with CHARLIE HARPER

$230 million is a pretty big number.  We can probably all agree on that.  It may be coincidence, but two unrelated-looking developments this week both seem to involve that humongous sum.  

Beginning Monday earlier this week, construction activity began at the expansive downtown Washington DC campus of the White House.  While security fencing largely screens off most of the north- and east-facing sections of the expansive property, sharp-eyed visitors spied a major project visibly underway at the White House.  

The East Wing was being demolished.  

According to news reports, demolition crews have begun tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build US President Donald Trump’s long-desired ballroom despite his pledge that construction of the approximately $230 million addition wouldn’t “interfere” with the existing building.  The East Wing was first added to the presidential mansion in 1902.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said during an executive order signing in July. “The White House is my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”  

The president may love the White House, but he evidently intends to make changes to make it more closely resemble Mar-a-Lago, his expansive property on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach.   

According to other news reports, Trump recently reviewed in some detail his planned ballroom during a dinner with executives from the tech, finance and defense industries, telling them that the project was fully financed after receiving donations as large as $25 million from dozens of companies, including Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin (a giant US defense contractor) and Coinbase, a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency.

Critics immediately seized upon this event as further evidence that Trump, an acknowledged admirer of the control exercised over Russia’s wealthy minerals-sustained oligopolistic titans by Russian president Vladimir Putin, continues with his increasingly successful efforts to emulate his Russian counterpart.

But despite these reported offers to pay for Trump’s ballroom, another development appeared to point to a different financing method.

At almost the same time that the ballroom became the latest polarizing, controversial Trump initiative to capture US attention, the president’s staff leaked the information that he was contemplating directing the US Department of Justice to compensate him for expenses – including damages to his reputation – incurred during the several federal investigations into his and his campaign’s alleged misbehavior leading up to and including his first term in office.

Those investigations, which Trump has insisted are unconstitutional judicial misbehavior, included Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor; two different impeachment trials initiated in the then-Democratic controlled US House of Representatives, and a variety of state and federal lawsuits targeting Trump during his four years out of office from 2017-21.

Maybe you have heard estimates of the sum Trump is reportedly seeking from the government in recompense?  

It’s $230 million.  

This story gets more interesting.  It turns out that the key official in charge of authorizing such a giant payment to Trump, likely without further reference to anyone not under her direct supervisory control, is Attorney General Pam Bondi.  Bondi’s willingness to comply with Trump’s wishes has been well established since she took office on February 5.  Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas administered her oath of office.

Trump certainly does love the shock effect his actions and words so often elicit.  And he has a unique talent for unveiling his stunning pronouncements with a calculating deadpan delivery.  It’s easy to imagine his glee as he contemplates the indignation as his many foes bluster in (so far) feckless opposition.

Elections Coming Soon

Almost since the results of last November’s presidential election revealed Trump’s decisive win over Kamala Harris, millions of Americans frustrated at his reelection began targeting November 3, 2026, the date of the next American general election when every one of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the seats in the US Senate will be on the ballot across the country.

Surely then, many hope, control of the American legislature will shift away from the White House and the US constitutional system of checks and balances will be restored.  Also, Trump will truly be reduced to lame-duck status and unable to exert such profound control over the elected members of the Republican Party.  

Maybe that will happen.  Meantime, there will be a few elections ten days from this morning that may provide insight into next year’s results.  The headline events are the quadrennial votes for governor in New Jersey and Virginia.  We’ll get to those in a moment.  

There’s a House election in November that is likely to attract some attention too, though not due to any suspense about its likely outcome.  

The seat in question represents a close-in district in Houston that has long been held by Democrats and that isn’t expected to change this year.  But that isn’t the end of this story.

At the moment, the Republicans hold a 219-213 majority in the House.  A Democratic incumbent from Arizona’s southernmost district, Raul Grijalva, died in office earlier this year and his daughter Adelita was chosen as his successor in September.  Her election was certified a couple of weeks ago, but House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to allow her to be sworn in.  This normally happens as soon as the new member’s family can get to Washington to attend this meaningful ceremony.

He has fussed and fiddled around trying to justify his intransigence, but it does look as though Johnson is behaving this way in order to keep Ms. Grijalva from signing a petition that would then contain the names of a majority of the House (including a couple of renegade Republicans) and demands that the ‘Epstein file’ be released.  Without Grijalva’s signature, proponents of the file release don’t have a majority.

Democrats and the millions of Trump opponents have clutched at the issue of releasing reports on investigations of disgraced pedophile, human trafficker and multi-millionaire (and longtime Trump friend) Jeffrey Epstein, in the hope that these reports will somehow besmirch Trump and weaken MAGA support for the president.  

Bondi and other Trump appointees have handled the issue maladroitly, to say the least, and the result has been a potential embarrassment for Trump in the eyes of his rabid supporters in the Make America Great Again movement.  

Anyhow, Grijalva will eventually be seated.  The US government will reopen fully.  And we will see what happens next.

But the Houston district vote November 5 has significance for two reasons.  First, it’s a runoff between three Democrats and one Republican.  One of the Democrats will win, but if someone doesn’t win at least 50 percent of the vote next Tuesday, there will be a runoff later and this key additional ‘Epstein files’ vote will be further delayed.

But if one Democrat wins a simple majority, we could see another potential Epstein petition voter in the House.

There’s still another wrinkle here.  In the Lone Star state, Republicans at the urging of the president have been very publicly trying to change some of their own recent work to redraw the state’s House of Representatives districts to shift as many as five of the state’s 38 congresspersons from the Democratic to the Republican column.  If they succeed, that would likely affect the Houston-area blue seat.  The Supreme Court may decide.

Now let’s get back to New Jersey and Virginia.  

In both states, attractive centrist-leaning Democratic women are running against pretty hardline Trump supporters.  In most recent elections New Jersey and Virginia have trended blue, and despite pundits’ attempts to drum up interest in these contests, few expect an upset.  

Accordingly, the pundits and cable news readers have tried to inject eyeball-attracting suspense into the elections by casting these votes as referenda on Trump’s second presidency and as predictors of next year’s elections. 

A well-respected analyst wrote that “both gubernatorial contests are tests of the brand that Democrats believe is best suited for their comeback next year.  The brand Democrats are selling in 2025 is moderate-liberal, national security-experienced politicians who are known more for policy preferences than fiery rhetoric. 

“If the Democrats don’t win both handily, the party will have to change strategy for next year.”