that's about the size of it

 

 

The White House is owned by the federal government of the United States and belongs to the American people. The sitting president does not own the property, but acts only as a temporary resident and steward,

 

The White House is 168 feet long, 152 feet wide, and 70 feet tall on the South side. In total, it covers 55,000 square feet across 6 floors. There are 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, and 3 kitchens.

The East Wing of the White House was originally built in 1902, and expanded in 1942, when an underground bunker was added. Since WWII was being fought, it was necessary to add The Presidential Emergency Center Operations Center to provide additional security.

    

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Wing#:~:text=The%20East%20Wing%20was%20a,1942%2C%20and%20demolished%20in%202025.

In July 2025, the White House released renderings of the planned White House State Ballroom. Initially, the venue was expected to be able to host up to 650 people for events, but that capacity was later revised to 999 people. Clark Construction was awarded the $200 million contract, with work planned to begin in September 2025.

In case you are wondering, Clark Construction was founded in 1906, and is one of the largest building and infrastructure companies in the United States.

About Us | Clark Construction

On July 31, President Donald Trump had said the new ballroom "won't interfere with the current building", wouldn't be "touching it", and would pay "total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of." A year later (2026), at a press conference, he said the White House had been "a shit house" in disrepair but, due to his improvements, was "tippy top now.

(Regardless of what happens to the ballroom, it will pale in comparison to what happened when Truman was in office.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2026/05/bulldozers-at-white-house.html

The demolition of the East Wing began on October 20, without review by the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction. On October 21, with unannounced demolition already underway, the National Trust for Historic Preservation objected that a 90,000-square-foot (8,400 m²) ballroom would "overwhelm" the 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m²) White House and "permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings."

The White House curator and her staff removed, catalogued, and stored the East Wing's art and furnishings and worked with the White House Historical Association to document the demolition and to use 3D scanning technology to capture the East Wing in detail prior to the demolition

 On October 22, a White House official told NBC that the "entirety" of the East Wing would eventually be "modernized and rebuilt". The official claimed that the construction plan had never been firm: "The scope and the size of the ballroom project have always been expected to vary as the process develops."

Later that same day, Trump told reporters during an Oval Office event, "We determined that after really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world, we determined that really knocking it down, trying to use a little section, you know, the East Wing was not much. It was not much left from the original". "In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure."

The next day, on October 23, photos from the Associated Press showed that the entire East Wing, including the East Colonnade and the White House Family Theater, had been demolished.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-ballroom-court-ruling-1528247275ec6103da892d271d4ee883

On August 7, a divided federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must stop construction of the $400 million White House ballroom because Congress has not approved the project, a decision he blasted as “unjust” while vowing to appeal it to the nation’s highest court.

Trump doesn’t have the unilateral authority to build a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom where the White House’s East Wing stood before he ordered its demolition last fall, according to the decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The Republican president said on social media that the administration will immediately appeal what he called an “unjust decision” to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On August 14, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow construction of President Donald Trump's White House ballroom to continue after a lower court put it on pause.

The administration on Friday asked the high court for an emergency stay of the injunction, which would halt substantial portions of the above-ground construction of the White House East Wing and ballroom while litigation plays out over its legality.

The injunction is set to take effect on Aug. 21 unless the Supreme Court acts.

The district court order would still allow below-ground construction or any other measures necessary to protect national security and the president's safety.

Solicitor General John Sauer called the injunction "extraordinary and unlawful," arguing that it would put the security of the president and his family at risk and override the advice of the nation's top military, intelligence and law enforcement officials. 

If you’ve been paying attention, you may remember that FDR had an underground bunker built in 1942, so additional security should not be needed.

In the addition, the events of 9/11 prove that the last place the president should be is at the White House, which would be a tempting target for adversaries.

Although the Supreme Court has made a lot of bad decisions in recent years, we can only hope that the court will tell Trump to permanently stop his latest ego project.

