The Dictatorship

What to know about this year’s White House holiday decorations

Published

8 months ago

December 3, 2025

What to know about this year’s White House holiday decorations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump on Monday unveiled the holiday decorations for her family’s first Christmas back at the White House and her theme is “Home Is Where the Heart Is.”

The decor also nods to next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and founding of the United States of America.

Several dozen volunteer decorators from across the country helped deck the halls of the Executive Mansion with 75 wreaths, 51 Christmas trees, more than 700 feet (213 meters) of garland, more than 2,000 strands of lights, over 25,000 feet (7,620 meters) of ribbon, over 2,800 gold stars, more than 10,000 butterflies and 120 pounds (54 kilograms) of gingerbread.

But a couple of things are different this year because President Donald Trump tore down the East Wing to build a ballroom he’s long desired.

AP AUDIO: Melania Trump reveals White House holiday decorations and her theme, ‘Home Is Where the Heart Is’

AP correspondent Darlene Superville reports the White House is decked out for the holiday season.

The official White House Christmas tree, which is always on display in the Blue Room, is doing double duty by also honoring Gold Star families, those that lost a member during active-duty military service.

That tree was an East Wing fixture and the first one visitors encountered after they entered through those doors, but the building and a covered walkway, or colonnade, connecting it to the White House were demolished by Trump in October as part of his ballroom plan.

Tourists can see the decorations

Public tours, which had been suspended because of the construction, are to resume Tuesday but with a shorter route limited to just the State Floor, which includes the East Room; the Green, Blue and Red Rooms; the State Dining Room; the Cross Hall; and the Grand Foyer.

The Library and the Vermeil and China Rooms on the Ground Floor, one level below the State Floor, were cut from the tour because of the construction.

The White House expects tens of thousands of visitors for holiday tours, receptions and parties before Christmas. Visitors will now enter through the North Portico doors on Pennsylvania Avenue using a new, semi-permanent walkway and entrance.

A White House statement said Christmas is a time to celebrate what makes the U.S. exceptional and that, while every home has its own traditions, Americans are united by shared values.

“In every community, we are lifted by simple acts of kindness that reflect the enduring American spirit of generosity, patriotism, and gratitude,” the statement said. “These moments remind us that the heart of America is strong and that Home Is Where The Heart Is.”

The first lady and Usha Vance, whose husband is Vice President JD Vance, met at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington later Monday to spend time with military spouses and join them in assembling care packages of Rice Krispies Treats and other snacks, and writing holiday cards for deployed service members as part of an American Red Cross effort.

Melania Trump said spouses show a resilience that few outside the military understand.

“We speak regularly of the bravery of our service members, and we should,” she said. “But we must also illuminate the bravery of those who walk beside them, the spouses who carry the weight of family life on top of their own dreams.”

Ribbons, lights and bows transform the mansion

The decorations touch every room on the State Floor, transforming it into a holiday wonderland.

Trees in the East Room are trimmed in patriotic red, white and blue and national symbols, including golden eagle tree toppers, to highlight the coming America250 national celebration.

The official White House Christmas tree in the Blue Room is decorated with gold stars to honor families who lost a member during active-duty military service. This tree traditionally recognizes each state and territory in some fashion, and this year’s fir is laden with ornaments showcasing the official bird and flower of each.

The Green Room celebrates family fun, featuring large portraits George Washington and Donald Trump, the first and current presidents, respectively, each made from more than 6,000 Lego puzzle pieces.

Thousands of blue butterflies decorate the Red Room, where the centerpiece tree celebrates young people and pays tribute to Melania Trump’s Fostering the Future initiativewhich support people who have been in foster care as part of her Be Best child-focused program.

A holiday highlight, the gingerbread White House on display in the State Dining Room shows off the mansion’s South Portico and offers a special glimpse into the Yellow Oval Room, a sitting room off the Truman Balcony in the president’s private living quarters on the second floor.

It was made using 120 pounds (54 kilograms) of gingerbread, 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of pastillage, a sugar-based modeling paste; over 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of chocolate and 5 pounds (2.2 kilograms) of royal icing.

