A second term, two chambers lost, and a great deal of masonry.
Trumpisms. A field guide.
What he says, what he builds, and what it costs. The ledger below is sourced and dated. The glossary at the bottom is not. That one is ours.
If you are reading this from outside the United States
Midterms happen halfway through a presidential term. The whole lower chamber (the House) and a third of the upper (the Senate) are re-elected. They are the closest thing America has to a vote of confidence, except nothing falls. The president stays.
On 3 November 2026 the president’s party lost both chambers. He cannot be removed by it, and there is no early election. He simply governs for two more years without a legislature that will pass his bills.
That condition is called being a lame duck. The 22nd Amendment already bars him from a third term, so this is the end of the road either way, hence the clock below.
An executive order is a presidential instruction to the federal government. It is not a law and Congress does not vote on it. It binds US federal agencies, and, as the renaming section shows, stops exactly at the US border.
Lame duck clock · time remaining in the term
Until noon on 20 January 2029. As of this week, without the House or the Senate.
The Vanity Ledger
Sourced & dated
Reported total for the capital projects …roughly £1.2bn / €1.4bn
Figures are as reported on the dates shown and have moved repeatedly. The ballroom alone was announced at one number and re-estimated at roughly three times it. Where outlets disagree, both figures are printed rather than averaged.
On The Record
His words, unedited
The Renaming Department
Signed, and merely announced
A US president can rename things on American maps. He cannot rename them on yours.
The world’s reply
Mexico. President Claudia Sheinbaum stood in front of a 17th-century world map and suggested North America be renamed América Mexicana, citing an 1814 document predating the Mexican constitution, and noted the Gulf has been called the Gulf of Mexico since 1607. She also made the legal point: naming authority reaches 12 nautical miles, not across an entire gulf. She wrote to Google and weighed a lawsuit.
Canada. Lake Ontario is jointly governed under the Boundary Waters Treaty. The order changes US federal maps and nothing else.
Google Maps split the difference, which tells you everything: Lake America inside the US, Lake Ontario inside Canada, and Lake Ontario (Lake America) for the rest of the planet.
The United Kingdom is among the countries that simply carried on saying Gulf of Mexico.
Iran condemned the proposed renaming of the Persian Gulf as a cultural attack. That plan was dropped.
And what it cost a news agency
The Associated Press kept writing “Gulf of Mexico.” From February 2025 its reporters were barred from the Oval Office and Air Force One.
The AP sued. In April 2025 a federal judge ruled the exclusion contrary to the First Amendment.
An appeals panel then partly lifted that order, holding the AP unlikely to win on the merits because those particular rooms are not public forums.
The Epstein Record
Documented only
Public record only: court-released flight logs, a published profile, his own
statements, the Justice Department’s releases. Nothing here alleges a crime.
What the record does not show
Donald Trump has not been charged with any offence connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
PolitiFact found no evidence that he visited Epstein’s island.
Appearing in flight logs or a contact book is evidence of association, not of wrongdoing. Hundreds of names appear in these documents.