Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
VIEWED: 185382
PAGE 419 of 479
Trump Isn’t Building a Ballroom
The Drey Dossier
Dec 15, 2025
https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/trump-isnt-building-a-ballroom
The Contractor
The lead contractor is Clark Construction. I went to their website to see what they normally build, and their “Critical Facilities” portfolio immediately caught my attention: the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Campus, CISA Cybersecurity Headquarters, USCENTCOM Headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base. These aren’t ordinary buildings. These are top-secret intelligence campuses and military command centers.
But what’s listed publicly is only part of the story. I started digging through government contract databases, and that’s when I found them. Six separate contracts for data centers where even the client names are redacted. Just listed as “Confidential Client Data Center 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.” The facilities themselves are so classified that acknowledging who they’re built for would compromise national security.
So building classified data centers for clients they legally cannot name is actually Clark Construction’s specialty. And they have the contractual mechanisms to hide what they’re building - they hold a NAVFAC contract with a $950 million ceiling where the total value is public but individual task orders can be classified. Which means you can effectively hide the true cost and scope of specific projects by funneling them through pre-existing military construction contracts.
The Firing
Then on December 4th, something happened that made the picture even clearer. Trump fired his original architect. James McCrery, who designs beautiful churches and the Supreme Court gift shop (say what you want about the guy, but he’s got range), was replaced with someone named Shalom Baranes. When I looked into who Baranes is, I understood immediately what had changed.
After September 11th, when the Pentagon needed to be rebuilt and hardened against future attacks, they hired Shalom Baranes. This man designed the Pentagon’s post-9/11 hardening project - the secure wedges, the SCIFs, the bomb-resistant architecture. His entire portfolio is federal facilities requiring classified spaces and hardened infrastructure. And Trump hired him after demolition had already started, after the East Wing was already gone. The aesthetics had stopped mattering. You don’t replace your church architect with the Pentagon’s bunker guy because you want prettier chandeliers.
At this point I wanted to see what was actually happening on the ground. If this were really a data center, there would be physical evidence. And data centers need one thing above all else: massive amounts of power.
DC’s Power-grid
So I started looking at what’s been happening with DC’s power infrastructure, and that’s where the timeline becomes impossible to ignore. In August and September 2025, just weeks after Trump announced the ballroom in July, Pepco filed emergency requests for major infrastructure work near the East Wing. They’re not making incremental improvements. They’re replacing 45-year-old power feeders and increasing power capacity in this area by five times. Five hundred percent.
Here’s what makes that absurd: downtown DC office occupancy has been declining since COVID. Buildings sit half-empty. Commercial real estate demand has shrunk. Power demand in this area should be flat or declining. But Trump announces a ballroom in July, and by August, emergency filings go in to increase power capacity by 500 percent. Downtown DC is half-empty, but apparently we need five times the power for a dance floor.
During this same period, DC Water increased capital spending by $300 million with specific focus on the Federal Triangle area. The Washington Aqueduct - run by the Army Corps of Engineers - issued warnings that “data centers are planning to use Potomac River water for cooling.” They’re explicitly acknowledging that data center development is driving new infrastructure demands. The GSA Central Heating and Cooling Plant completed upgrades including industrial-scale cooling towers and magnetic
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Orsted files legal challenge to Trump’s wind-farm suspension
Jan 2, 2026
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/orsted-files-legal-challenge-to-t
rump-s-wind-farm-suspension/ar-AA1Tr9zK
(Bloomberg) -- Orsted A/S filed a legal complaint after the Trump administration suspended the lease of a wind project that’s near completion off Rhode Island.
The US government’s order “violates applicable law,” the Danish developer and joint-venture partner Skyborn Renewables said in a statement. The firms will call for the suspension to be lifted until the court hands down a final verdict.
It’s the second time the Revolution Wind project has been targeted by the administration. After the government issued a stop-work order in the summer, a judge ruled construction could resume while a legal challenge was underway. President Donald Trump has fought aggressively to thwart the growth of the industry as he rolls back Biden-era climate policies and champions fossil fuels.
Orsted rose as much as 3.7% at the open on Friday. The shares slumped more than 30% last year, dragged lower by Trump’s repeated attacks on the sector and by management’s decision to hold a massive share sale, which was effectively a handout by the Danish government.
Revolution Wind “faces substantial harm from a continuation of the lease suspension order,” the company said in the statement. The project is 87% complete and expected to be ready to deliver power to American homes this year.
The US in December suspended leases for five wind farms under construction off the East Coast, citing concerns over national security as the huge turbines may interfere with radar systems. Aside from Revolution Wind, Orsted’s Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York was also affected.
The company “continues to evaluate all options” in relation to that project, including possible legal proceedings, it said in the statement. Other major developers, including Equinor ASA, are engaging with US authorities over security concerns tied to offshore wind.
________________
Recent Legal Developments (Late 2025 – 2026)
• Court Battles: Multiple federal judges have struck down Trump’s executive orders to freeze wind permitting, calling the actions "arbitrary and capricious".
• Project Pauses: Despite legal setbacks, the administration has used "stop work" orders for projects like Revolution Wind and Empire Wind, citing the need for further environmental and security reviews.
As of January 2, 2026, President Trump’s efforts to thwart wind power—particularly offshore wind—are driven by a combination of aesthetic personal grievances, ideological commitment to fossil fuels, and recently, specific claims regarding national security
His opposition stems from several key motivations:
1. Aesthetic and Personal Grievances
Trump's hostility toward wind power began over a decade ago when he unsuccessfully fought to block an offshore wind farm visible from his golf course in Scotland. He frequently describes turbines as:
• Ugly and "Disgusting": He often claims they ruin scenic views and property values.
• "Cemeteries" for Birds: He argues they "kill all your birds," specifically citing bald eagles, though many research studies show these claims are often exaggerated or unsupported by site-specific data.
2. National Security Claims
In late 2025, the administration cited national security risks as a primary legal justification for halting major wind projects.
• Radar Interference: The Department of the Interior paused five major offshore projects, claiming turbine blades create "clutter" that obscures and confuses military radar signals.
• Classified Reports: The administration has pointed to classified Pentagon reports as the basis for these halts, although critics and some judges have questioned the validity of these claims as a pretext for a broader ideological ban.
3. Energy Policy and Economic Ideology
Trump views wind energy as an inefficient competitor to traditional energy
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Comedy Writer Bought ‘Trump Kennedy Center’ Domain Names, Anticipating President Would Rename Institution After Himself: ‘Satire Became Unavoidable’
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/south-park-writer-buys-trump-kennedy-
center-domain-names-1236617630/
“As soon as Trump began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year, I thought, ‘Yep, that name’s going on the building,’” Morton recently told the Washington Post. “The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast any one administration or personality. It’s meant to honor culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became unavoidable.”
Morton hasn’t launched websites on trumpkennedycenter.org or trumpkennedycenter.com at this point. But he pledged that when he does, they will “absolutely reflect the absurdity of the moment. Lots of surprises. Some things are truly hard to parody, though.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Comedy Writer Bought ‘Trump Kennedy Center’ Domain Names, Anticipating President Would Rename Institution After Himself: ‘Satire Became Unavoidable’
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/south-park-writer-buys-trump-kennedy-
center-domain-names-1236617630/
“As soon as Trump began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year, I thought, ‘Yep, that name’s going on the building,’” Morton recently told the Washington Post. “The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast any one administration or personality. It’s meant to honor culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became unavoidable.”
Morton hasn’t launched websites on trumpkennedycenter.org or trumpkennedycenter.com at this point. But he pledged that when he does, they will “absolutely reflect the absurdity of the moment. Lots of surprises. Some things are truly hard to parody, though.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Well now it's not funny.
And it probably won't even happen.
You're an idiot, dude.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Quote:What's funny is that Trump's Gestapo can arrest Trumptards, based on skin color, once Trump is gone:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Well now it's not funny.
