Sebastian Smee: “If President Trump’s ambition is realized, a triumphal arch will thrust its way into this murmuring conversation like a boastful bore crashing into a huddle of friends swapping stories about a loved one at a wake.”

“Heavy-handed and overbearing, it would pervert the significance of this uniquely meaningful place, forcing visitors to see these two sites through a crass and generalized assertion of victory and triumph.”

Jonathan Chait: “Of all the reasons for Trump to hesitate to crown Vance as the Republican presidential nominee in 2028, he has fixated not on Vance’s inflammatory comments about single women or on the difficulty vice presidents have detaching themselves from their administration’s unpopular record, but instead on the one time that Vance briefly mishandled a football trophy.”

“This is an extraordinarily shallow method for picking your party’s standard-bearer. It isn’t a surprise, however, because Trump is almost certainly the shallowest man ever to inhabit his office. Superficiality is a value system that has guided some of his administration’s most important decisions as it has drifted from menace into frivolity and decadence.”

Bloomberg: “President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday stripping job security from nearly 8,000 federal positions, expanding his authority to fire career employees who work on policy matters and accelerating a civil-service overhaul that’s drawn legal and political pushback.”

A new Marquette Law School Poll national survey finds Donald Trump’s overall job approval at 38%, with disapproval at 62%, for a net -24 points underwater.

Axios: “Over a quarter of President Trump’s MAGA loyalists don’t want the Treasury to print $250 bills with his face on them, according to a new YouGov poll.”

“Trump enjoys 91% approval overall among his most loyal base, but less than half of self-identified MAGA Republicans want to see Trump’s face on cash.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if past reporting that he said he would punch newly-named acting intelligence director Bill Pulte in the face was correct, NewsNation reports.

Said Bessent: “No sir, I actually said I was going to kick his ass.”

“President Donald Trump is suggesting that the UFC lighting grid, known as ‘The Claw,’ will stay on the White House South Lawn well beyond the fight there later this month,” CNN reports.

Said Trump: “Many don’t know that in Paris, France, the Eiffel Tower — 1889 it was built. It was supposed to be taken down immediately after the World’s Fair, and then they said, ‘You know, we sorta like it, let’s leave it up a little bit longer.’ Well, they never took it down.”

Wall Street Journal: “Trump has gotten involved in regulatory decisions big and small that once were made by independent agencies, according to interviews with business executives, lobbyists and administration officials, dramatically shifting the balance of power across Washington and reordering how influence campaigns are waged.”

“Political appointees by nature tend to be closely aligned with the president’s worldview. But former agency officials across administrations say it is highly unusual for presidents to be so intimately involved in the details of regulatory reviews. Previous presidents were careful to avoid the appearance of influencing agency decisions, typically making a point of not publicly weighing in on matters until reviews were complete.”

“President Donald Trump said his administration was dropping plans for a $1.8 billion fund to pay victims of alleged government ‘weaponization’ only because a federal court temporarily blocked the move, which had become a political lightning rod,” Bloomberg reports. 

“⁠Donald ​Trump said ‌he believed ‌he ⁠would make ⁠acting attorney general ​Todd Blanche ​permanent as the ⁠top US ⁠law ⁠enforcement officer,” The Guardian reports. 

Paul Krugman: “Donald Trump will never admit that his gratuitous Iran war has been a total disaster. But the debacle has clearly broken him. So we are now saddled with a president who has given up governing, but will maintain his grip on power wherever he can. And his power will be exclusively focused on rage and revenge…”

“Trump appears to have given up on governing — even governing aimed at consolidating his own power and legacy. He wants to punish everyone he imagines has wronged him but has lost all interest in making the government work, even for nefarious purposes.”

New York Magazine: “The military is currently compiling lists of U.S. service members who will be offered tickets to ‘UFC Freedom Fights 250’ on June 14. The Octagon being constructed on the South Lawn will have about 4,300 seats, and Time reported that at least 1,200 will go to active military members.”

“To get tickets, service members must meet the new body-fat standards the Defense Department put into place earlier this year.”

The Trump administration is abandoning its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund after it drew broad condemnation from Republican lawmakers and threatened to sink an unrelated immigration-enforcement bill, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: “We’re not moving forward with the fund. Period.”

David Frum: “Bill Pulte does not have a habit of publicly saying admiring things about Vladimir Putin or Bashar al-Assad, so in that one respect his appointment as acting director of national intelligence represents an improvement over Tulsi Gabbard.”

“In every other respect, the appointment is baffling. Pulte has no intelligence background; no national-security expertise. He’s an ultra-partisan with a highly quarrelsome personality and great inherited wealth. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about his record of public or personal achievement.”

“Yet Pulte does have a disgraceful record of putting the prosecutorial powers of government at President Trump’s vindictive service.”

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will meet Tuesday with President Donald Trump at the White House as the Republican Senate nominee tries to consolidate his support and boost fundraising in one of the country’s most competitive midterm races,” Bloomberg reports. 

Bloomberg: “President Donald Trump said he will attend a rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on July 24, three months after the annual gala was postponed due to a shooting incident at the venue.”

Semafor: “President Donald Trump on Tuesday installed his top housing regulator as acting director of national intelligence — a decision swayed by longtime Republican operative Roger Stone and other MAGA forces inside the administration, according to multiple sources.”