The East Wing is history
Plus: Hilary Duff says her comeback is for the gays
You’ll be startled to know that the White House wing that once housed the First Lady’s offices is suddenly no more, our army is now being paid privately, and Kim Kardashian is considering retiring from fame.
Welcome to this week’s issue of Whig. Read to the end for America’s message to Hollywood about bravery. — Hunter Schwarz
The East Wing is history:
After President Donald Trump and his administration falsely said the East Wing wouldn’t be touched during construction for his planned ballroom, the entire wing of the White House has been torn down.
A YouGov poll found more than twice as many Americans strongly or somewhat opposed the East Wing demolition (53%) than strongly or somewhat approve (24%).
Former Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan called the tear down “disturbing,” writing that it felt like a metaphor and that “all this was done without public demand or support, and was done in a way that was abrupt, complete, unstoppable.”
Shutdown continues:
At 27 days and counting, the ongoing federal government shutdown is now the second longest in history, behind only the 35-day shutdown from 2018 to 2019 in Trump’s first term.
The Agriculture Department said Saturday that food benefits will expire for 41 million people, while the Defense Department said Friday it accepted an anonymous $130 million donation to pay troops.
“There is a plan” for third Trump term, Bannon says:
In an interview with The Economist, former White House aide Steve Bannon said, “Trump is going to be president in ‘28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that.”
Bannon, who pleaded guilty to fraud in a border wall case this year and was charged with money laundering and conspiracy in 2022, said days before the 2020 election that Trump planned to falsely claim he won even if he lost, which he ended up doing.
Most think Trump’s targeting his enemies:
A 55% majority of U.S. adults believe Trump is using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last Thursday.
FLOTUS and makers of her memecoin face suits:
Author Michael Wolff is suing First Lady Melania Trump over her threats to sue him for more than $1 billion unless he retracted claims related to Jeffrey Epstein. Attorneys for Wolff wrote in the suit that the threats “are designed to create a climate of fear in the nation so that people cannot freely or confidently exercise their First Amendment rights.”
FLOTUS responded in a statement. “First Lady Melania Trump is proud to continue standing up to those who spread malicious and defamatory falsehoods as they desperately try to get undeserved attention and money from their unlawful conduct,” Nicholas Clemens, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement to the Associated Press.
In an unrelated suit, the makers of FLOTUS’s memecoin are also getting sued. The creators behind at least 15 crypto coins including $MELANIA are accused of launching, pumping, and dumping cryptocurrency, and that Trump was used as “window dressing for a crime.” She is not named as a defendant in this suit.
Trump Jr.’s drone company just got a big government contract:
A drone manufacturer with ties to first son Donald Trump Jr. just got a contract to make drone parts for the Defense Department.
All told, the Center for American Progress says the Trump family has made “more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts from leveraging the presidency for personal gain” since Trump Sr. won the 2024 election.
The 2028 Democratic primary is already starting to shape up:
A pair of potential presidential candidates from California declined to rule out a run in 2028. Former Vice President Kamala Harris told the BBC that her grandnieces would “in their lifetime, for sure” see a female president in the U.S., and when asked if it would be her, she said “possibly” and “I am not done.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) told CBS News Sunday Morning “I’d just be lying” if he said he wasn’t thinking about the possibility of a presidential campaign after next year’s midterm elections. “Fate will determine that,” he said.
Bernie wins Debs award:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was in Indiana this weekend to receive an award named for Eugene V. Debs, the labor leader and five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate who Sanders called “one of the great figures in American history.”
Sanders, who visited the Eugene V. Debs museum while he was in town, said Debs’s work influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s agenda. “If anybody here thinks that Roosevelt’s agenda was not impacted by Debs, you would be sorely mistaken,” Sanders said.
🎬 No. 1 movie: Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, a Japanese anime.
💿 No. 1 album: The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift for a third week.
🎵 No. 1 song: “The Fate of Ophelia” by Swift for a third week.
Katy Perry and her new boyfriend made their first public appearance in Paris:
Katy Perry celebrated her 41st birthday with a cabaret show at the Crazy Horse Paris with her date, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It was their first public appearance together since being spotted smooching off the California coast.
Perry said during a London stop of her Lifetimes Tour earlier this month that she was no longer single, and the pair are officially an item, according to TMZ.
A plurality of Americans approve of the NFL having Bad Bunny do the Super Bowl halftime show:
Yes, they poll on this, and by they, I mean Quinnipiac, which found 48% approve of Bad Bunny being named next year’s Super Bowl halftime show entertainment while 29% disapprove, and 24% have no opinion.
Hilary Duff says her comeback is for the gays:
Hilary Duff says new music is coming “really soon” and when told her gay fans can’t wait to hear it, she said with a smile, “You know it’s all for them. It’s just to impress them.”
“I always knew I was going to return to music,” Duff told Variety about her imminent comeback. “I needed to feel safe and I needed to have the right people in my corner and be absolutely 100% ready. Honestly, I needed to have 10 years of life under my belt. I needed a lot to say.”
Kim K considers one day retiring as a celeb:
In an interview Friday on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show, Kardashian said she could one day envision doing law full time. “Maybe in 10 years, I think I’ll give up being Kim K and be a trial lawyer,” she said. “That’s what I really want.”
David Archuleta says cameras scare him:
David Archuleta stopped by Kelly Clarkson’s show last week where the OG Idol called him “a man” and shared a photo of a young Archuleta auditioning for American Idol.
“I had no idea I was going to get that far,” Archuleta said. “Then you end up at the finale and your life changes.” He said “cameras still scare me ever since American Idol, I feel like what are people going to think? Are they going to vote me off?”
Archuleta said he’s enjoying being in his flirty era and adding choreography to his shows for the first time, which has been “so fun.” It gave him a greater appreciation for Beyoncé.
Chu talks Britney biopic:
Wicked director Jon Chu told Esquire his planned biopic based on Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me is his white whale. Reading her 2023 memoir was profound and he’s desperate to tell Britney’s story, according to the magazine.
“She did what she had to do to survive. She deserves a story that honors that,” Chu said. “Now that she has her freedom, what does freedom actually cost? And what does that look like? What can we do most to encourage her to be free and not try to turn her into whatever we want her to be?”
Paris dressed as Britney for Halloweek:
Last year she did the “…Baby One More Time” school girl outfit. Now for Halloween 2025, Paris Hilton is taking inspo from her famous friend one more time, donning an all-red “Oops!… I Did It Again” catsuit. “#ThatsHot” Hilton wrote.
America Ferrera calls Hollywood to “be as brave the characters we write”:
Actress America Ferrera wants Hollywood to be brave. She told the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Latino Cinema & Television last Friday that she believes the U.S. is “barreling towards a crisis point in our country and therefore in our world” and “artists and the stories we tell have a role to play in this moment,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“We have an obligation to point not only to what we are against, but to create and to demonstrate the world that we are for and the world that we want to live in,” the Barbie star said.
“Our opportunity as storytellers is to lift each other up, to give each other our humanity, to reaffirm the dignity that we all deserve — and in this moment, we have an obligation to preserve our rights as storytellers, as artists,” she said. “And make no mistake, we are there, and it is time for us to find our courage, find our heroism, be as brave as the characters we write and as brave as the characters we play.”
Thanks for reading! See you next week. ⭐