And it probably won't even happen.
You're an idiot, dude.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Evil. Be a dick.
ICE is now the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country. And it has the fewest checks on its power.
Armed with sweeping powers, a ballooning budget, and minimal oversight, ICE is rapidly transforming into a force similar to those authoritarian regimes globally have used to spread fear and silence opposition.
https://represent.us/explains/ice-accountability/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:What's funny is that Trump's Gestapo can arrest Trumptards, based on skin color, once Trump is gone:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Well now it's not funny.
And it probably won't even happen.
You're an idiot, dude.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Evil. Be a dick.
Cool. They've been scouring the internet for death threats and maybe they'll find yours and finally toss you out on your ass even though you're white before Trump is gone.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Quote:This is exactly what the Founders warned us about
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Cool. They've been scouring the internet for death threats and maybe they'll find yours and finally toss you out on your ass even though you're white before Trump is gone.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Evil. Be a dick.
By Thom Hartmann | January 04, 2026 | 06:44AM ET
https://www.alternet.org/msn-uk/trump-founder/
The American Revolution was not just a revolt against British rule. It was a revolt against three ancient tyrannies that had dominated human society for thousands of years. Warlord kings. The morbidly rich. And theocrats.
The Founders knew exactly what they were fighting. They wrote about it constantly, in the Declaration of Independence and in decades of letters to one another. They believed those three forces were the natural enemies of freedom, and unless they were restrained, they would always claw their way back into power.
Today, every one of those tyrannies is back. And they’re not even pretending otherwise.
The first tyranny was the warlord king. For most of human history, power came from violence. Kings ruled because their ancestors slaughtered their neighbors, seized land, and enforced obedience at sword point. They claimed God had chosen them, demanded loyalty, and crushed dissent.
By 1776, monarchy was so normalized that the idea of overthrowing a king was considered radical, dangerous, and insane. But that was exactly what the American Revolution set out to do.
King George III ruled as all kings did. He taxed, punished, and occupied at will. He treated the colonies as property. Jefferson spelled it out in the Declaration, describing a ruler who had become a tyrant, “unfit to govern a free people.”
The Founders rejected that model completely. No kings. No thrones. No divine rights.
Fast forward to now.
We now have a president who openly admires strongmen and autocrats. He talks about ruling, not governing. He issues decrees like a monarch and demands personal loyalty and a constant stream of gifts and flattery.
He surrounds himself with suck-ups, fellow billionaires, and yes men. He’s reimagined the White House not as the people’s house but as a palace, complete with plans for a massive ballroom modeled after the gilded throne room of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
This is not just cosmetic: it’s symbolic, reflecting how kings think.
At the same time, this regime talks casually about seizing territory, controlling other nations’ resources, and using military and economic force to bend countries to our will. Greenland, Panama, and now Venezuela. That isn’t diplomacy: it’s warlord logic dressed up in patriotic slogans.
The second tyranny the Founders feared was the morbidly rich.
In the 18th century, they were called lords, dukes, earls, and princes. They inherited wealth they didn’t earn and used it to control governments. They owned monopolies like the East India Company, whose corruption and brutality helped ignite the American Revolution itself.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote again and again about how wealth corrupts democracy, never mincing words. Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned that the central duty of a republic was to protect the poor from the tyranny of the rich. Jefferson agreed, writing that the rich prey on the poor like animals “devouring their own kind.” Adams warned that once wealth and power become hereditary, elections would collapse into corruption.
Look around today.
Trump is an oligarch who’s stocked his administration with oligarchs. Billionaires write this administration’s policy. Billionaires get tax cuts. Billionaires dismantle regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the planet. The morbidly rich now sit openly in the halls of power, not behind the curtain but right at the table, shaping an economy designed to funnel wealth upwards and lock it there.
