The White House’s East Wing is gone. With its demise, President Donald Trump continues to rewrite history, including the traditions of how a US president can take a bulldozer to the “people’s house.”

For Trump, the East Wing had to be demolished to make way for a 90,000-square foot ballroom to host foreign dignitaries and 999 guests. It’s a massive $350 million project he said will be paid for by private donors. 

The viral images of the demolition awakened intense emotions ranging from horror to celebration, and stirred questions of what this new White House means for everyday Americans.

“[There are] those that do see it representing prosperity; that certainly can be aspirational,” said Debbie Millman, designer and educator at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. “But that’s not the status of most Americans.”

We spoke with Millman about Trump’s legacy of destroying historical artifacts and enraging the public. It’s a legacy that began with his father Fred Trump, and shares a throughline with the architectural visions of monarchs and dictators. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What is your gut reaction to what you see happening at the White House right now?

Oh, my gut reaction is one of heartbreak. It’s really sad to see what’s happening, to see the demolition, to see this historic wing of the White House demolished. He’s essentially done this on his own without any input or counsel from preservationists or historians. He’s not gotten any, at all, to do something like this. 

If you go to the White House website, they very craftily put up a historical list of other renovations that have occurred. But those were always done with the permission of historians, preservationists, architects that were quite open about what was being done, with blueprints and so forth. And so it’s a little bit of a game of hide and seek here, where there seems to be an openness to what’s being done. But it’s really smoke and mirrors. There are no floor plans that have been shared. There’s a couple of nondescript drawings that have been shared, but [they] don’t in any way feature what’s happening on the inside of the building more than just a footprint.

President Trump is not known for his restraint. Right? He likes things big, he likes them gold. He likes things that some people might call tacky or gaudy. 

If you look at what Americans are saying about this remodel, some people see those visual choices as representative of prosperity, as representative of success. Like one man’s tacky is another man’s “Hey, that’s gorgeous.” Is there an argument here that the “people’s house” should reflect the guy that the people elected, because that reflects us as well?

The answer to that is very much about what you believe to be true about representation. Those that do see it representing prosperity — that certainly can be aspirational, but that’s not the status of most Americans. This is the “people’s house.” It’s not one person’s house. And what Mr. Trump is doing is creating a castle or a palace. 

President Trump has long treated architecture as his tool of identity, as has his father in 1966. [Fred Trump] tore down a 19th-century amusement park in Coney Island and promised that he would preserve some of the historical elements, but they didn’t. Instead they threw a party at the demo site. Believe it or not, there were bikini-clad, hard-hat wearing models, and Fred Trump handed out bricks for people to throw at the glass front of the historic pavilion there, to dismantle and destroy it, as opposed to preserve it for historical purposes.

And then [Donald] Trump followed suit in 1980; he demolished the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue to be able to make way for Trump Tower, and he promised the limestone art deco reliefs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he destroyed them. And when asked about that later, he shrugged his shoulders and provided a sense of disdain for them as opposed to respect. This is not something that he hasn’t done before. And it shows a lack of respect for history. It shows a lack of respect for preserving artifacts that have value and meaning to create something that is benefiting only really himself.

I don’t know much about the history of the White House, but I have to assume that President Trump isn’t the first president to kind of tinker with the place. I mean, these are generally men with big egos who see themselves as big leaders. What’s been done in the past, and is what Trump is doing that much different?

Well, the new ballroom is estimated at 90,000 square feet. It is not the first intervention in the White House by a long shot. Thomas Jefferson expanded the grounds. He created gardens that reflected his ideals. Franklin Roosevelt relocated the Oval Office to the southeast corner of the West Wing, but at the time, the existing office was rather dark, rather cramped, and so he brought a lot of light and accessibility to the office. Harry Truman oversaw the reconstruction of the interior, 

But a lot of that was because of what seemed to be imminent collapse of parts of the building that were so unsafe that there was really no other recourse but to do that. Of course, Jacqueline Kennedy — her restoration project in general emphasized historical continuity. She also obviously created the Rose Garden. She did a lot to the grounds, all of which had been demolished. [Editor’s note: In July, Trump paved over the Rose Garden to create a tiled patio.]

So this is not the first destruction of pieces of the White House that Trump wants to remake as a zone for primarily celebratory or party reasons, as opposed to [for] reasons that reflect more safety or preservation or augmentation for the people, as opposed to [for] billionaire donors.

All right, so other presidents have changed the White House, but you’re saying this sort of belies comparison. If there’s no real comparison in the US, are there comparisons elsewhere, other world leaders who have done this sort of thing?

