100 Years of Women's Work, Reduced to Rubble
Inside the history of the late East Wing. Plus: What healthcare will cost you next year. Trump's latest gold item is... a naval fleet. And new polls show Trump fatigue and a rebound for Democrats.
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This week Trump demolished the East Wing, a building that housed more than a century of history, most of it centered on the work of women in the White House. His administration quietly updated the White House website to add entries embarrassing to Democrats and rewrite history. (I made a video about it here.) He’s also misrepresenting basic economic data — grocery prices aren’t falling, tariffs are paid by Americans — while promising to continue intercepting boats in the Caribbean without legal process.
There’s a pattern here: erasing inconvenient heritage, blurring established norms, destabilizing shared truth. It’s how power gets consolidated.
Here’s the good news: most Americans see it too. Recent polling shows large majorities are unhappy with the direction Trump is taking the country. We break down those numbers below. History doesn’t disappear because someone knocks down a building or rewrites a website. It survives when we pay attention and remember.
Erasing History
End of an Era: After 123 years, the East Wing of the White House has been demolished to make way for Trump’s gilded ballroom and other unidentified buildings. Former staffers who worked there over the decades decried the destruction as “jarring,” “revolting,” and a “gut-punch.” One said she burst into tears at the sight of the rubble. Vanessa Valdivia, former press secretary to former First Lady Jill Biden, said it’s “truly a loss and a disrespect for the rich history of the first ladies who worked in the East Wing.” To understand why this is such a big deal, we’ve decided to cover that history. As Anita McBride, former chief of staff for former First Lady Laura Bush, noted, “The walls may be gone, but those East Wing stories must be preserved and shared for future generations.”
Origins: The East Wing’s beginnings can be traced back to President Thomas Jefferson, who ordered the addition of colonnades on both sides of the White House in the early 1800s. The East Wing itself wasn’t built until 1902, during the Roosevelt administration. At first, it was chiefly a social entrance to the White House. Over the next century, millions of people, from humble citizens to the world’s rich and powerful, would be welcomed to one of America’s central seats of power through the East Wing. It was only completed as a permanent structure under the next Roosevelt administration, in the 1940s.
Center of Power: In the early 1900s, first ladies began taking on individual female staffers. At first, their role was chiefly that of organizing social gatherings. Historically, the first lady did not openly talk to the press. In 1933, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made history in the East Wing by holding her first press conference. She insisted that all 30 reporters in attendance be women. Mrs Roosevelt went on to hold almost 350 press conferences over the next 12 years. The press began to refer to the first lady’s social secretary as her official spokesperson. The role of the first lady (and her staffers, usually women) became more important over the next few decades. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy made headlines daily, and her staff dedicated themselves to handling the press; a press secretary began working out of dedicated office space in the East Wing. Kennedy also established a first lady’s agenda. These causes— from Betty Ford pushing for equal pay for her female staff, to Laura Bush advancing literacy, to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative — turned the first lady into a truly public figure in need of a fully professional, specialized, and engaged staff. That’s exactly what happened over the course of the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations. “If the West Wing is the mind of the nation,” First Lady Betty Ford said, “then the East Wing is the heart.” By the late 1970s, Rosalynn Carter had her own permanent office in the East Wing with a professional staff, formalizing decades of convention. For the next half-century, the East Wing was home to the offices of every first lady. As First Lady Carter said, “the role of First Lady has changed as the role of women has changed.”
All Undone: The growth in prestige of the first lady and her staff was intertwined with the physical space of the East Wing. As historian of the first lady MaryAnne Borelli told East Wing Magazine, “space in the White House is power.” You can see, then, what the loss of the East Wing might mean for the influence of the first lady. Penny Adams, Pat Nixon’s radio-television coordinator — who cried as she saw the destruction of her old office, done over the protests of herself and other former staffers — said her “heart is breaking for the evident loss of prestige for the first ladies and their staff.” You might also see what President Trump thinks of the role of the first lady; when he confirmed this week the entire East Wing would be destroyed, he dismissed it as “a very small building” that “was never thought of as being much.” Does razing this wing — erasing more than a century of women’s work and power — signal how this administration views women’s contributions to American leadership?
One Step Forward… Trump’s moves may reflect how his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, engaged with the East Wing. During Trump’s first term, she visited the East Wing so infrequently, her office was converted to a gift-wrapping room. Since Trump’s second inauguration, an historian of first ladies said her presence in the East Wing has been “limited” to “perhaps one [to] three visits a month.” Another historian said “this demolition suggests the current White House does not think that the first lady does anything of value.… They’re not cognizant of the history.” (Clearly they should read News Not Noise.) Melania’s former chief of staff, though, said, “I hate to see that kind of history literally being demolished in front of our eyes.”
What’s Next? The White House insisted that “all the historical components of the East Wing … have been preserved and stored,” and “plans are in place for future use.” What exactly those plans are is unclear.
See For Yourself: We’ve attached some historic images of the East Wing over the decades at the end of this newsletter.
