, Musk’s top litigator, referred to testimony from executives like former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, who said Altman had a habit of “creating chaos” by “saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person.”

Molo also cited an April New Yorker investigation in which a wide array of sources close to Altman described him as someone with an unrelenting drive for power. 

Distraught text messages from Altman to Murati pleading for his job in 2023 raised parallels with how Altman’s team framed Musk’s explosive exit from OpenAI in 2018, after the Tesla head lost a reported power struggle for control of the company. Altman’s lawyers framed Musk’s 2024 suit againstOpenAI and its leadership as simple retaliation, unmotivated by any actual concern about OpenAI’s original, feel-good nonprofit mission to advance AI in a manner “to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

Musk’s argument is that OpenAI abandoned its values for profits and should therefore return $150 billion to its nonprofit arm—but for Musk, the trial doesn’t particularly seem to revolve around the facts of the case.

The wins, such as they are, come in the form of peeling back the tireless hours of public relations strategizing and mythologizing to make OpenAI and Altman look ridiculous. Musk’s lawyers’ examination of Altman seems intended to extract as many unconvincing responses of “I don’t recall” and “I can’t say how other people think” as possible. (Honestly, just getting these guys to talk in environments they don’t have full control over does most of the job.) Molo’s questioning often devolved into pettiness:

Molo: “Are you completely trustworthy?” 

Altman: “I believe so.” 

Molo: “You don’t know whether you’re completely trustworthy?” 

Altman: “I’ll just amend my answer to yes.”

The public doesn’t need to think Musk is right; they only need to think Altman lies a lot.

A lot of the work has already been done for Musk. According to a national NBC News survey from March, 57 percent of registered voters said the risks of AI outweigh its benefits. Sam Altman is one of the most prominent faces of the industry, and there were two separate attacks on Altman’s home in the span of three days last month.

So as closing arguments wrap up and jury deliberations begin next week, the result of the lawsuit may not even matter. The damage is already underway.

Another scam that will never work...

Trump’s Golden Dome Would Cost $1.2 Trillion

A Congressional Budget Office report deemed the missile defense scheme both wildly expensive and ineffective.

Sophie Hurwitz

Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense dream might seem like something out of science fiction, but it would cost real dollars, the Congressional Budget Office says—about $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, according to a report the federal agency released today.

Trump has held the idea dear since his 2024 campaign, when he made  “A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY” to “PREVENT WORLD WAR III” one of his 20 core campaign promises. Later, he rebranded it as the “Golden Dome,” and about a dozen major American weapons manufacturers (and over 2,300 smaller companies) started to compete for the privilege of building a massive interceptor-missile system in the skies over the United States.

As I reported in 2024 and again in 2025, scientists have a lot of questions about how this will work. It would nominally be modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome system, which is designed to protect a very small geographic area (something the US does not have) from improvised missiles launched from within 40 miles (which is also not happening here).

Given those constraints, the administration quickly moved to include satellite-based missile interceptors on their vision board. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein admitted to the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee in April that this Star Wars–esque setup might not be cost-effective, either.

Trump estimated last May that his Golden Dome would cost around $175 billion and be deployable by the end of his term in 2029. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, however, says that estimate was off by approximately one trillion, seventy-four billion dollars.

Even at that staggering cost—almost the entire proposed Pentagon budget this year—the system still wouldn’t block all missiles, the CBO wrote in their report. “The system could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack mounted by a peer or near-peer adversary,” they said.

“It would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the CBO wrote. “As a result, the strategic consequences of deploying an NMD system with the capacity considered here are unclear.”

Even if the Golden Dome never intercepts a single missile, companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril are likely to profit: they’re among 12 companies that have already been awarded $3.2 billion in Golden Dome contracts.

"I don't know.. I am only the head of the agency that over sees it..."

Interior Secretary Claims Ignorance of Trump’s July 4 “Vanity Projects”

Doug Burgum told Congress he didn’t know who was making his department’s decisions on plans for the country’s 250th anniversary.

Dan Friedman

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has taken a lead role in promoting President Donald Trump’s particular plans to mark America’s 250th anniversary. That includes helping fund Freedom250, an opaque, public-private partnership set up within Burgum’s department.

But how Freedom250 came about apparently is a mystery to the secretary—or so he said in congressional testimony on Wednesday.

Critics contend that the Trump administration is breaking laws, and dodging congressional oversight, by diverting funds appropriated for America250, a nonprofit organization set up by Congress to organize the country’s semiquincentennial, to Freedom250, a limited liability corporation that launched in December under the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, a federal agency that is part of the Interior Department.

At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Wednesday on Interior’s budget request, Colorado Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the panel, pressed Burgum, with little success, for information on the decision-making behind Freedom250.

Burgum said he did not order anyone at Interior to set up the group.

