Donald Trump
The Demolition Of The White House’s East Wing, A Metaphor For Trump’s First Year In Office
“The White House is many things in one […] No other residence reflects so meaningfully the struggles and aspirations of the American people.” That is how a 1961 memo begins — one treasured by Jacqueline Kennedy, perhaps the resident who did the most to turn 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into a living museum. “Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there,” the charismatic First Lady once said.
Six decades later, and just days before the first anniversary of his election victory — coming up next Wednesday — the current occupant, Donald Trump, has made it his “main priority,” in the words of his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to remodel the residence and shape the White House in his own image, turning it into a reflection of his government’s politics.
Having learned from his first term (2017–2021), during which he believes his advisers prevented him from doing what he truly wanted, Trump now appears determined to leave a lasting mark — on the political system, and even physically. Backed by a team wholly loyal to him, and with every lever of power under his control — a Republican majority in Congress and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices — he is pushing the boundaries of authority just as he pushed for the demolition of the East Wing of the White House.
In Trump’s view, there is no need for lengthy consultations or approvals — whether it’s ordering extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers in the Pacific or the Caribbean, or turning the once-modest Lincoln Bedroom bathroom into a marble showcase. His majority, he believes, is all the authorization he needs: after all, didn’t Americans elect him to get things done?
Trump regards his arguments as irrefutable, even if to others they may sound highly debatable. To explain his Lincoln bathroom renovation, showcased on social media this past Friday, he claims the new style is far more in line with the building’s original era, that of the Civil War (1861–65), than the previous Art Deco. In the case of the drug-smuggling boats, he argues there is an open war on narcotics. “We are just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” he said— precisely on the day the excavators began demolishing the East Wing to make way for a gigantic ballroom.
Anyone who disagrees with his decision, he says, can leave — whether they like it or not. Tens of thousands of officials and senior staff from independent oversight agencies have already been fired, with the Supreme Court’s approval. Last week, the White House confirmed the dismissal of all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a group of architecture experts that advises the government on the maintenance and conservation of public buildings.
The changes to the White House began almost immediately after Trump returned to office in January. The first ones took place in the Oval Office, the venerable heart of the U.S. government, where the sober tones of his predecessor, Joe Biden, have been replaced by ubiquitous gold details: in the curtains, moldings, wall sconces, the frames of family photos displayed behind the famous Resolute Desk, and the numerous portraits of Trump’s favorite presidents. Or in the gifts offered by those who come to pay homage: there is, for example, the solid gold record presented by Apple CEO Tim Cook.
These days, the Oval Office practically functions almost daily as a busy television studio, from which the president holds audiences with foreign leaders, billion-dollar corporate executives, or members of Congress and his Cabinet. And live on air, he treats them according to his whims. His favorites — the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — receive lavish praise in real time and are shown renderings of the new ballroom. While other guests — whether it’s Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, or a journalist asking overly probing questions — are humiliated, insulted and belittled.
After the Oval Office, the next renovation was a bit more drastic: the Rose Garden, adjacent to the Oval Office, would no longer be a garden. The historic lawn where Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and then-president Jimmy Carter drafted the Camp David agreements for peace between Israel and Cairo was removed to make way for a cement courtyard with tables and umbrellas, closely resembling the one Trump already has at his private Mar-a-Lago residence.
The garden, which had long served as a place of welcome and inclusion — hosting Cinco de Mayo cocktails with the Hispanic community, historic press conferences, state dinners, and speeches — is now called the Rose Garden Club. Being invited to one of its events is the most coveted ticket in the MAGA world, the conservative movement created by Trump, and a prime opportunity for politicians and businesspeople to lobby.
One of the most recent high-profile events was a luncheon thanking Republican lawmakers for confirming the candidates Trump had proposed for senior positions. Meanwhile, outside the Rose Garden Club, the country struggles with the consequences of a government shutdown that has already lasted a month: services to citizens are being cut, and federal employees are left without pay, forced to stay home or work for free, due to disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over cuts to healthcare.
The next step in the changes — a “Presidential Walk of Fame,” a series of portraits of his predecessors in the exterior gallery connecting the residence area with the West Wing — was unveiled this summer, as Trump escalated his attempts to consolidate power and take revenge on his enemies. And no one looms larger as a target than his predecessor, Joe Biden, ridiculed in those portraits. Instead of Biden’s photo, there is an image of an autopen: Trump claims that the Democrat, too old, let others make decisions on his behalf, which were simply formalized with one of those machines. Biden has categorically denied these allegations.
