TODAY’S WHITE HOUse story

Trump’s huge ballroom to replace razed East Wing

What happened
President Donald Trump yesterday acknowledged that the White House’s East Wing would be completely demolished to build his ballroom, despite his earlier pledge that the project “won’t interfere with the current building.” He also said the cavernous ballroom would cost $300 million, up from the original estimate of $200 million, and would be financed “100% by me and some friends of mine,” though “the military is very much involved” as well.

Who said what
“In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,” Trump said. The East Wing, built in 1902 and expanded in 1942, primarily housed the first lady’s office. “It was a very small building” and “was never thought of as being much,” Trump said. But the unannounced “demolition of part of one of the most historic buildings in the United States has sparked an angry outcry,” Reuters said.

“It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” Hillary Clinton said on social media. The National Trust for Historic Preservation had asked Trump to pause demolition until plans for the ballroom were properly reviewed, saying the 90,000-square-foot structure would “overwhelm” the 55,000-square-foot White House. Trump “needs to tell the public now what he is doing with the East Wing,” conservative commentator Byron York said, and “why he didn’t tell them before he started doing it.” The White House dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage.”

What next?
The “process of tearing down the East Wing was expected to be completed as soon as this weekend,” The New York Times said.

TODAY’S IMMIGRATION Story

NY attorney general asks public for ICE raid footage

What happened
New York Attorney General Letitia James yesterday launched a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” and encouraged New Yorkers to upload footage of federal agents conducting a large raid in Manhattan on Tuesday so her office could assess “any violations of law.” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference yesterday that ICE had wrongly detained four U.S. citizens in the Canal Street raid and held them for “nearly 24 hours” without charges, an act he called “lawless terror.”

Who said what
“No one should be subject to unlawful questioning, detention or intimidation,” James said in a press release. Tuesday’s raid “rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown,” The Guardian said. Nine undocumented immigrants with long “rap sheets” were arrested, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told Fox News yesterday, and New York City will see an “increase in ICE arrests” because there are “so many criminal illegal” immigrants there.

“In other cities where the federal government has escalated immigration enforcement, local authorities have complained that federal agents have bent the law and abused civilians,” The New York Times said. In San Francisco, which is bracing for an ICE influx, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested yesterday that “state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law.”

What next?
The “ability of states to arrest federal officers is murky,” the Times said. U.C. Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said if “ICE agents are acting legally, the state can’t prosecute them and hold them liable, even if it dislikes what they’re doing,” but if they “act beyond their legal authority, and violate state law in doing so, they can be prosecuted.”

It’s not all bad

Breastfeeding may help protect women from aggressive breast cancers by creating long-term immune defenses, researchers from Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Center reported in the journal Nature. Women who breastfed have more specialized T-cells in breast tissue, the researchers found. Those T-cells, which can attack tumors, persist for decades, reducing cancer growth. Understanding this mechanism could help develop new vaccines to replicate the effect.

Under the radar

Spaniards seeing red over bullfighting

Spain’s leading matador “stunned the bullfighting world” last week by “symbolically cutting off his ponytail in the ring,” said The Times of London. The gesture by Morante de la Puebla in Madrid’s bullfighting ring Las Ventas, after a “triumphant” performance, signaled the retirement of “one of the greatest ever” bullfighters. The 46-year-old’s exit, which astonished even his own team, is a “blow to the tradition as public sentiment is turning against it.”

Bullfights have been held on the Iberian Peninsula for over 900 years and are deeply ingrained in Spanish culture. In the 1930s, dictator Francisco Franco declared bullfighting the “national fiesta.” Today, it enjoys protected status as part of Spain’s cultural heritage.

But there has always been some level of opposition. Interest in animal welfare has grown steadily since the explosion of pet ownership in the 1990s, and an increasing number of Spaniards today view bullfighting as an “archaic practice involving unacceptable cruelty,” said CBC.

Now, there’s a “legislative war afoot,” said Euro Weekly News. In February, the popular campaign “No Es Mi Cultura” (“It Is Not My Culture”) gathered more than 700,000 signatures calling for the government to remove bullfighting’s protected status.

But last week, Spain’s ruling Socialists abstained from a vote to debate the petition as a citizens’ initiative, saying they “neither prohibit nor promote” bullfighting. It’s “hard to envision” a Spain that isn’t governed by either the Socialists or the conservative People’s Party, said The Local, so it may be “even longer before there’s a real national debate about whether bullfighting should stay or go.”

On this day

October 23, 1981

The U.S. national debt reached $1 trillion. This was considered a major economic problem at the time, but the country’s debt burden has grown rapidly since then, especially this century. The current national debt surpassed $38 trillion yesterday, with $1 trillion added since August — the fastest accumulation of U.S. debt outside the Covid-19 pandemic.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘A royal pain’

“Elevating 2020 deniers, Trump fuels 2026 fears,” The New York Times says on Thursday’s front page, while in Britain, “prince’s ties to Epstein provoke constitutional debate.” Prince Andrew, “after relinquishing dukedom, is still a royal pain,” The Washington Post says. “U.S. eases curb on missile use by Kyiv, plans Russian sanctions,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Danger signals ahead in shutdown,” says USA Today. “Premiums would jump without ACA subsidies,” The Boston Globe says. “ICE raid tactics at issue in shooting,” says the Los Angeles Times. “Illinois steps up to the plate vs. Feds,” says the Chicago Sun-Times.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Pumpkin high

Brandon Dawson’s 2,346-pound pumpkin won this year’s 52nd World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California. The hefty gourd weighs about as much as a “small sedan or a large bison,” said The Associated Press. Dawson, an engineer, used his skills to determine how much water the pumpkin needed and where it could get the right amount of sunlight. He also had something to prove: Last year, Dawson’s pumpkin lost the top prize to a rival gourd 6 pounds heavier.

Morning Report was written and edited by Helen Brown, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harriet Marsden, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.