“Do you know who did?” Huffman asked. “Who made that decision? Who ordered it?”

“I’m not aware of the final decision maker on Freedom250,” Burgum said.

Their exchange highlights the secrecy and resistance to congressional oversight that the Trump administration seeks, even as it celebrates the birthday of a country that has traditionally celebrated divided government and a constitution that gives Congress control over federal spending.

Unlike America250, Freedom250 is not legally required to hold bipartisan events. Nor is it informing lawmakers how it spends funds. And the group this year has taken over planning for high-profile, notably Trumpy events that the administration says are connected to the anniversary, including an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday, which administration officials say will celebrate “Christian values”; an MMA fight the president plans to hold at the White House on his birthday; and an IndyCar race around the Mall in August.

Even as Trump encourages corporations, many seeking presidential support for their priorities, to fund Freedom250, Interior is also reportedly steering taxpayer funds to the group. Freedom250 has refused to detail its finances. Interior has also declined to provide information on the group’s funding.

Burgum appeared before the Congress to defend a budget request that includes deep cuts to most of his department, including the National Park Service. But he is also seeking $10 billion for a general fund the administration says will pay for beautification of federal land around Washington in connection with the 250th anniversary.

Burgum has said those funds do not cover a 250-foot arch Trump wants to construct by the Potomac River. Nor do they include the $1 billion the administration wants to spend for work including the ballroom Trump hopes construct after tearing down the White House’s East Wing.

Democrats on Wednesday repeatedly referred to the $10 billion as a “slush fund” that the department would use to support “vanity projects” touted by the president.

In connection with the 250th anniversary plans, Interior has awarded lucrative contracts to contractors reportedly favored by Trump to repair foundation and other landscaping features in Washington. The New York Times has reported that the department has repeatedly used an “urgency” exception—typically justified by life-threatening emergencies like natural disasters—to sidestep federal procurement rules that require competitive bidding. The administration says the exception is necessary to fulfill Trump’s wish to complete the work by July 4.

As the administration races to do so, costs appear to be increasing. A push to upgrade the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall by July 4, which Trump has claimed would cost $1.8 million, is now slated to cost more than $13 million, the Times reported. That project has drawn a lawsuit, and mockery, in part over images showing that contractors painted the base of the pool blue.

Burgum on Wednesday disputed some of lawmakers’ characterizations, even denying that contractors are painting the landmark.

“There is no painting going on on the reflecting pool,” he said. “It’s not paint. It’s a liner.”

They just don't give a fuck....

Immigrants Are Dying in ICE Detention. A Key Watchdog Office Is Now Gone.

“An utter disregard for safety and just humane treatment.”

Isabela Dias

On March 21, 2025, Allison Posner received a “Reduction in Force” notice informing her that her position as chief of external relations at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman was being abolished. Her termination was the result of the “dissolution” of the watchdog office, which handled complaints about conditions and treatment in detention facilities. She was among some 110 full-time OIDO staff who were put on a 60-day administrative leave. “You will be separated from DHS at the close of business on May 23, 2025,” the letter stated.

Posner, a one-time immigration attorney, had joined DHS during the Obama years to work in the ombudsman’s office for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency in charge of visas, work authorizations, and other immigration benefits. Then, in 2019, Congress established another office to carry out independent and neutral oversight of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities and investigate potential misconduct and detainees’ rights violations. Posner was tasked with helping set up this new detention watchdog.

OIDO was supposed to be separate from ICE and CBP while still answering directly to the Homeland Security secretary. It was also designed to complement the oversight work of other department bodies, such as the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and the Office of Inspector General. Crucially, the office placed on-site inspectors and case managers inside detention centers where they could hear complaints directly from detainees and more immediately address their grievances.

“We went into facilities, talked to people, and solved their individual problems,” Posner said. “For the first time, it wasn’t that people in detention would file a complaint by mailing off a form to Washington. They would simply look for someone from our team who was visiting their facility every week or every other week and just talk to a person in real life.”

But after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Posner witnessed his administration gut the detention ombudsman’s office she had played a role in getting off the ground. It all culminated in this month’s announcement, first reported by the HuffPost, that OIDO was being shut down. The dismantling of the watchdog office creates a void in independent detention oversight at a moment when it’s needed the most, former employees and advocates say. “We were getting to a place where we were doing it well,” Posner said, “but now there’s no one doing it at all, and that’s the part that’s particularly heartbreaking.”

The stated mission of the ombudsman office was to ensure that the conditions for detained immigrants were humane. To that end, case managers stationed across the country conducted announced and unannounced visits to more than 100 detention centers, including those run by private companies and owned by state and local governments. The office also published inspection reports with recommendations to improve detention conditions in specific facilities and flagged broader systemic trends like medical understaffing at the border.