Here Are Your Headlines
Increasingly Unhappy: A series of new polls bring terrible political news for Republicans and a ray of hope for Democrats. Most striking among them: 56% of Americans agreed that Trump is a “potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys democracy.” That’s 14 points more than those who agreed that he’s a “strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness,” a margin almost twice as large as in April. Notably, the same PPRI poll showed that 45% of Americans “strongly” agree that Trump was a dangerous dictator. It also showed that almost two-thirds of adults think the economy and the way the federal government functions are headed in the wrong direction; clear majorities disagree with how the US is dealing with other countries and how the government is dealing with undocumented immigrants. Trump’s recent actions seem to be giving Democrats a major boost. A new Gallup poll puts the party 7 points over the GOP — potentially enough to hand them the House even with Republican redistricting. CNN’s chief data guru said the rapid gains for Democrats are “shocking” and “a metric that has been quite telling of elections.” Plus a new AP-NORC poll suggests Trump’s favorability among Hispanics — a key part of the coalition that delivered him back to the White House — has cratered. 65% view him unfavorably, while just 25% have a favorable view, down from 44% just before he took office the second time. Wonder why.
Standing Tall: New York Attorney General Letitia James today pleaded not guilty to charges of mortgage fraud leveled against her by the Trump administration. James accused the administration of using the justice system “as a tool of revenge.” “I have a belief in America,” she said. “There’s no fear today.”
Thin Skinned: Trump announced late Thursday night that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Why? Because Ontario produced an ad featuring an excerpt of a speech by former President Ronald Reagan, in which Reagan explains how tariffs only work “for a short time” before ultimately harming American businesses and consumers. “Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs,” Reagan warned. The Reagan Foundation complained that the ad used “selected audio and video” and misrepresented Reagan’s 1987 address. In it, Reagan explained why he’d just slapped tariffs on some Japanese imports – as punishment after Japan violated a trade deal. But he was clearly making the point that tariffs are a cure that can kill the patient. Read the full transcript of Reagan’s address here.
Like, Dead: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is sending an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean, which a Pentagon spokesperson said would help the administration’s efforts to “counter narco-terrorism.” This strike group alone almost doubles the number of US naval forces in the area and is a significant show of force. The move follows more deadly strikes on boats the administration alleges were trafficking drugs, bringing the total to 10 strikes and at least 43 killed. Remember, we still don’t know the identities of the targeted people or the evidence used to justify their killings. Were they really trafficking drugs — or, as relatives of survivors and victims claim, were they innocent fishermen in the wrong place at the wrong time, denied due process, and summarily executed? What’s the legal justification for these strikes? We don’t know. Trump on Thursday said he won’t seek congressional approval for the strikes, despite suggesting the conflict could soon move onto land. “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we are going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them.… They are going to be, like, dead.”
Gruesome: Since the US carried out its first deadly strike in September, multiple bodies have washed ashore on Trinidad, mangled by burn marks and missing limbs — as if blown apart by an explosion. One local said “there’s no question in my mind that these men are casualties of war.”
Some Ally: The Treasury Department today imposed sanctions on Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, his family, and Colombia’s interior minister. The sanctions accuse Petro of having ties to narcotrafficking. They are more likely retaliation for Petro’s vocal opposition to the Trump administration’s deadly strikes, which he claims have killed Colombian citizens. Petro told CBS News this week the strikes were conducted without his knowledge, despite him being open to collaborating on anti-narco-trafficking efforts. He also condemned them as illegal and ineffective. “Killing the business’ workers is easy,” he said. “But if you want to be effective, you have to capture the bosses of the business.”
Wrong Line Goes Up: Mixed news from the latest inflation report. Prices rose less than expected in September, but annual inflation still reached 3%, the highest all year. Trump has repeatedly claimed that grocery prices are “way down.” In fact, they rose by 0.3% between August and September. Since last year, many staples have become significantly more expensive; coffee is almost 19% more expensive and beef almost 15% pricier.
Tighten Your Belts: Thousands of federal workers, many of them still actively working, were supposed to receive a full paycheck today. Instead, they received nothing. That’s left many seeking side hustles, taking out loans, and joining long lines at food banks to get by.
Deadlock: Senators on Thursday rejected two competing bills to pay government workers during the shutdown. The GOP bill would have paid troops and certain federal employees who aren’t furloughed, but Democrats warned it would have let Trump choose who gets paid. The Democrat’s bill would have paid all federal workers during the shutdown and prevented the administration from continuing its mass layoffs. Another Democrat bill that would have paid servicemembers, federal employees, and contractors was also voted down by Republicans. Democrats appear to be holding firm in their demand for Republicans to agree to extend crucial healthcare subsidies before reopening government.
Not Healthy: Premiums for Obamacare plans covering some 17 million Americans are set to rise by an average of 30% next year. That spike, plus the expiration of subsidies — which Democrats are trying to extend — will cause premiums for millions of people to double or even triple.
Small Increase: Over 70 million Social Security recipients will see their checks increase by 2.8% next year, an average of $56 extra per month. Some worry that won’t be enough to cover skyrocketing prices. One senior told the AP the increase “does not match the affordability crisis we are having right now.”
Midas Touch: Trump reportedly wants a new “Golden Fleet” of warships to counter China and other threats. He’s repeatedly criticized the look of America’s current warships. One retired naval officer noted that “the president’s aesthetic eye is not the proper paradigm to evaluate tactical ship requirements.”
The East Wing, Then and Now
You’ve likely seen the pictures of the East Wing’s destruction. (If not, check out our newsletter from Wednesday.) But what about the East Wing in all it’s glory? We’ve attached a few of our favorite images below. They span multiple decades and administrations, Democrat and Republican.
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