The tallest structure on Washington D.C. is the Washington monument, which is 555 feet tall.  The Heights of Buildings Act of 1910 limits typical D.C. commercial buildings to a maximum of 130 feet (plus exceptions for wide streets) to keep the skyline low. Building a 250-foot arch would be a clear violation of the intent of that act.

Remember that $200 million budget for Trump’s ballroom?

The latest estimate has now risen to nearly $900 million dollars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/08/12/trump-administration-set-spend-least-900-million-white-house-construction/

 

None of us know how the Supreme court will rule on Trump’s ballroom.

Even if the monstrosity gets approved, it is critical that it cannot be larger than 55,000 square feet, since that would make it larger than “the people’s house” – and that would not be a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a book worth reading

 

In 2024, Dr. Anthony Fauci released a book titled, “On call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service”. I read it shortly after it came out, and found it to be very inspirational.

 

 Here are some reviews of the book:

 “The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents”

“An eventful autobiography [and] a classic American story…Gripping.”—The Washington Post

“One of the most consequential and most prominent [careers] in American medicine in the past fifty years.”—Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker

Dr. Fauci has had an impressive career, which is detailed in the Wikipedia article about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci

Anthony Stephen Fauci^[a] (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 and as Chief Medical Advisor to the President from 2021 to 2022. He was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals from 1983 to 2002.^[6][7]

Fauci graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he studied classics, and earned his Doctor of Medicine from Cornell University. As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci served in the American public health sector for more than fifty years and has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.^[8] During his time as director of the NIAID, he made contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiency diseases, both as a research scientist and as the head of the NIAID.^[6] In 2008, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on PEPFAR, an AIDS relief program, by President George W. Bush.^[9]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci served under President Donald Trump as one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. His advice was frequently contradicted by Trump, and Trump's supporters alleged that Fauci was trying to politically undermine Trump's run for re-election in 2020. As part of the Biden administration, Fauci served as one of the lead members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team and as Biden's chief medical advisor, during which time his advice was generally supported.^[10][11] On Biden's last day in office, Fauci was issued a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025.

As you are aware, Dr. Fauci has been in the news again this week:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/06/anthony-fauci-is-not-contempt/

The headline in today’s Washington Post tells us why:

The contempt vote against Fauci was a stunt

A Senate committee voted Thursday along party lines to approve a resolution holding Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times. It would be an abuse of prosecutorial power if the Trump administration were to use this stunt to pursue criminal charges against the 85-year-old.

Fauci explained that he would not cooperate with the committee because its chair, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), had an “obvious obsession” with trying to engineer his prosecution.

 Paul has argued that Fauci’s refusal to testify amounted to an obstruction of Congress’s investigative authorities. “A subpoena with no consequence is not a subpoena,” Paul said on Thursday. “It’s a suggestion.”

 But Fauci did comply with the subpoena. Unlike Peter Navarro and Stephen K. Bannon, who were convicted of contempt of Congress after refusing to appear before the House’s special committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, Fauci endured hours of public humiliation from Republican lawmakers as he repeatedly claimed the Fifth.

 The more complicated legal question is whether Fauci had a right to invoke that right after President Joe Biden granted him a preemptive pardon before leaving office. But that does not stop prosecution at the state level. Three Republican state attorneys general have opened a probe into him.

 Given the repeated statements by Paul and other leading Republicans that Fauci deserves to be behind bars, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had reasonable fears that anything he said would be used against him.

If you are of the opinion that Rand Paul’s committee was correct in issuing a subpoena against Fauci, consider this fact:

Donald Trump pleaded the Fifth Amendment on August 10, 2022, during a four-hour deposition for a civil fraud investigation led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. [1, 2, 3]

 

Deposition Details

• Location: New York, New York (at the New York Attorney General Office).
• Case: Civil investigation into the Trump Organization's business practices and asset valuations.
• Frequency: Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 440 times during the questioning. [1, 2, 3, 4]
•  

Background & Statements

  

• Prior Stance: Trump had previously criticized others for using the constitutional protection, famously stating that "if you're innocent, you're not taking the 5th" and comparing it to the mob. [1, 2]
• Explanation: In a statement released during the deposition, Trump explained his change in perspective, stating that he had no choice because his family, company, and people in his orbit were targeted in an "unfounded, politically motivated witch hunt". [1]

 Watching political news can be exhausting, so here is my advice:

 Turn off the television, and read a book, starting with Dr. Fauci’s.