Outside the White House gates, Trump’s reprisals against his enemies have gone far beyond mere theater. Since this summer, Trump has sent National Guard troops to cities governed by Democratic opponents, ordered Republican-led states to redraw electoral districts to secure more seats for his party in next year’s midterms, and has dismissed — or attempted to dismiss — senior officials of institutions resisting his control, such as Federal Reserve Chair Lisa Cook. Above all, he has sought the prosecution of those who once stood in his way: former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and his former national security adviser John Bolton are all facing charges in court.
The most shocking act of destruction — the most symbolic demonstration of Trump’s strategy to obliterate anything in his path, whether a building or a government system — was still to come. Since taking office, Trump has gutted approved budgets and entire federal agencies, such as USAID and the Voice of America network. In October, he oversaw the complete, surprise, and rushed demolition of the entire East Wing of the White House.
Built in 1902, the East Wing housed the offices of the First Lady — from which Jacqueline Kennedy planned the restoration of the building — and served as the public entrance to the “people’s house.” Now it will be replaced by a grand ballroom of 8,300 square meters, designed in the marble-heavy taste of the former real estate mogul. By comparison, the main White House building measures 5,109 square meters.
As in the United States he now governs — where doors are closed to immigrants, raids are on the rise, unwanted foreigners are expelled, and dissenting opinions are treated with suspicion — the sense of inclusion and welcome that had guided the design of this functional wing in the era of Theodore Roosevelt is being replaced by exclusivity. Now, multibillion-dollar corporations are competing to secure a spot among the private hands that will fund the colossal project.
The demolition of the East Wing was as symbolic as it was characteristically executed. When announcing his grand ballroom project — justifying it as necessary to host hundreds of guests for state dinners and other major events — Trump had insisted that the new structure would not affect anything already standing in the White House. He never disclosed that plans had changed until the work was already complete. There were no consultations with experts, no permit requests, and no established procedures were followed.
Nor has there been opposition. Those who might have presented it — the National Trust for Historic Preservation, for example — found it was too late: nothing remained standing. Federal agencies, such as the National Capital Planning Commission, responsible for federal construction in Washington, maintain that the decision was not within their purview. Will Scharf, the commission’s chairman, said in September that his mandate concerns construction, not demolition: “This commission does not have jurisdiction and it has long denied that it has jurisdiction over demolition and site preparation work on federal buildings and federal property,” he said. “What we deal with is essentially construction.”
For now, the plans for the project remain unknown, and its cost has already climbed from the $200 million Trump cited this summer to $350 million or more. With the government shutdown in effect, no documents have been filed. But one thing is clear: for Trump, construction is a priority — so much so that work is underway while government operations remain minimal. He wants to inaugurate the ballroom before his term ends and leave an indelible mark — on the White House, and on history.
“Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there,” Jackie Kennedy once said. In the Trump era, there is one reason: the president’s own agenda.
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Donald Trump
Greisa Martínez Rosas, Executive Director Of United We Dream: ‘This Isn’t Just About Undocumented Migrants, But Whether We’re Going To Be Able To Maintain Democracy’
Greisa Martínez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream — the largest network of young migrants in the United States — witnessed a group of students, as she was leaving school, place a garbage bag over a friend’s head. “They spun him around and around and yelled, ‘Go back to Mexico.’”
She has another memory from that same time, of a phone call she received during her first year of college, when she was preparing to return home to Texas for spring break in 2007. “My mom told me, ‘They got him.’ That was all. She and I knew what she was talking about. It was the family’s recurring nightmare, that one of us would be separated from our family for being a migrant.”
Her father, a man who at that time was the same age Rosas is now, 37, who brought her to the United States from Mexico as a child, the carpenter who supported her and her three younger sisters, had been arrested for not having a license to drive the old pickup truck he used to get to work every day. He was later deported.
Rosas’ long journey on the path of activism begins there, in those memories, and it’s not over yet. Especially not now: “My story is what gives me the courage and strength to continue, but it’s not unique; millions have experienced it.”
When her father was facing deportation, no one in the family knew anything about the law, lawyers, or how much such things cost. “We had to learn very quickly, and unfortunately, we didn’t have good legal advice.” The $5,000 the family borrowed to avoid deportation was useless. So life changed. “The head of the family, the one who brought money home, was gone. My mom had to start working, the bills were impossible to pay, my sisters were little, it was such a difficult time.” The following year, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, so Rosas had to drop out of school.
Today she is convinced that the burden a migrant carries is built upon the systemic ills of the United States. “It’s the story of how systems are working together to make life difficult for migrants,” she asserts. “It’s not just migration; it’s also about access to healthcare and higher education. That’s why I joined United We Dream.”
