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The renderings are complete, the architects and contractors have been hired. After at least 15 years of talking about it, President Trump is building a ballroom at the White House. According to the White House, the work will begin this September, with a price tag of $200 million.

"President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail," said White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in a statement on Thursday. "The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House while building a beautiful ballroom that can be enjoyed by future Administrations and generations of Americans to come."

Iconoclasm (from Ancient Greek εἰκών (eikṓn) 'figure, icon' and κλάω (kláō) 'to break') is the social belief in the importance of the destruction of icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be figuratively applied to any individual who challenges "cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the grounds that they are erroneous or pernicious."

Conversely, one who reveres or venerates religious images is called (by iconoclasts) an iconolater; in a Byzantine context, such a person is called an iconodule or iconophile. Iconoclasm does not generally encompass the destruction of the images of a specific ruler after their death or overthrow, a practice better known as damnatio memoriae.

Three weeks ago, White House officials were battling a frenzy from President Donald Trump’s supporters over the Jeffrey Epstein case. But the flurry of criticisms from within the Make America Great Again movement have quieted, and Trump officials say they are plotting steps to try to shape the public narrative to their advantage.

The president’s advisers are not under any impression that the storm has entirely passed: The most recent polling shows the public largely disapproving of Trump’s handling of the Epstein case.

Archive: https://archive.is/beTMr

So about those Epstein files?

On Wednesday, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer announced that he and the seven Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs are demanding the files, citing “a century-old and little-known” statute known as the “rule of five.”

Under the rule, executive agencies are, upon the request of five members of the Homeland Security Committee, required to submit “any information requested of it relating to any matter within the jurisdiction of the committee.”

Note: Article's actual headline, by the way. It is The Register.