What Is the Biggest Hole Trump Has Ripped in the Walls?
A reasonable accounting of the major policies enacted in one way or another in the nine months of the Trump administration resembles, essentially, a series of weeping voids in the sides of various figurative edifices, now given corporeal form within view of the Treasury building.
Please subscribe to Gravity Is Gone to support independent writing and reporting on science, politics, and policy.
As far as metaphors go, it is a tad on the nose. On Monday, the Washington Post was the first to report that demolition crews had begun ripping holes in the side of the, uh, White House. The East Wing saw its facade torn off, ostensibly to prepare for construction of Donald Trump's long-desired massive ballroom, a $250-million monstrosity which has not yet actually received the necessary approvals. On Tuesday Law Dork's (and my former colleague, RIP Grid) Chris Geidner obtained another, worse photo, demonstrating the extent of the demolition. Further WaPo reporting on Tuesday was even more dire.
The Statue of Liberty remains intact, at least as far as I know.
The shocking visual of a gaping hole in the side of the country's most famous building is, well, unfortunately relevant. A reasonable accounting of the major policies enacted in one way or another in the nine months of the Trump administration resembles, essentially, a series of weeping voids in the sides of various figurative edifices, now given corporeal form within view of the Treasury building. A week does not pass this year without another such gash hewn into the fabric of the country, but it got me wondering which cavities in our collective teeth cut closest to the nerve.
This is, of course, deeply unscientific, and is not so much a ranking as an accounting, a catalog of horrors — the sort of accounting I find instructive to return to, periodically, to remind those of us drenched by the firehose of the sheer extent of the destruction. You only get literal holes in the White House so often (previously: never), and recaps of the worst season of The American President in the country's history are at very least a historically useful exercise. And so:
