Lifestyle
Trump and ‘The Residence’ Share a Fixation on Water Pressure

This week, as the global economy struggled to adjust to whipsawing tariff policies, President Trump signed an executive order to address another national crisis: weak shower head pressure.
The order, aimed at reducing bureaucracy and regulation, reverses limits on how much water can pour out of a nozzle per minute, which were implemented by the Obama and Biden administrations in an attempt to conserve water.
Mr. Trump, while signing the order, noted that, in particular, he doesn’t appreciate that weak pressure hinders him from getting a good hair wash.
“In my case I like to take a nice shower, to take care of my beautiful hair,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.”
Weak shower pressure has been one of Mr. Trump’s longstanding pet peeves. But the whole thing may have sounded familiar — a little too familiar — for anyone who has been watching Netflix’s recent screwball mystery series, “The Residence,” in which President Perry Morgan, played by Paul Fitzgerald, has a similar pet peeve, with a White House usher explaining that he demands “pressure like a fire hose.”
As the White House staff tries to get the pressure right, President Morgan is vocally disappointed. “A rumor of a mist,” he declares after one attempt. At one point, NASA gets involved.
The Shondaland show, which features stars like Uzo Aduba, Giancarlo Esposito and Randall Park, revolves around a murder at the White House during a state dinner, unleashing a sprawling whodunit in the mansion, with details about the building and its history that are drawn heavily from Kate Andersen Brower’s nonfiction book, “The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.” It premiered last month and rocketed into Netflix’s top-10 most-watched shows.
The water pressure incident was a quirky scene that proved almost too prescient, and Paul William Davies, the writer and producer of the show, took some time on Friday to discuss how he finds the whole thing “thoroughly amusing.”
This show leverages the White House’s many rooms, secret passageways and quirky staffing details. How much of it is fact and fiction?
Obviously, the big picture part of it — the dead body in the White House — is 100 percent fiction. But, as much as I possibly could, I tried to draw on, or at least be inspired by, things that did actually happen that I thought were kind of fascinating. So I used quite a bit of stuff that Kate Brower had in her book — anecdotes, specific things about relationships or just incidents and so forth. And other things that I had found doing research outside of the book as well. So, there are a fair number of things in the show that I think people would be surprised to realize that they were actually rooted in some real White House history.
So is the shower scene based on fact?
It is. It’s based on a thing that happened with President Johnson, who was obsessed with his shower — both the water pressure and the water temperature. And when he moved into the White House, immediately after the Kennedy assassination, obviously, he became very fixated on the low water pressure. To the extent that, as Kate reports it, he threatened to leave, to move out of the White House and to move back to where he lived in Washington. And it was like a multiyear effort to kind of tackle the plumbing in the White House to achieve what he wanted, which was apparently unreal, like he wanted a fire hose.
There was one plumber who worked in the White House who did, at one point, bring in folks from outside, the Park Service and other federal entities, to see if they could work on the water pressure, and also had people leave the White House to go look at other buildings that he had been in to see if they could kind of replicate the systems.
Have you tested the water pressure at the White House?
I have not.
There’s just something about shower water pressure that feels so personal and relatable. It’s one of those things that reminds you, ‘Oh, presidents, they’re just like us.’
Yeah. I mean, it really does go to the fact that this is the home of the president. You know, it’s an old building — there’s lots of quirks to it, and the water pressure is certainly one of them. And to your point, it is very relatable because at the end of the day, that’s where somebody is living and waking up and going to bed and doing all the things that we all do in our places.
So what were your thoughts when you saw life imitating art in this way?
It made me laugh because I hadn’t really thought about the water pressure thing as being something that would come back up again. There are a couple of other things in the show: I have a scene between two senators where they talk about buying Greenland and also abolishing the Department of Education. Both of which have obviously come up as concepts in the last couple of months. And I’ve gotten a lot of people come to me saying, “Wait, when did you write this?”
But the shower thing kind of surprised me because it seemed like such a particular obsession of President Johnson’s that I didn’t expect to hear about it.
When did you write those references to Greenland and Department of Education?
A couple of years ago.
Wait — are you a clairvoyant?
Well, there’s a third thing in that speech about fracking under San Francisco — that’s the only one left. I haven’t heard anything about that.
OK, I want to get a little bit personal — what is the water pressure like in your house?
It’s terrible. It’s actually bad and I do appreciate a strong shower. I don’t think I would survive something like President Johnson’s, but somewhere between what I have in my house and President Johnson’s would probably be good.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Lifestyle
Jonathan Groff loves criticism … up to a point

A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: When I was growing up my parents talked a lot about purpose. They wanted my siblings and me to find careers that were satisfying but really they wanted us to find our purpose — the thing we were put in the world to do. And that’s the idea that came into my head when I was thinking about how to introduce Jonathan Groff. Because yes, he’s a mega talent with a long list of Broadway credits including “Spring Awakening” and “Hamilton.” He won a Tony award for his role in “Merrily We Roll Along” and now he’s nominated for another Tony for his new musical about singer Bobby Darin called “Just in Time.”
But when I watch Jonathan Groff perform it’s more than just watching a person do what they love – it’s watching a person live out their purpose. It’s like he couldn’t do anything else if he tried. And watching him on stage, doing his very special thing, is just a complete joy.
Lifestyle
Pennsylvania kindergarten student handed out jello shots to classmates, district says