 You’ll have a better appreciation for the experts in our society who protect us from harm – even when they are long past retirement age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NASA

 

 

On this day in 1958, the U.S. Congress passed legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a civilian agency responsible for coordinating America’s activities in space, on July 29, 1958.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-29/nasa-created

NASA has since sponsored space expeditions, both human and mechanical, that have yielded vital information about the solar system and universe. It has also launched numerous earth-orbiting satellites that have been instrumental in everything from weather forecasting to navigation to global communications.

NASA was created in response to the Soviet Union’s October 4, 1957 launch of its first satellite, Sputnik I. The 183-pound, basketball-sized satellite orbited the earth in 98 minutes. The Sputnik launch caught Americans by surprise and sparked fears that the Soviets might also be capable of sending missiles with nuclear weapons from Europe to America. The United States prided itself on being at the forefront of technology, and, embarrassed, immediately began developing a response, signaling the start of the U.S.-Soviet space race.

On November 3, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik II, which carried a dog named Laika. In December, America attempted to launch a satellite of its own, called Vanguard, but it exploded shortly after takeoff. On January 31, 1958, things went better with Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite to successfully orbit the earth.

In July of that year, Congress passed legislation officially establishing NASA from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and other government agencies, and confirming the country’s commitment to winning the space race. In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that America should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 mission achieved that goal and made history when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, famously declaring “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

WATCH: Footage from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing

NASA has continued to make great advances in space exploration since the first moonwalk, including playing a major part in the construction of the International Space Station. The agency has also suffered tragic setbacks, however, such as the disasters that killed the crews of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986 and the Columbia space shuttle in 2003.

Here are some surprising facts about NASA:

1)    Vodka had a lot to do with the launching of SPUTNIK, and the link below provides the details:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/11/vodka-and-internet.html

2)   Roughly 7% of the American public still believes that the moon landing was faked.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-view.aspx

 

3)   The moon landing was made possible due to the efforts of three black women in the early 1960’s. One of them is Katherine Johnson – a fact that people like Stephen Miller will never accept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson

Creola Katherine Johnson (née Coleman, previously Goble; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician and human computer whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks previously requiring humans. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".

Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and John Glenn (the first American in orbit), and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a human mission to Mars.

In 2015 President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, the United States Congress awarded Johnson the Congressional Gold Medal and NASA announced the establishment of the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in her home state of West Virginia  In 2021, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame

There are some events in our history that we will never forget.

When (and where) we were when we got married.

We all know exactly where we were when we heard that JFK had been shot.

We all know exactly where we were when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon.

To give you an idea who remarkable the moon landing was, consider these facts:

  

A modern iPhone is millions of times more powerful than the technology NASA used during the 1969 moon landing, possessing vastly superior processor speeds, RAM, and storage capacity.

 

Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (1969)

 

• Processor Speed: Operated at roughly 0.043 MHz.
• RAM / Memory: Had about 4 KB to 64 KB of total memory (with magnetic core RAM around 2 KB to 4 KB).
• Storage: Limited read-only core memory equivalent to roughly 32 KB to 72 KB. [1,
•  
• Modern iPhone (Today)

• Processor Speed: Runs well over 2,400 MHz (2.4+ GHz) across multiple cores, making it over 100,000 times faster in raw processing.
• RAM / Memory: Features 6 GB to 8 GB+ of RAM—millions of times larger than the Apollo system.

• Storage: Offers storage capacities up to 1 TB (1,000,000,000 KB), millions of times more capacity than the historic guidance hardware.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A word about tariffs

I was an Economics major in college, so I know more about tariffs than a lot of people. You can learn a little more about tariffs by revisiting the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the 1930’s, but the truth is that they simply do not work as intended.

