New York Times: “President Trump offered a surprising justification last month for forging ahead with construction of his White House ballroom: Halting the $400 million project would pose a grave threat to national security.”

Said Trump: “Everything is drone-proof and bulletproof.”

“It was hardly the first time the administration had invoked national security to justify a contentious decision. Over the past year, top officials have cited similar concerns when stripping union rights from thousands of federal workers, pausing the construction of wind farms off the East Coast, and exempting oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from protections for endangered species of whales.”

“Critics see a troubling trend that is testing the limits of presidential power.”

Tom Nichols: “On many recent nights, Donald Trump has been posting obsessively on his Truth Social site into the wee hours. The president, of course, has never been one for a solid night’s sleep—or restrained and temperate commentary on social media—but his emotional state seems to be fraying: This weekend, he attacked Pope Leo XIV, presented himself as Jesus Christ, and then jabbed at his phone until dawn.”

“Judging from those posts, the commander in chief is in distress. No one can say for sure what is causing the president’s bizarre behavior. Perhaps Trump’s narcissistic insistence that he is always successful in everything he undertakes is feeling the sting and strain of multiple public failures, including the collapse of his campaign to dislodge the Iranian regime, plummeting approval ratings, the decline of the U.S. economy, and, on Sunday, the crushing defeat of one of his favorite fellow authoritarians, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.”

“But whatever is driving this decline in Trump’s self-control, Americans must not shrug off the president’s latest implosion.”

The Atlantic: “While carrying out public business for his father-in-law, he has continued to pursue his private interests and declined to disclose any information about them. There’s a carve-out designation in ethics laws known as the ‘special government employee,’ which allows business people to perform work for the government.”

“Elon Musk was a special government employee, and so was Corey Lewandowski. But Kushner has not been designated one. He is both outside and inside government—a ‘volunteer,’ the White House calls him. And he is vaulting over strictures that were put in place to defend the mechanisms of government from becoming tools of foreign or private interests.”

“Prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office showed up unannounced Tuesday at the construction site for the Federal Reserve’s headquarters renovation, a new provocation in their investigation of the central bank,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“After speaking with construction workers, two of Pirro’s deputies were advised they couldn’t access the site without preclearance, and they were given the contact information for the Fed’s legal staff.”