This system Trump is reinventing is not capitalism. It’s aristocracy with better br
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The Real Donroe Doctrine
Seeking cash and an ego boost, not regime change
By Paul Krugman | Jan 05, 2026
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-real-donroe-doctrine
For Americans of a certain age, the snatch and grab abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, brings back memories of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in some ways with good reason.
Almost everyone now sees Iraq as a cautionary tale about the lies of the powerful: We were taken to war on false pretenses. Almost everyone also thinks of Iraq as a prime example of the power of delusional thinking on the part of the powerful themselves. Slogans of the time — “We will be welcomed as liberators”; “Mission Accomplished” — are now routinely used ironically, to denote foolish projects doomed to catastrophic failure. And Donald Trump’s Venezuela adventure is another tale of lies and delusion.
But in other ways the Trump/Venezuela story is very different from the Bush/Iraq story.
Two days after the abduction, it’s clear that Trump wasn’t seeking regime change, at least not in any fundamental way. He’s more like a mob boss trying to expand his territory, believing that if he knocks off a rival boss he can bully the guy’s former capos into giving him a cut of their take.
If that sounds harsh, bear in mind that before Trump stepped in, Maduro and his fellow Chavistas — the movement founded by Hugo Chavez — faced strong opposition from domestic pro-democracy forces led by María Corina Machado. Edmundo González, a Machado ally, clearly won Venezuela’s 2024 election, only to have Maduro steal it. So, if Trump wanted regime change he would be supporting Machado and her movement.
But in his triumphal Saturday press conference, Trump sneeringly dismissed Machado, declaring that “it’d be very tough for her to be the leader, she doesn’t have the support. She doesn’t have the respect.”
Instead, he appeared eager to support Maduro’s second-in-command, Delcy Rodriguez, implying that she was ready to cooperate with his designs. Indeed, during the press conference and afterward Trump repeatedly declared that he was already “running” Venezuela.
But it took only a few hours for Rodriguez to make him look like a fool: Later that day she and other leading members of the Maduro government denounced U.S. actions and declared on TV that Maduro is still president of Venezuela.
Oops. By Sunday Trump was threatening to punish Rodriguez for her defiance.
How did Trump make such a big miscalculation? Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants like Pete Hegseth, who has repeatedly described him as “the greatest president of my lifetime.” He lives in a self-aggrandizing fantasy world — a world in which he has a 64 percent approval rating and is a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Washington Post reports that Trump turned on Machado because she committed the “ultimate sin” of accepting her genuine Nobel prize.
Anyway, the core of Trump’s fantasy involves imagining that he really is the character he played on The Apprentice, a master of the Art of the Deal.
Given Trump’s belief that he can always out-deal, out-bully and out-cheat everyone else, it’s easy to see how he interpreted some conciliatory conversations with Rodriguez as a signal that she would be his obedient puppet.
Trump’s self-image as the ultimate dealmaker explains why he was so ready to believe, falsely, that he controlled Venezuela. It also explains his insistence that by, as he imagined, seizing Venezuela, he had gained a valuable prize in the form of its oil. “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” Many Trump critics share his view that there’s a lot of money to be made from Venezuelan oil and condemn his intervention as an attempt to steal that money.
But you know who doesn’t think there’s a lot of money to be made in Venezuela? Oil companies. They see a dilapidated infrastructure that would cost billions to repair. They don’t see a stable political environment above ground. And while Venezuela has large oil rese
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Trump’s “Don Roe Doctrine” Turns Canada Into His Worst Nightmare | Jimmy Kimmel
Jan 4, 2026
Hello to all the loyal viewers and die-hard fans of Jimmy Kimmel — the people who can watch five minutes of Trump talking about foreign policy and instantly tell the difference between a real doctrine and a drunk guy doodling on a placemat at Mar-a-Lago. I hope you’re somewhere comfortable right now, maybe half-sliding off the couch with your phone in one hand and a snack you definitely didn’t intend to eat this late in the other, because tonight we’re going to talk about something that sounds like a bad joke, feels like a comic-book supervillain plan, and is actually being treated like a real threat by an entire country: Donald Trump’s so-called “Don Roe Doctrine” and how it just turned the Canadian people into some of the most determined Trump-resisters on the planet.
