Happy 250th, America. Your Landlord Has Some News...
Trump marks the nation's birthday at Mount Rushmore - a monument that can't fit his face and can't get its $57 million in repairs
America turns 250 this weekend. One of the kick-off parties was at Mount Rushmore. So was the landlord.
The mountain, for its part, said no long ago. The geology is settled - the National Park Service has thoroughly evaluated the carved portion of Mount Rushmore and concluded there are no viable locations left for additional carvings. Even the sculptor himself, Gutzon Borglum, wrote back in 1936 that the stone limitations were so serious he doubted the composition could ever be changed to include a fifth head.
But Donald Trump went anyway on the eve of the 250th - participating in a flyover, delivering remarks, watching fireworks beneath four faces he has openly dreamed of joining - and posting a 3D video of himself on the rock face. And that dream is on the record: he told then-Governor Kristi Noem in the Oval Office, “Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?” Noem recalled: “I started laughing... He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”
The Slum Landlord Tell
Here’s the detail that gives the game away - and it’s not the vanity. It’s the maintenance ledger.
Mount Rushmore needs $57 million in repairs it isn’t getting. Democrats accuse the Trump administration of redirecting tens of millions of dollars in national park fee revenue to fund the president’s Washington “beautification” projects, leaving landmarks like Rushmore to deteriorate. The National Park Service’s deferred maintenance backlog now exceeds $24.2 billion nationwide.
Every tenant of a bad landlord knows this playbook. The lobby gets marble. The boiler gets nothing. Money meant for the building goes to the owner’s name on the awning. The property decays while the brand appreciates - and the tenants, in this case the American public, are told to admire the renovation.
The Point Isn’t the Granite
The physical impossibility is almost beside the point. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum - who oversees the Park Service - insists there is “certainly” room for Trump’s face, and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has introduced legislation to arrange the carving, though the bill is stalled with little to no chance of clearing the Senate.
Meanwhile, the branding project proceeds where no dynamite is required. Trump has spent much of his second term imposing his style and tastes on the architecture of the nation’s capital, and now has an airport named after him in Florida. His name and likeness have been added to official government documents, institutions and currency. The mountain may be the one surface in America that can still refuse him.
Mount Rushmore was conceived as a tribute to the ideals of America, not to any one man - the words of the sculptor’s own granddaughter. The 250th was supposed to celebrate a republic. What it showcased instead was a property under new management - one that strips the maintenance budget, gilds the facade, and puts the owner’s name on everything except the repair bill. Happy birthday, America! Read your lease.
Russian shadow fleet ships have started to circumvent British and French waters after the two countries stepped up interceptions of the sanctioned vessels. Five sanctioned tankers that had called at Primorsk, Russia’s largest oil-loading port, on Friday were making their way around the UK through the north Atlantic rather than taking the much shorter English Channel route, according to ship tracking data. A further two close to the Portuguese coast had also taken the long route around the UK. The diversions, which involve more than a day of extra sailing for each ship, come after 13 tankers were intercepted by French, British and Swedish militaries this year. One of the enabling factors in two recent seizures by French and UK armed forces was a decision by Cameroon — under pressure from western governments — to eject 39 sanctioned vessels from its flag registry. That allowed European navies to intercept ships on the basis that they are sailing without a flag. “Russian ships are doing everything they can to avoid their territorial waters,” said one EU security official, who declined to be named. Territorial waters extend for 12 nautical miles or around 22km off the coast. Ships passing through the English Channel must pass through UK or French waters. Since February 2022, Moscow has been gradually building a shadow fleet of more than 700 oil tankers to evade international sanctions imposed on its exports of fossil fuels, a major plank of the Russian economy. Normally shadow fleet ships carry Russian oil from ports in the Baltic or Black Sea through the Mediterranean and on to Asia where it is often delivered to China’s independent, or ‘teapot’, refineries. But the crackdown by European governments has pushed the vessels to take more circuitous routes to avoid being held up by western authorities - FT
Two Romanian nationals have been jailed for stabbing a journalist in Wimbledon on behalf of the Iranian regime in an attempt to “silence” him. Their target, Pouria Zeraati, works for the Persian language channel Iran International, that is critical of the Iranian government. Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, attacked him in March 2024 as he walked to his car near his home, just around the corner from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. At the Old Bailey in London, Stana was sentenced to 12 years in prison and Badea to eight, after being convicted last month of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The knife attack left Zeraati in hospital needing stitches for three stab wounds in his leg. Zeraati said Badea wielded the knife, while a third man, David Andrei, held him while he was being stabbed. The men left the UK on a flight to Geneva from Heathrow Airport. Andrei is still in Romania, Badea and Stana were extradited to the UK - BBC
Colombia’s outgoing President Gustavo Petro phoned Donald Trump on Friday and asked for help getting himself and his family removed from the US Treasury’s OFAC sanctions list - and, per Petro’s own social media posts and a Colombian Presidency statement, Trump said he’d work to have the situation reviewed. The context makes this remarkable. Washington sanctioned Petro, his wife, his son, and Interior Minister Armando Benedetti last October, accusing him of letting drug cartels flourish — at the height of a rupture that saw Trump call him an “illegal drug leader” and cut US aid. Now, with conservative Abelardo De La Espriella weeks from taking office, the call focused on Colombia’s coca eradication drive - Bogotá says it has hit its agreed 30,000-hectare target and expects 41,000 hectares by year’s end . Petro spent his final year in office wearing the OFAC designation as a badge of defiance - “never on our knees. It’s worth noting that back in February, after their Oval Office meeting, Petro denied having asked Trump to remove him from the SDN list. Asking Trump personally to lift it now, on the way out the door, is a quiet admission of what the list actually costs: frozen assets, blacklisted banking, a family under financial siege. Trump, meanwhile, gets to look magnanimous at zero cost - with a far friendlier president-elect about to move into the Casa de Nariño.
Interpol on Friday identified a 39-year-old woman from Ukraine as the main suspect in a bombing in Monaco that reportedly targeted a Ukrainian tycoon with links to Russia. The police organization named Anastasiia Berezovska, who remains at large, in a Red Notice seeking her arrest on charges of attempted murder, placing an explosive device in a public place with criminal intent, and criminal conspiracy. Monaco authorities haven’t identified any of the three people wounded in Monday’s explosion at an apartment building entrance but said they are a family and that they appear to have been specifically targeted. Media reports named Ukrainian construction tycoon Vadym Yermolaiev as being among the wounded. He has said he renounced his Ukrainian citizenship nearly a decade ago, and he was targeted by Ukrainian sanctions in 2023 for ties to Russia. A woman and a child were also hurt. One of the victims is still in a life-threatening condition, prosecutors said Friday, also mentioning two other “collateral victims” who were slightly injured in the attack. Investigators are also seeking to establish whether the suspect had accomplices or acted on behalf of someone else. “The relative sophistication of the explosive device and the modus operandi suggest that the person who planted the device did not act alone,” Monaco’s deputy prosecutor, Morgan Raymond told a news conference. He said the bomb was detonated from a distance, using a remote control, and its remains are being analyzed in neighboring France. The attack shocked Monaco, a coastal playground for the rich and famous known for its tax-friendly incentives, royal family and Formula 1 Grand Prix. Its head of state, Prince Albert II, described the blast as “an odious act” and said all public services were mobilized to ensure security. The Interpol notice says the suspect has a tattoo, possibly of a snake, on her right arm from the shoulder to the elbow. It says she was born in Ukraine, has dark hair, and speaks German - PBS
The journals….