Part of the White House creche is on display in the Grand Foyer while the rest of it is undergoing a restoration overseen by the curator’s office.

The Dictatorship

Trump administration admits canceling grants based on politics

Published

2 hours ago

July 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump administration admits canceling grants based on politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has acknowledged in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — in this case, 16 states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

The statement contradicts repeated assertions by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials that the projects were canceled because they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or had other problems that made them a poor investment of taxpayer dollars.

Democrats and environmental groups seized on the court filing Friday, saying the administration had “weaponized” the federal government to kill good jobs and punish working families because of their political views.

Democrats say what was ‘obvious’ has now been acknowledged

“This administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: it terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state. Both are high-ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees, respectively.

“Weaponizing the federal government like this is outright un-American, and it’s hardworking families already struggling with sky-high costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power,” Kaptur and Murray said.

They called on congressional Republicans to join them in holding the Trump administration “accountable for the President’s failure to look out for all Americans.”

The Energy Department announced last October that 321 funding awards across 223 projects were terminated, saying that after review, they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable.”

The cuts, part of broader attacks from President Donald Trump on climate programs and clean energy funding, slashed federal support for projects to build battery plants, develop hydrogen technology, upgrade the electric grid and capture carbon dioxide emissions.

Russell Vought, the White House budget director, highlighted the cutbacks in a social media post, saying money “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”

The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Projects from many states were cut

Projects that were cut were located in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. All 16 targeted states supported Harris, but Wright said the cuts were “business decisions” based on whether the projects were a good use of taxpayer money or not.

The cuts were immediately challenged in court, and more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress, led by California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, wrote a letter to the Energy Department’s acting inspector general requesting a formal investigation. The department’s internal watchdog launched an investigation in December.

Government lawyers had p reviously confirmed in a court filing late last year that the selection of grants in fact “was influenced by whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect … Democratic candidates in state and national elections (so-called “Blue States”).”

That filing came in a separate suit filed by clean energy groups and the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, over the canceled funding. The most recent admission came in a case called Thakur v. Trump that’s been ongoing since last spring. Federal lawyers acknowledged that they used keywords related to diversity, gendervaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities.

Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, said the latest court filing shows “the Trump administration is brazenly admitting to a vindictive approach to cancelling much-needed energy infrastructure that ignores the job losses, air pollution and increasing bills that people are experiencing everywhere.”

Instead of “building the energy projects we desperately need,” billions of American taxpayer dollars are “going to line the pockets of a small handful of fossil fuel company CEOs,” Bender said, citing nearly $3 billion pledged by the Trump administration to cancel offshore wind projects in favor of fossil fuel projects such as natural gas and coal.

The Dictatorship

Trump orders signs warning of ‘inaccurate information’ at Smithsonian museum

Published

11 hours ago

July 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump orders signs warning of ‘inaccurate information’ at Smithsonian museum

Christmas. 25, 2026, 4:21 PM EDT

If President Donald Trump gets his way, the first thing visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will be greeted with are signs warning them that because of “inaccurate information presented in the Museum” they should seek “accurate information” elsewhere.

The president on Friday ordered the installation of temporary “warning” signs on the museum’s sidewalks, marking a major escalation in his campaign to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to rewrite American history to better align with his administration’s ideology.

The executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and several other Cabinet officials to utilize “all available authorities to encourage” the Smithsonian Institution to “correct the issues found” in a scathing White House reportreleased on July 4 that accused the museum of “extreme political activism” and claimed it “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”

The sidewalks and walkways outside of the popular museum, which welcomes just shy of two million visitors annually, are federal property controlled by the National Park Service. The signs would “notify visitors that the Museum exhibits should be renovated consistent” with the findings of the July 4 report. They would also “direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.”

Trump also accused the museum of failing to “to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country,” and instructed Burgum to install “temporary exhibits” on Smithsonian walkways to correct “inaccurate information presented in the Museum.”