If you somehow missed it, here’s the quick horror recap. After Trump’s unlawful invasion of Venezuela — you know, that little “kinetic action” he announced like he was plugging a hotel opening — he walked into a press conference and bragged that he’d basically upgraded the Monroe Doctrine. Remember that old 19th-century policy that said the Western Hemisphere was kind of our neighborhood and European empires should back off? Trump stands there, sweaty and proud, and declares that under his “new national security strategy,” American dominance in the Western Hemisphere “will never be questioned again,” and that they now call it the “Don Roe Doctrine.” He even stumbles over the name like he’s not sure if he’s saying “Monroe,” “Don Roe,” or “Don’t Know,” which is honestly the most accurate version.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump Has Once Again Made Fools Out of His “Populist” Supporters
Trump’s new GOP looks a lot like the old GOP, especially after his invasion of Venezuela.
By Zachary D. Carter | Jan 05, 2026 5:40 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/venezuela-trump-maduro-bus
h-biden-maga-republicans-democrats.html
There was a time not long ago when people would claim with a straight face that Donald Trump was a populist who prioritized the interests of working-class Americans and avoided stupid foreign wars. “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars,” then-Senator J.D. Vance crowed in 2023. As Trump assembled his second-term national security team in 2024, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claimed to be “amazed by the Trump cabinet” and the president’s rejection of “warmongers.” A mere two months ago, one of those cabinet officials, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, told a conference in Bahrain that Trump had ended the “counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building” that has defined American foreign policy for decades.
Trump’s brazenly illegal military assault on Caracas last week would embarrass these people, were they capable of embarrassment. Trump did not govern as a populist during his first term; his second term has been an unabashed celebration of crass imperialism and the super-rich.
And the super-rich are thrilled. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman croons that Trump’s war in Venezuela “will lower oil prices, which is good for America.” The Jeff Bezos editorial board hailed the Trump invasion as a happy confluence of “justice” and technical prowess. Elon Musk is patching things up with Trump, proclaiming the war “a win for the world and a clear message to evil dictators everywhere.” Nor are Republicans the only enthusiasts. Democratic Party fundraiser Charles Myers is organizing a post-Maduro field trip to Venezuela with about 20 hedge funders and asset managers to scout investment opportunities in “oil and gas,” “construction,” and “tourism.”
The story of American capital profiteering on American war is as old as America itself, and Trump openly claims to have invaded Venezuela for its oil. But in this particular case the Wall Street opportunists have their work cut out for them. On Saturday, Politico reported that Trump offered U.S. oil executives “reimbursement” for oil assets that were nationalized by the Venezuelan government decades ago—but only on the condition that they actually take control of Venezuela’s oil fields. Ten days after making the offer, Trump doesn’t have any takers. Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is outdated, and it will take tremendous investments to meaningfully expand production, something oil companies are reluctant to do when large profits are readily available from high prices and low corporate investment. We are thus presented with the bizarre spectacle of an American president waging an imperialist war on behalf of American executives who are reluctant to claim the spoils. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, is telling reporters that Cuba may be next in line for American-imposed regime change, as the wife of Trump’s racism czar Stephen Miller points to Greenland.
Embarrassing as these developments are for the right-wing populists who supported Trump in 2024, I have always harbored some sympathy for their political plight. Conservative populists are generally right about war (bad) and poverty (wrong), and they claim to recognize warmongering and elite favor-trading as unpleasant features of Republican politics. At the same time, I have maintained contempt for the belief that Donald Trump might deliver America from those evils. Trump’s first term was defined by a massive tax cut for the rich, a bank deregulation bill that delivered a rash of bank failures, the destruction of a standing diplomatic treaty with Iran, and sustained, vocal support for the violent and corrupt governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia. All of these agenda items could have been implemented by a President Mitt Romney, had an election or two gone a l
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