Oh my gosh, yes. Louis XIV’s decision for the design of Versailles transformed what was a royal residence into a stage on which his reign would be essentially performed. And Benito Mussolini’s marble piazzas sought to tie fascism to Rome’s magnificence. And in the process, entire neighborhoods were demolished to create the boulevards of the Imperiali. 

In Versailles and fascist Rome, architecture was created to extend the power of a leader by rewriting the meaning of the nation’s most visible symbols. And essentially, that is what Trump is doing here. It’s not a practical addition; it’s a metaphor for the Trump brand overtaking the institution. 

Now, there’s no question that there will be value to a ballroom. The current ballroom holds, I think, about 250 people. When the White House has hosted bigger parties, they’ve had to erect tents on the grounds. And that was not always a feasible or comfortable situation. If it was raining, people had to walk on plastic. But that doesn’t mean we need to have the over-the-top showpiece that does not reflect the soul of this country. The soul of this country is not gilded flourishes; it’s just not.

You are an expert in your field. And President Trump has done this thing in America that’s very interesting: He’s cast a lot of doubt on experts in favor of regular people, ordinary folk. And I think what he might say is, “I was democratically elected by the ordinary folk. I have those regular people on my side, and if I choose to remake the White House in my image or the image of something else, that’s what ordinary Americans voted for.” 

Madam Expert, what do you think about that argument?

Well, this is not a reflection of or for the people. The ballroom will rescript the White House as an extension of the Trump brand. And the fact that this has been funded by and hosted for billionaires in exchange for recognition of their own brands as part of this really refutes that statement. 

In my opinion, one of the great tenets of a brand is: Can you remove the logo and still identify what it is? Do these iconic assets speak to you beyond the name of the brand? And the current building will be reshaped in the image of President Trump. It will be defined by over-the-top opulence — truly exaggerated and cumbersome scale. And it’s a preference. It shows a preference for size over substance, and size over subtlety, and size over dignity. It will challenge the integrity of the existing architecture of the White House in ways we can’t even envision yet. And I think it’s converting what is considered to be, and has always been considered to be and described as, “the house of the people” into a stage for Trump’s personal aggrandizement.

Netflix’s mega-hit KPop Demon Hunters is now the streaming platform’s most popular movie of all time. But its ascendance as 2025’s surprise cultural phenomenon extends far beyond the animated movie itself.

It’s the music. It is the first soundtrack to have four songs in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, with the single “Golden” reaching No. 1 for several weeks. The high-octane songs have the glossy production, catchy hooks, and charisma Korean pop is famous for.

The story follows girl group trio Huntr/x, who adore their fans as much as slurping ramyeon. But there’s a twist: they lead double lives to protect the world from demons through their music. Standing in their way are The Saja Boys. They’re demons masquerading as a human boy band, fighting back with infectious pop tunes and eight-pack abs to thwart Huntr/x’s critical mission.

That premise did not impress Sony, the studio that made the movie but ultimately passed distribution to Netflix. 

One of the reasons why the movie is so special is that it honors k-pop’s status as one of the world’s most popular genres, said Rebecca Sun, author of the Quiet Part Substack about cultural news and criticism. K-pop groups like Blackpink, BTS, TWICE, and NewJeans don’t always get as much love from American tastemakers, even though their music and presence is literally everywhere.

“I found that every single project that highlights some sort of historically excluded culture or some subculture,” Sun said, “they always are more successful if they just throw you in there rather than attempt to handhold you in some cheesy way.”

Below is an excerpt of a conversation between Today, Explained host Noel King and Sun, edited for length and clarity. There’s more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Where did this movie come from? How did Netflix get a hold of it?

So this is another brilliant part of the narrative. 

The movie is completely produced by Sony Pictures Animation, which is the studio that made the Oscar-winning Spiderverse movies. And the two directors, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, had deals with Sony. So it was completely developed in-house within Sony. They pitched Sony’s distribution arm and they passed. Sony said, yeah, I don’t think we’re going to put this movie out ourselves.

Simultaneously, Sony had a first-look deal with Netflix. This was a deal that was struck around the time of the pandemic where Netflix said, “Hey, we promise that we will finance at least one or two of your movies a year. We’ll put them on our streaming service and we’ll just buy them for you. So you make them, we will pay, we reimburse you for the entire production budget and the rest is history.”

And Sony was not the only entity to underestimate this movie. You actually wrote on your Substack that you ignored an invitation from Netflix to prescreen this movie. Why? What was going through your head?

Okay, so first of all, I cannot compare myself anywhere to the level of import as a player in this universe. 

To me, you are.