Here is the short version of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act

The Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, was a protectionist trade measure signed into law in the United States by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. Named after its chief congressional sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley, the act raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods in an effort to shield American industries from foreign competition during the onset of the Great Depression, which had started in October 1929.

Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates. It was followed by more liberal trade agreements, such as the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.

Naturally, our trading partners retaliated, and their reaction made the Depression worse than it would have been otherwise.

Both Smoot and Hawley lost their re-election, and FDR   got elected in 1932.

The 1932 Democratic campaign platform pledged to lower tariffs. After winning the election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the now-Democratic Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. This act allowed the president to negotiate tariff reductions on a bilateral basis and treated such a tariff agreement as regular legislation, requiring only a majority, rather than as a treaty requiring a two-thirds vote. This was one of the core components of the global economy that developed after World War II.

After World War II, that understanding supported a push toward multilateral trading agreements that would prevent similar situations in the future. While the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 focused on foreign exchange and did not directly address tariffs, those involved wanted a similar framework for international trade. President Harry S. Truman launched this process in November 1945 with negotiations for the creation of a proposed International Trade Organization (ITO).

As it happened, separate negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) moved more quickly, with an agreement signed in October 1947. In the end, the United States never signed the ITO agreement. Adding a multilateral "most-favored-nation" component to that of reciprocity, the GATT served as a framework for the gradual reduction of tariffs over the subsequent half century.

Postwar changes to the Smoot–Hawley tariffs reflected a general tendency of the United States to reduce its tariff levels unilaterally while its trading partners retained their high levels. The American Tariff League Study of 1951 compared the free and dutiable tariff rates of 43 countries. It found that only seven nations had a lower tariff level than the United States (5.1%), and eleven nations had free and dutiable tariff rates higher than the Smoot–Hawley peak of 19.8%, including the United Kingdom with 25.6%. The 43-country average was 14.4%, which was 0.9% higher than the U.S. level of 1929, demonstrating that few nations were reciprocating in reducing their levels, as the United States reduced its own

By now, you are aware of the fact that history often repeats itself.

In 1993, in discussion leading up to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), then-Vice President Al Gore mentioned the Smoot–Hawley Tariff as a response to NAFTA objections voiced by Ross Perot during a debate they had on The Larry King Show. He gave Perot a framed photograph of Smoot and Hawley shaking hands after passage of the act.

In April 2009, then-Representative Michele Bachmann made news when, during a speech, she referred incorrectly to the Smoot–Hawley Tariff as "the Hoot–Smalley Act", misattributed its signing to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and blamed him for the Great Depression. The act has been compared to the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), with Andrew Quinlan from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity calling FATCA "the worst economic idea to come out of Congress since Smoot–Hawley".

 

As soon as he was sworn in to his second term of office, Trump imposed a series of tariffs, which were called “Liberation Day tariffs, and many of them were later ruled illegal by the Supreme court.

 

The link below goes into a LOT more detail.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_administration

In its annual forecast supplement for the global economy that was published in November 2024 ('Year Ahead' for 2025), The Economist observed that [in the wake of the Tariff Act] "... global trade fell by two-thirds. It was so catastrophic for growth in America and around the world that legislators have not touched the issue since. 'Smoot-Hawley' became synonymous with disastrous policy making"

The tariffs announced on April 2, 2025, which could raise tariff levels higher than the rates during the Smoot–Hawley Tariffs, brought renewed attention to the Smoot–Hawley Act.

In July 2026, the Trump administration invoked section 338 of the Tariff Act for the first time in its history (96 years after its passage). This section allows the president to apply a tariff up to 50% to nations which "discriminate" against American trade. On July 20, Trump invoked this section with a 50% tariff against multiple industries from Canada effective August 19. This was partially precipitated by recent Canadian wildfire smoke that caused negative air-quality across many cities in the Northern United States

The official position of the White House puts a more positive spin on the tariffs.

          https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-imposes-additional-tariffs-on-canada/

 

Although the latest round of tariffs is primarily aimed at Canada, Canada will not be paying them.

We will. 

They will be paid by American consumers – and that truth was summed up by Bill Bramhall this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bramhall cartoon