“The Report demonstrates that the Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society,”according to the newly signed executive order.

The signage order followed a week of congressional testimony by Smithsonian officials in hearings called by House Republicans in response to the White House report. Anthea Hartig, head of the National Museum of American History, was grilled over her patriotism and dedication to country.

Hartig said the White House report “does not fairly characterize the full body of work of this museum.” And under questioning from GOP lawmakers she reaffirmed her allegiance to her country multiple times, at one point answering, “I love this country unconditionally.”

The report, oversight hearings and signage demand compound more than a year of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order that vowed to strip federal funding from Smithsonian programs that present what he viewed as “improper, divisive, or anti-American” ideology.

The Trump administration has since threatened to withhold federal funding from the Smithsonian Institution unless a number of its museums submit documentation for an expansive content review.

Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

Trump threatens full-scale war as his tariffs take hold and gas prices soar

Published

11 hours ago

July 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Christmas. 25, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT

As his new tariffs went into effect and gas prices climbed on Saturday, President Donald Trump said he’s not ruling out a full-scale war.

In a phone interview with French journalist Sonia Dridi, Trump said he’s “absolutely” considering resuming full-scale war with Iran if the U.S. doesn’t “get 100% of what we want.”

The president told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday the U.S. is “talking” to Iran, adding that he believes Iran is “getting more and more serious as the days go by” but “that doesn’t mean we get there.” Friday night was the first in 13 consecutive nights that the U.S. did not strike Iran.

The national average gas price rose slightly Saturday to $4.11 a gallon as Trump’s newly imposed tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries threatened to heap further financial strain on Americans ahead of the midterms. The reporter said when she asked Trump whether he would follow through with his threat to levy “substantial” new tariffs on the European Union, which he has accused of “robbing” American tech companies, he declined to comment.

The tariffs, which took effect Friday and have already been challenged in court, could cost American households an extra $1,100 annually, according to an analysis by The Budget Lab at Yale University. That comes at a time when consumers are already shelling out more for necessities, including gas and groceries, as the Iran war drives inflation and energy prices upward.

Gas price averages in the United States surpassed $4 a gallon on July 20 for the first time in more than a month as fighting in the Iran war escalated following the collapse of a temporary ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, which the White House billed as a significant step toward substantial nuclear negotiations and a permanent peace deal.

With the war soon to enter its sixth month, there has been little public progress on an agreement between Washington and Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuzthe vital trade waterway that has become a major source of contention since the war began on Feb. 28. Iran declared the strait closed “until further notice” earlier this month, and the U.S. military’s bid to forge an alternate route for shipping oil and other goods along Oman’s coast has been hamstrung by new threats.

In the middle of it all, Americans are feeling the pain.

More than half of Americans reported feeling more stressed about their finances than they were one year ago in a quarterly CNBC and SurveyMonkey survey released last week. Optimism for a better financial outlook was low, too, with half of Americans reporting they believe the U.S. economy will worsen over the next year because of international turmoil, government policy and the rising cost of living.

Patience with the economic cost of the president’s military campaign in Iran has slipped in recent polling, even among Trump’s most ardent supporters, with 37% of self-identified MAGA Trump voters saying the U.S. should only continue the war if it does not further increase costs, according to a POLITICO poll published on July 22. In May, half of Trump’s base thought the war was worth its economic costs.

While the White House has taken steps to address the prices at the pump as the midterms approach, Trump himself has so far done little to publicly address the financial pain Americans are feeling.

And his latest effort to resurrect his global tariff regime following the Supreme Court’s February strike down of his “liberation” day tariffs threatens to add insult to injury. The latest tariffs apply to countries that make up 99.4% of U.S. trading partners. Brought under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which enables the government to levy import taxes in response to unfair trade practices, the tariffs range from 10% to 12.5%.

The Liberty Justice Center, the legal nonprofit that represented the plaintiffs in the successful challenge of Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, is leading a new lawsuit challenging his authority to levy the Section 301 tariffs.

Emily Hung contributed to this report.