Thank you. But this is what was going through my head: As somebody who’s been covering entertainment for a very long time, I had been tracking K-pop projects in Hollywood for a decade. Like, Hollywood has been trying to make K-pop themed projects since at least 2015, which is the earliest known project that I could find. And so it was more my cynicism about the industry’s historic failure to make a successful scripted K-pop feature. 

But look, it wasn’t just me. Because merchandising — you know they tried, Netflix tried going to merch retailers to say, hey, do you want to partner with us on this movie we have coming out, KPop Demon Hunters, and all the merchandisers passed.

So yeah, whatever toy companies passed on making stuffed Derpy tigers, they could have made so much money this summer.

But this raises a very interesting question, right, because I don’t know a ton about K-pop, but I do know that Korean music and Korean movies have had stunning global appeal for years now. Why, to this point, was nobody able to pull off this type of movie and why did this movie hit, do you think?

One commonality I found in all of the K-pop projects that never made it to the finish line was they were all written from the point of view of what I call the outsider’s gaze. So there were several projects where the protagonist was a Westerner, and in most cases a white character, who was imported to Korea to the K-pop scene for some reason. It’s always been this fish out of water trope. And I think that that comes from studio executives who themselves are not K-pop fans, but have just read in the papers that K-pop is big. They were like, let’s do a K-pop thing, but let’s make sure that this exotic thing makes sense to people. They’re trying to sort of reverse-engineer its popularity. 

Whereas KPop Demon Hunters, what’s interesting about it is that it takes place in a universe where [it’s] just assumed that every single person in the world, every single character in the movie is obsessed with K-pop. Every single person from kids to old men at the sauna listen to K-pop, participate in the subculture’s rituals, and there’s no explanation.

I was talking to some friends, they are 4 and 6 years old, and they were telling me how much they love KPop Demon Hunters. And I was talking to their mom at one point over their heads. And we were saying like, “Okay, we get it.”

How long do you think this movie is going to dominate for? At what point does the obsession fade?

That’s a question to ask some kids.

Nothing prepares a casual Olympics fan for falling in love with a sport they know nothing about.

During the gymnastics trials in Milwaukee this year, I waited to watch Simone Biles, Suni Lee, and the rest of the ladies dazzle with their awesome skills. Could we get the men’s competition over with already?  

Yet there I was, transfixed as the men’s team went through their routines. Yes, the men showed massive feats of strength and ability, but they also had a certain … rizz? 

I wasn’t alone in watching men’s gymnastics for the first time. The US men’s team’s bronze win in the Paris 2024 Olympics left many awestruck at athletes they underestimated or didn’t know much about. 

The American women gymnasts have outperformed the men in the Olympics for decades. But this week’s win brought a new amount of attention to US men’s artistic gymnastics, ending a 16-year run of watching other countries beat them to the podium.

Perhaps no one personified this turnaround better than “Pommel Horse Guy” — Stephen Nedoroscik, whose only event was pommel horse, and was constantly featured on camera in a state of meditation, eyes closed in Clark Kent style glasses, all while his teammates (Brody Malone, Frederick Richard, Asher Hong, and Paul Juda) were hitting it big in their routines.  

They did their jobs, but to clinch a medal, Nedoroscik had to do his. The glasses came off, Nedoroscik perfectly pommeled, and the internet went wild. 

Beijing 2008 was the last time the US men’s team won a medal, taking home America’s first bronze in the team event. “We believe that absolutely stimulated an interest in men’s gymnastics,” Justin Spring, who was part of that winning group, told Today, Explained. “It’s got to be cool.”

But that momentum wouldn’t last. After retiring from competition, Spring went on to become head coach for men’s gymnastics at the University of Illinois. Throughout his tenure, he saw a troubling trend of colleges across the US cutting men’s gymnastics programs. 

Back in the 1970s, more than 150 universities had men’s gymnastics programs. Today there are only 12 Division I teams. 

One of the culprits that some observers have pointed to is the need to comply with Title IX programs and balancing budgets. (Title IX forbids discrimination based on sex in schools that receive federal funds.) According to this view, in order to achieve equity between men’s and women’s athletics, schools tended to cut men’s sports like swimming, diving, track and field, and gymnastics.

“There are so few opportunities outside of the Olympics and NCAA scholarships that it’s hard to keep kids in the sport,” said Lauren Hopkins, founder of the GymTernet blog, on Today, Explained. 

How is a sport to thrive — and win medals — if the pickings are slim?

Newly minted Paris 2024 bronze medalist Fred Richard has made it a big deal to bring all eyes back to the sport. “You know, we’re in a sport where there’s not as many viewers. You know, it’s a much smaller sport, especially on the men’s side,” Richard told Good Morning America before a segment recreating his popular TikTok @frederickflips of somersaulting into the air and landing into a pair of shorts. 