Since 2010, the organization, 60% of whose members are women and 20% identify as LGBTQ+, has worked to help, support, and empower young migrants. Now, United We Dream, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Abundant Futures Fund (AFF), has launched an unprecedented initiative: the Our Neighbors Defense Fund, which aims to raise at least $30 million to financially support legal organizations.
“We set out to do something new for our organizations,” Rosas says. “The hope is that millions of people will feel inspired to do something different right now, to be part of the solution. We know this is an opportunity for those who feel hopeless, who don’t know what to do, or who are perhaps afraid to take to the streets and participate in the protests.”
Less than three months had passed since Donald Trump’s return to the White House when the new administration made an announcement that would leave many in limbo: federal programs that sustained organizations and groups, which in turn helped thousands of migrants navigate the U.S. justice system, were canceled. Many of these migrants were minors who, without resources, have now had to appear before a judge alone. The toll, according to Rosas, is incalculable.
“The price is also some lives we’ve lost while they were in detention centers, waiting for a lawyer to have a hearing with a judge,” she says. “This is a matter of life or death for many people. Every month, we announce the deaths of approximately one or two migrants in detention centers, from different causes, but what they all have in common is that they were detained. It’s not normal. Unfortunately, this is a moment that our history books will record, and we all have to have an answer to the question: What did you do when people were suffering like this? None of us are safe; the only salvation is for us to stand together as a community, to reach out to one another. And this fund and our organization are two answers to how to do that.”
In a country with 11 million households that have at least one family member at risk of detention or deportation, where many lack the funds to afford legal representation, this fund, according to its founders, “will help ensure that immigrant families facing the threat of unjust separation, detention, and deportation have access to lawyers.” To date, they have raised over $12 million. Individual donations have totaled approximately $250,000 from some 10,000 people across the country.
“This is an opportunity for them to take action, to help our families,” Rosas says. “Today there are undocumented youths in detention centers, children forced to represent themselves before an immigration judge. So this is a legal emergency to guarantee due process, which is so fundamental to democracy. Because what is happening is not only going to affect immigrants, it’s going to affect all of us.”
According to Rosas, the money they receive goes immediately to the organizations they support. “What’s striking about this fund is that the money raised has come mostly from individuals, whether they have a lot or a little.” The activist — who has personally felt the impact of deportation and has fought more than one battle for the migrant community in the country, including for the “Dreamers,” which later led her to become a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient — has no doubt that the United States is experiencing unprecedented events.
“The people in control of this government want unlimited power, without consequences. Many people came to this country fleeing authoritarian governments, and that’s what’s happening here now. It’s something that hasn’t happened at this level before,” she maintains. “This isn’t just about whether you’re undocumented or not; we’re seeing young people born in this country being detained by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], [and the administration is] using immigration to give unlimited power and money to agencies like that. So we have to act with great courage, with great clarity, and understand that this isn’t just about undocumented people or migrants, but about whether or not we’re going to be able to maintain democracy.”
Rosas has felt the weight of the hatred that keeps American society so polarized today. At the beginning of the year, in front of thousands of listeners, she acknowledged that she had lived as an undocumented immigrant in the country, and that, nevertheless, she “wasn’t afraid.” That was enough for several members of the MAGA movement to turn against her after the talk.
“They used my image, demanded my deportation, and tried to humiliate me. And although I lived in great fear this year, I’m not actually afraid,” she says. “I’ve survived difficult things. I’m not 17 anymore. I’ve been part of a student movement that has had victories and changed the trajectory of this country. My intention is that even if people feel afraid right now, in the future they’ll understand that we survived this together. That’s why I work every day.”
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Resounding Victories In New York, Virginia, And New Jersey Restore Faith To The Democrats
Democrats woke up Wednesday after a 12-month nightmare with the feeling that their inability to connect with their voters and win elections like the one they lost exactly a year ago against Republican President Donald Trump was nothing but a bad dream.
Faith in the party’s chances of victory returned with resounding wins in New York — where the socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race in the most anticipated contest of the night — as well as in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia (which Abigail Spanberger turned blue) and New Jersey (which Mikie Sherrill won). In both states, the centrist candidates swept their Republican opponents. The Democrats, moreover, won almost everything where they ran: from the Detroit mayoral race to the vote to stop Somerville, Massachusetts, from investing in Israel.
