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The Trump administration has awarded Clark Construction a $500 million no-bid contract to build the president’s ballroom—even as he has promised multiple times that it would be privately funded and built at no cost to taxpayers, according to The Washington Post. Records show that the president was personally involved in the contract negotiations.Competitive bidding is generally required for all federal contracts. However, the Trump administration filed this contract through the Executive Residence, which is exempt from competitive contract rules.The White House justified the move by stating that under federal law, the president can spend however much on the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting” of the White House grounds. The Trump administration tried to cite the same law as authority to build the ballroom, but a federal judge rejected it in March. The administration’s no-bid contract, however, has yet to become a legal matter.White House Office of Administration Director Joshua Fisher noted on the contract that it skipped the typical bidding process because “the disclosure of the executive agency’s needs would compromise the national security.”Trump has repeatedly said that private donors would foot the whole bill for the ballroom construction, but now it’s clearer than ever that’s not true. “They said: ‘Sir, we’ll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor,” Trump claimed earlier this year.

Detailed data is useful for understanding and addressing environmental effects on people’s lives in ways that become difficult or impossible if only the broadest and blurriest picture is developed.

By Shaddi Zeid, Hannah Gelder, Marla Bramble This article was originally published by Truthout Our campaign won a digital advertising revenue tax that may generate over $1.1 billion annually for the state’s budget. On June 1, the Illinois legislature passed a tax on the digital advertising revenue of tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s been nearly eight years since Congress reauthorized the farm bill, the massive legislative package that funds programs run by the US Department of Agriculture. What used to be passed roughly every five years, the farm bill touches nearly every aspect of […]

In an interview with Fox News, Oz attempted to explain how rife fraud is among Obamacare recipients when he launched into a diatribe over how “40% of the people ostensibly signed up never use it.”

The far-right justices just gave Trump a power that King George III would have loved, while Colorado gets ready for primaries that could put another young democratic socialist on the path to Congress.

The post To Protect Its Drinking Water, This City Has to Appeal to the Oil Regulators That Put It at Risk appeared first on ProPublica.

The post Trump’s DOJ Said Police Reform Was “Factually Unjustified.” A New Report Shows Otherwise. appeared first on ProPublica.

The post Florida Is Executing Prisoners at a Record Pace, Even as Most of the U.S. Abandons the Death Penalty appeared first on ProPublica.