That video is part of a steady stream of content that’s helped him amass more than a million followers on the app — and, men’s gymnastics fans hope, will prod more boys to join the sport.

The men’s gymnastics pipeline, explained

In the 1940s and ’50s, high schools in every state had some kind of boys gymnastics programs. Today, that’s all but disappeared.

Spring says boys have to start training super young. “It’s discipline, focus, unbelievable strength, and technical precision from the age of 5. And I think that is why it’s not a sport for everyone.” 

It’s a reality that gymnasts — of any gender — usually start their Olympic journey while they’re still learning how to read. Fred Richard was competing at age 5. Asher Hong’s parents told the Houston Chronicle he was gunning for the Olympics at age 6. 

A majority of the 2024 men’s team were collegiate athletes, including all the guys from the 2024 Paris Olympics who either went to Stanford or Michigan.

“Almost every collegiate institution is a mini national training center,” said Spring. “You just cannot supplement, provide support for Olympic athletes better than a collegiate program does. You have nutritionists. You have sport’s psychologist, you have multiple coaches.”

To get to college, you have to be the best of the best for a dwindling amount of college recruiters. And for those who can’t afford college, you have to compete for a limited amount of scholarships.

“I think a lot of kids, once they hit 13, 14, 15, and they realize they’re not going to be at the same level as the guys that are getting the scholarships, in their minds, there’s probably no reason at this point,” said Hopkins of the GymTernet blog. “And putting in all that extra effort and hours and work, it’s easier for them to kind of drop down and do other sports that aren’t as demanding. A lot of them will go into diving or track and field, where there’s just more opportunities for college programs to take them in.”

Adding insult to injury, you can already be an athlete at a university, and your program can still be cut.

The decline of NCAA programs

Shane Wiskus, a member of the US’s 2020 Tokyo Olympic team, is also an alternate for this year’s Paris Olympics. He was a senior at the University of Minnesota, where his team placed second in the NCAA championships. 

Afterward, the men’s gymnastics program was cut.

“My first thought is the next generation and even the guys on my team that are behind me, I was thinking a lot about them,” Wiskus told Fox 9 Minneapolis. “And the missed opportunity that they won’t have that I had going through these programs.”

Title IX has been blamed for the decimation of men’s college gymnastics. On paper, universities had to make sure that the percentages of male and female athletes are about the same as the percentages of male and female students enrolled at the school.

Some schools have gotten creative to get in compliance with Title IX. And while there are options to create more women’s sports or cut some men’s, many colleges have chosen the latter, citing budget concerns. 

In a 60 Minutes interview, historian Victoria Jackson, who specializes in the history of college sports at ASU, said, “Every time there’s an economic downturn, you protect the core business, which is football. Which means that other sports are on the chopping block.”

Sports like football and basketball bring in hundreds of millions in revenue each year from ticket sales to television contracts. Men’s gymnastics just doesn’t have that pull. Since the onset of COVID-19, championship-winning men’s programs have been cut. 

Mike Burns, who was head men’s gymnastics coach for 17 years at the University of Minnesota, told Vox he’s not giving up.

“They pissed off the wrong 62-year-old from Boston who teaches cartwheels for a living,” Burns said, “that’s gonna be the thing they wish they hadn’t done, because there’s gonna be a fight.” 

Staying alive

Now that Minnesota men’s gymnastics is no longer part of the school’s athletic roster, Burns and other volunteers have spun off the 117-year-old program into a club sport supported by the school’s Office of Student Affairs.

In June 2024, they were officially kicked out of their beloved practice gym, Cooke Hall, a place they’ve practiced since the 1930s, to make space for diving.

They’ve had to get scrappy by creating the nonprofit Friends of Minnesota Gymnastics, whose board is staffed by former alumni. From donations and other fundraising efforts like hosting gymnastic meets, Burns said the association is able to raise about a tenth of what the University of Minnesota offered a year. Students who used to train at the university now have to drive about 45 minutes to train.

“My one desire is to keep this program alive,” said Burns. “And I’m going to do everything in my power to do so.”

When asked about this new class of Olympians in Paris, Burns mentions how Fred Richard “brings the confidence and cockiness that I just love every time I see that kid.”

He said that’s the sort of thing that can make men’s gymnastics contagious. But he admits the US has a long way to go if they’re going to reach silver and gold without the state-sponsored resources offered by powerhouses like China and Russia. 

The fact is: Olympic medals bring lots of attention, and attention is currency. The question is whether this year’s athletes can hold onto it.