An investigation is underway after a Pennsylvania school district said a kindergarten student gave jello shots to classmates.
The Greater Johnstown School District said a kindergarten student at the elementary school gave out “alcohol in the form of small jello cups” to three other students.
The superintendent said once staff learned about the situation, “immediate action was taken.” The students were taken to the nurse’s office for evaluation, and out of an abundance of caution, EMS was called to take the kids to a local hospital. Parents were notified and met first responders at the hospital, the district said.
It’s unclear how the student got the alcoholic jello cups, but the district said it’s looking into it and cooperating with authorities.
“We are currently in possession of the jello cups and the matter is under investigation,” the district said in a release. “We are cooperating fully with local authorities to determine how the student came into possession of these items and to ensure the continued safety of our students and staff.”
The superintendent said the district is committed to transparency, though it’s limited in what it can share because of student privacy laws. The district called it an “isolated incident.”
“We want to assure our families that the health and well-being of our students is our top priority. Counselors and support staff will be available for any students who may need assistance processing today’s events,” the district said.
The school thanked staff, administration, school nurses and school police officers for their “swift response” to the situation.
Lifestyle
No Naked Dressing at Cannes Film Festival? How Will Stars Make News?

The Cannes Film Festival is getting more covered-up — and just in time for the opening ceremony honoring the octogenarian Robert De Niro. Bella Hadid, newly blonde, is already in town, and stars expected include Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Stone. But anyone expecting one of the most reliable moves on the red carpet might be disappointed. The new dress code for gala screenings includes the admonition, “for decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the red carpet, as well as in any other area of the festival.”
Cue a crisis in the fashion-film industrial complex.
After all, nowhere has the naked dress been more of a presence than at Cannes, where the combination of Mediterranean, sun and a certain Gallic disdain for prudishness (or at least perceived disdain for prudishness) have conspired to create its own tradition of sartorial liberation.
And “nudity,” when it comes to celebrity dressing, is a relative term. The idea that it may no longer be a shortcut to the spotlight is even more shocking than the clothing it may be proscribing.
“Naked dressing,” or that mode of dress in which large swaths of the normally private body are aired for public viewing, has been a tent pole of the publicity machine since long before Marilyn Monroe cooed “Happy birthday, Mr. President” into a microphone in a flesh-colored sheath so tight it left little to the imagination.
In recent years it has become practically a category unto itself, especially at events like the Met Gala. That’s where Beyoncé played Venus on the half shell in 2015 in sheer Givenchy with strategically placed floral embroidery. Where, in 2024, Rita Ora wore a nude Marni bodysuit covered in what looked like strings, and Kylie Minogue modeled a Diesel dress with a naked torso superimposed on her actual torso. It has been framed as a post-Covid libidinal celebration and a post-#MeToo reclamation of the body. Either way, it is pretty much always a talking point.
All the way back in 1985, Ilona Staller, or La Cicciolina, the porn star, politician and former wife of Jeff Koons, walked the Cannes red carpet in a white satin … well, what would you call it? An evening version of Rudi Gernreich’s monokini, with breast-baring straps and a long white satin skirt. Madonna dropped her opera cape to reveal her Jean Paul Gaultier bullet bra and undies on the carpet in 1991, and in 2002 Cameron Diaz wore a sheer beaded gown and panties, starting a peekaboo trend that is still going strong.
Indeed, the dress as scrim, a transparent piece of nothing draped over bare skin or lingerie to suggest clothing without actually covering much of anything, is perhaps the most popular current form of naked dressing. It is more omnipresent than, say, the skirt slit up to here and the top cut down to there that has also been modeled by many on the red carpet. It provides the illusion of clothes while also teasing what is underneath.
It’s unclear from the wording of the Cannes dress code if the new policy applies only to literal nudity or to clothing that exposes body parts that might reasonably be termed “indecent.” According to Agnès Leroy, the head of press for the festival, the new rules were established to codify certain practices that have been long in effect. The aim, she said, “is not to regulate attire per se, but to prohibit full nudity — meaning the absence of clothing — on the red carpet, in accordance with the institutional framework of the event and French law.” (Even if French law allows toplessness on some beaches, a reality that may add to the confusion around the Cannes rules.)
Still, that leaves the dictum somewhat open to interpretation, given the general absence of fabric in many evening looks. One person’s vulgarity can be another person’s celebration, and who is to say who gets to police whose body?
(This is reminiscent of the time Melania Trump addressed critics of her naked photo shoots in her memoir, situating them in an artistic tradition that includes John Collier’s “Lady Godiva” and Michelangelo’s “David,” and noting that “we should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression.”)
Perhaps the new code is simply calculated to prevent the sort of attention-grabbing stunt that occurred at the Grammys in February, when Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, crashed the red carpet with his wife, Bianca Censori, only to have her take off her fur coat to reveal her fully naked body “covered” by an entirely transparent nylon slip that provided no coverage at all. That seemed to have taken the trend to its ultimate, disturbing extreme by breaking the last barrier in naked dressing: genitalia.
Even though Ye had not actually been invited to the event, he and his wife dominated the headlines the next day more than the actual award ceremony.
The fact that the Cannes dress code also prohibits “voluminous outfits, in particular those with a large train, that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theater” suggests that what the organizers were really forestalling was the appearance of dresses that act as their own sort of performance art, grabbing eyeballs and dominating conversations that might otherwise be focused on the films that are the nominal point of the festival.
If that was the aim, however, it has somewhat backfired. By officially banning nudity on the carpet, the Cannes organizers simply sparked a raft of pieces (like this one) discussing nudity on the carpet. Most of them focus less on the actual meaning of the term in all its thorny nuance than the opportunity to revisit notorious nude-adjacent moments past.
You could have seen that one coming.
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