The dose of good news — and the adrenaline rush after a year of post-mortem examinations of the November 2024 defeat — was completed by Californians voting “yes” on Proposition 50, which put to a referendum the efforts of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to redraw voting districts in California. Newsom managed to convince his fellow citizens that only with tactics like this is it possible to defeat Trump, who is pushing to alter electoral maps across the country to favor his supporters in the 2026 midterm elections.
The effect of that vote goes beyond the confines of the most populous territory in the country, because it secures for the Democrats five seats up for grabs in next year’s midterms, in which Republicans risk losing control of one or both Houses of Congress.
Left turn?
The California result arrived around midnight due to the time difference. By then, it was clear what had happened, although there was no consensus on how. The party, which celebrated its victories as a referendum on Trump’s second administration — which is relentlessly advancing down its authoritarian path 10 months after he took office — remains divided on the best way to continue winning. Is Mamdani’s progressivism and shift to the left the key? Or could his phenomenal campaign — from which there is much to learn about how to seduce the electorate in record time and activate young people — never have ended so well in the purple states, a color that comes from mixing Democratic blue and Republican red?
These questions meant that each faction of the party had something to celebrate Wednesday, and, equally, that the victory did not illuminate a single path toward the 2028 presidential elections. “The important thing,” Democratic Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez of New York explains to EL PAÍS, “is that we have sent a signal to the Republicans: there is an erosion of public support for the president, whose approval rating is at rock bottom.” “These elections have made it clear what battles we must fight and what positions we must adopt to win. It’s not about moderates or progressives, but about listening to the voters and fighting again for the working class,” adds Velázquez, who is on the left side of the coalition.
Both Spanberger and Sherrill presented themselves as moderate candidates, and both won by a landslide with over 56% of the vote. Their life stories further reinforced this moderate image. The new governor of Virginia was a CIA agent. The governor of New Jersey was a Navy helicopter pilot. They also share the fact that they entered politics in opposition to Trump and successfully positioned themselves as an alternative to the policies of the Republican president.
Mamdani, for his part, tried to focus on municipal issues such as rent freezes and free buses for New Yorkers, although with Trump in power, everything is inevitably overshadowed by the national circus, with him as its sole ringmaster. The young and proud socialist’s emphasis on affordability in a city ravaged by financial issues, where residents struggle to make ends meet, has proven to be a successful strategy that can be replicated elsewhere. It also stands in stark contrast to the campaign that led Kamala Harris to lose in every key state last year to Trump, whose candidacy successfully convinced voters that only Republicans cared about the cost of living and rampant inflation.
On Tuesday, when the debacle was already apparent, the U.S. president rushed to distance himself from the runners in his party with an all-caps message that once again revealed him as a team player only when the team wins. He wrote: “Trump wasn’t on the ballot, and shutdown [which on Tuesday shattered its all-time record with no end in sight] were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight, according to pollsters.” On Wednesday, he addressed a group of conservative senators at a breakfast at the White House, asking them to examine their consciences, as if the matter had nothing to do with him.
Despite the blatant disclaimer of responsibility, Trump has a point: the results in Virginia — which until Tuesday had a Republican governor and is home to some 150,000 federal workers — indicate that voters blame the president’s party for cutting off public funding. They also show that the Democrats’ risky decision not to vote with their rivals to reopen the government until they receive guarantees that there will be no cuts to healthcare subsidies is proving to be a winning move in the arena of public opinion, despite the harm being done to federal employees who have stopped receiving their paychecks. Many have been forced to rely on food banks to fill their pantries.
Sherrill’s victory in New Jersey, meanwhile, hides hopeful signs for the party, which has seen the return to the fold of some of the Hispanic and African American minority voters who fled in the 2024 presidential elections.
The respite that Tuesday’s elections have given Democrats has not, however, resolved the major outstanding issue: who will lead the party back to the White House? Mamdani cannot run for president because he was born in Uganda and the law prohibits him from doing so. Harris, who has just published a memoir in which she blames everyone but herself for her defeat, has not ruled out the idea. And among the names that have been solidified in the predictions for months, from progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, none clearly stands out.
Newsom, who emerged strengthened from the Proposition 50 referendum as someone unafraid to take shortcuts to achieve results, is another prospect. On Tuesday, he strove to make his victory appearance what history may ultimately remember as the first speech of his presidential campaign.
“Tonight was not just a victory for the Democratic Party. It was a victory for the United States of America, for the people of this country and the principles that our founding fathers lived and died for,” Newsom said.
Now it remains to be seen how far this momentum will take the Democrats, and how they plan to regain their momentum after a year in limbo. In a country perpetually in election mode, the campaign for the 2026 midterm elections, in which the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate will be renewed, is officially underway a year before they take place.
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