Connect with us

News

RNC speakers want to separate the president from the person to show softer side of Trump

Published

on

RNC speakers want to separate the president from the person to show softer side of Trump

Linda McMahon, former administrator of the Small Business Administration, during the Republican National Convention.

Hannah Beier/Bloomberg/Getty Images


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Hannah Beier/Bloomberg/Getty Images

For updates from the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, head to the NPR Network’s live updates page. Plus: You can watch live video coverage from NPR of tonight’s speeches. Here’s how.

Before former President Donald Trump’s marquee address tonight, the schedule of speakers has sought to show a softer, friendlier side of Trump than his persona as president and on the campaign trail.

Several employees of Trump’s golf properties spoke about his character, like John Nieporte, the head golf pro at Trump International in Florida.

Advertisement

“For 25 years, I’ve seen his generosity and his remarkable character firsthand,” Nieporte said. “He could have chosen a quiet life. He could have played more golf, but he cares deeply about America and our people, he just keeps working and he does it for us.”

The leadup to Trump’s nomination acceptance speech is also a lineup that largely avoids overshadowing the former president’s big moment.

Trump’s speech tonight is expected to be softer in tone and more focused on unity than his typical campaign remarks this year. Those speeches have painted a more dire picture of the country, frequently attacked President Biden and Democrats and used harsh language towards his opponents.

The attempted change in vibes during this week’s convention comes as a majority of Americans don’t believe Trump has the character to serve as president, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

Advertisement

WWE exec-turned-small business administrator Linda McMahon calls Trump a fighter

Linda McMahon, who served for a time as the administrator of Trump’s Small Business Administration, spoke from her perspective as a colleague, employee and friend of the former president.

McMahon, alongside her husband Vince, spent decades as the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) before running unsuccessfully for both of Connecticut’s U.S. Senate seats in 2009 and 2010.

She served as Trump’s small business administrator from 2017 to 2019, when she stepped down to join the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. She introduced herself onstage as the chair of the America First Policy Institute, which was founded in 2021 by former Trump advisers.

McMahon opened with what she described as “probably not the typical Donald Trump story,” recalling a time she met him at Mar-a-Lago for a meeting and watched a sweet interaction between him and his 4-year-old granddaughter.

“He kissed her on both cheeks, she took off his hat and mussed his hair, and he smiled with only the love that a grandfather could have given,” she said, joining a long line of RNC speakers who have portrayed Trump as a loving family man.

Advertisement

McMahon said she first met Trump during her time at the WWE, when he “became part of some of the most compelling and highest-rated storylines in the company’s history.”

She said she was honored to serve in his cabinet at his invitation, and recalled her time traveling the country talking to business owners and job creators.

“They knew they had a president who understood them and fought for them,” she said.

McMahon described Trump as a champion of job creation and “the best friend American workers have ever had in the White House.” And, in true WWE fashion, she described him as “not only a fighter” but “a good man.”

“He has the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior, and I believe that if necessary he would stand at the gates of hell to defend our country,” she added.

Advertisement

News

Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Published

on

Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

Advertisement

Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

Advertisement

The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Published

on

Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

Mario Tama/Getty Images


hide caption



toggle caption

Advertisement

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

Advertisement

The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

Continue Reading

News

Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

Published

on

Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

Advertisement

City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

Advertisement

Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

Advertisement

Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

Advertisement

“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

Advertisement

Advertisement

Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

Advertisement

Image from @Bogs4NY via X

Advertisement

The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

Advertisement

Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

Advertisement

Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending