Trump administration

Trump’s White House helipad do-over

From our US edition

Get to the chopper... but not yet. More construction is underway at the White House, as President Trump has directed contractors to redo their work on the new helipad, a project that started at the beginning of July. Photos taken show crews taking apart their hard work. According to the Washington Post, Trump is "frustrated with its appearance”, and is questioning its placement on the sloped lawn of the White House. Two anonymous sources say he’s debating whether “the slope of the White House lawn needs to be changed.” You cannot question an artist's process. Construction began on the helipad even before it was announced publicly, with the goal of completing the project before President Xi Jinping visits in late September.

helipad

Why is Trump all but invisible in J.D. Vance’s Communion?

"Read Hillbilly Elegy," a friend messaged me a decade ago. "The author really gets it." So I did, and indeed he did. The young and then obscure J.D. Vance showed, through his family travails in Appalachia, how both Republicans and Democrats had in their different ways screwed blue collar, just-about-working-class families like his. The book went platinum and launched his public career. Three things saved the young Vance from the fate that awaited people like him: a fiercely defensive and religious grandmother ("Mamaw"), enlisting in the Marines, and evangelical Christianity. He fell away from this last, however, as he discovered that his fundamentalist faith may have had community love in spades but was very short on good answers to big questions.

communion