Lately, Posner said, DHS hadn’t allowed them to publish their most recent annual report on the website. “We didn’t publish anything else,” she said. “I think we had a couple of other inspection reports that we ended up just sitting on.” The last available report posted on the website is from 2024, and OIDO’s webpage advising relatives of detainees and advocates on how to request assistance has been archived.

The detention ombudsman wasn’t the only DHS oversight office affected by the March 2025 reduction in force. Most of the 150 full-time employees with CRCL and the 44 who worked at the USCIS ombudsman’s arm were also put on administrative leave, according to an April 2025 complaint filed by the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center and other advocacy groups challenging the closure of the oversight offices as “arbitrary and capricious.” The complaint claims their elimination violated the statutes mandating their existence and funding. (CRCL and the USCIS ombudsman were established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002.)

The number of complaints the detention ombudsman office received plummeted in the months after March 2025, which a government official attributed to the absence of case managers in the detention centers, according to a Washington Office on Latin America report about the dismantling of DHS’s internal oversight. Detainees also reported that information on how to file complaints with the watchdog offices had been removed from their facilities.

Tricia McLaughlin, then a DHS spokesperson, said at the time that the watchdog offices “obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles” and “often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.” OIDO, she added, “misused taxpayer funds by facilitating complaints that encourage illegal immigration.” In an April 2025 letter to ex-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, dozens of members of Congress expressed outrage at the closure of the watchdog offices, saying it placed “vulnerable populations at even greater risk of abuse.”

In May 2025, a federal judge in Washington, DC, ordered the government to post public notices stating that the offices remained operational. But by early 2026, OIDO had been stripped down to just a handful of employees, according to a court declaration by the acting deputy immigration detention ombudsman, who framed the downsizing not as a fatal blow to the office but as a “realignment.” In 2025, OIDO had a $28-million budget—a small fraction of DHS’s ballooning resources boosted by an injection of $170 billion from the Big Beautiful Bill. The department’s budget request for the 2026 fiscal year accounted for no additional funding for the watchdog office, stating that “OIDO has been eliminated in its entirety.”

“The office of the ombudsman was already decimated in early 2025 when the Trump administration fired almost all of the staff,” Michelle Brané, who served as the ombudsman in 2024, said. “But it is particularly concerning that there is now no pretense at all, and there is no mechanism for people to have very serious concerns about conditions of custody addressed.”

It wasn’t easy for people who had been detained by the federal government, and their families and supporters, to trust that an office within that same government would address their problems. But over time, the complaints coming in started to mount. Some were about relatively small problems, like a broken soda vending machine. Others had to do with medical neglect or abuse. In the fiscal year 2024, OIDO received 11,384 complaints, according to an unpublished annual report to Congress. The number of complaints that reached the office over five years added up to 26,846. The most common issues were related to inadequate medical care, contact and communication, and facility environment.

News of OIDO’s shutdown broke on the same day as the Washington Post published an investigation based on internal ICE records that revealed 780 use-of-force incidents in detention facilities during the first year of the second Trump term. It also comes at a time when immigrant deaths in ICE custody have reached a record high; 49 people have died in detention since January 2025. As many as 29 just in this fiscal year. In January, the detained population peaked at 73,000, but it has since diminished to about 60,000, according to the most recent data from ICE.

Former employees I talked to wondered if some of these deaths could have been prevented if the office hadn’t been decimated. “Any death in immigration detention custody is a death too many,” Brané said. “I would like to believe that our attention to a lot of these medical issues kept that number lower than it might have been otherwise.” OIDO’s system wasn’t perfect, she noted, and could have used more independence and enforcement authority. Nonetheless, the now-defunct office played a critical role in providing immediate responses to complaints ranging from insufficient food to a detainee’s inability to secure a medical appointment.

David Gersten, who worked at DHS for almost 20 years and recently served as acting immigration detention ombudsman, praised on LinkedIn the watchdog’s case management embedded model as a “new approach” to federal oversight. “I visited around a hundred ICE and CBP facilities over four years and know OIDO helped ICE and CBP reduce costs and improve efficiency while ensuring safe and secure conditions for detainees,” he wrote in a post. In 2023, then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recognized the office with an innovation award.

Last week, DHS blamed the end of the detention watchdog on Congress, saying in a statement to NPR that it had shut down because of a funding lapse. But the legislation to fund the department and end the government shutdown didn’t mandate the closure of the office. “There’s plenty of money lying around for DHS to accomplish its statutory functions,” said Anthony Enriquez, an attorney with the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center leading the case against the government. “They’re using the fact that Congress didn’t give even more money as a pretext to accomplish the goal they always had from the beginning, shut these offices down without congressional approval.”

Posner agreed. “It feels like it’s all very intentional to make people absolutely miserable while they’re detained,” she said, calling it “an utter disregard for safety and just humane treatment.”