https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-22-2025
"“It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.”
Yesterday, former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton cut to the heart of
President Donald J. Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House.
Indeed, that might have been the whole point. After saying in July that the
ballroom he planned to build would not touch the East Wing, the president tore
into the building on Monday, the first workday after about seven million people
turned out for the No Kings protests to demonstrate their opposition to his
administration.
There are currently no approved plans to rebuild, no permits, no signs of
weatherproofing for a construction project begun just before winter, no
indication that the history or the paintings or the artifacts in the East Wing
were preserved. There is only the destruction of the People’s House.
Today, Luke Broadwater of the
New York Times reported that Trump will
demolish the entire East Wing. According to a senior administration official,
the demolition should be finished by this weekend.
Today the U.S. military struck another vessel the administration claims was
smuggling drugs into the U.S., killing two people on board. This is the eighth
strike that has been made public; the U.S. strikes have killed at least 34
people. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, this strike was operating
in the eastern Pacific, widening the zone the administration is patrolling for
those it claims are enemy combatants, a legal claim that experts widely reject.
Eleanor Watson of
CBS News noted that on Sunday, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ)
told Margaret Brennan of
Face the Nation that when administration officials
briefed Congress about the strikes, they “had a very hard time explaining to us
the rationale, the legal rationale for doing this and the constitutionality of
doing it.” The officials informed Congress that they have “a secret list of
over 20 narco organizations, drug trafficking cartels,” but they did not share
the list with lawmakers.
National security scholar Tom Nichols commented on today’s strike: “The
president is establishing the principle that he can order the murder of anyone
he deems a threat. And Congress is letting it happen.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
