By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday announced that construction on a new $200 million ballroom will begin in September and be ready before President Donald Trump ‘s term ends in early 2029.

It will be the latest change introduced to what’s known as “The People’s House” since the Republican president returned to office in January. It also will be the first structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition of the Truman balcony in 1948.

Trump has substantially redecorated the Oval Office through the addition of golden flourishes and cherubs, presidential portraits and other items and installed massive flagpoles to fly the American flag on the north and south lawns. Workers are currently finishing a project to replace the lawn in the Rose Garden with stone.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds up photos of the planned new White House ballroom during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Trump for months has been promising to build a ballroom, saying the White House doesn’t have space big enough to hold large events and scoffing at the notion of hosting heads of state and other guests in tents on the lawn as past administrations have done for state dinners attended by hundreds of guests.

The East Room, the largest room in the the White House, can accommodate about 200 people.

As he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held talks in the ballroom of the hotel on his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, on Sunday, Trump praised the space and said it was what he envisioned adding to the White House.

“The White House has wanted a ballroom for 150 years, but they never had a real estate person. You know, nobody, no president knew how to build a ballroom,” he said, harkening back to his early career in real estate and construction.

He said the Turnberry ballroom had been “quite the success” since it opened a short time ago. That ballroom “boasts a generous capacity of up to 500 guests,” according to the hotel’s website.

“I was just saying I could take this one, drop it right down there and it would be beautiful,” Trump said. “This is exactly what they’ve wanted.”

The White House is pictured before President Donald Trump departs, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

The 90,000-square-foot ballroom, announced on Thursday, will be built where the East Wing currently sits and will have a seated capacity of 650 people. The East Wing is home to several offices, including the first lady’s. Those offices will be temporarily relocated during construction while that wing of the building is modernized and renovated, said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“Nothing will be torn down,” she said.

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White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said the president and his White House are “fully committed” to working with the appropriate organizations to preserve the mansion’s “special history.”

“President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail,” Wiles said in a statement.

Leavitt said at her briefing Thursday that Trump and other donors have committed to raising the approximately $200 million in construction costs. She did not name any of the other donors.

Renderings of what the future ballroom will look like were posted on the White House website.

Trump has chosen McCrery Architects, based in Washington, as lead architect on the project. The construction team will be led by Clark Construction. Engineering will be provided by AECOM.

Regan Smith continues to add medals to her collection.

The Lakeville product pulled in two more silvers at the World Championships on Thursday in Singapore.

Smith finished behind only Canada’s Summer McIntosh, who won the 200-meter butterfly by three full seconds with a time of 2 minutes, 1.99 seconds, just 14 hundredths off the world record pace.

“Going into tonight, my coach and I, our big goal was to break that world record. It’s what I’ve been training for,” McIntosh told reporters. “To see that I missed it by that little, and I know that I messed up the last 15 meters of my race… Overall, happy with the time and a (personal best), but I didn’t reach my goal tonight. Happy with the gold, happy with the win, just going to keep pushing forward.”

Australian Kaylee McKeown, who won the 100-meter backstroke earlier in the week, scratched the 50 meter – in which she’s the world record holder – from her program pre-meet, cracking the door open further for another winner in that event.

Katharine Berkoff seized the opportunity, setting a new American record with a 27.08 seconds to win the gold. That was just 18 hundredths clear of Smith

“I’m super excited,” Berkoff told reporters. “It’s been a goal of mine for a long time, and it’s great to finally achieve that.

Smith now has three silvers at the championships after also taking second in the 100-meter backstroke and completing a difficult double in Thursday’s session.

“Doubles are never easy, but I’m grateful that it was just a 50m backstroke, not 100m or 200m,” Smith told reporters. “And the ready room for the 50m is really fun. There are a lot of great girls in there and I love swimming with Katharine, so they gave me the energy to do what I needed to do. And I’m just excited to hear the anthem tonight.”

Individually, Smith will also compete in the 200-meter backstroke this week.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who aided President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, should be stripped of his law license, a Washington disciplinary panel ruled on Thursday.

Clark, who is now overseeing a federal regulatory office, played a key role in Trump’s efforts to challenge his election loss to Joe Biden and clashed with Justice Department superiors who refused to back his false claims of fraud.

The D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility’s recommendation will now go to the D.C. Court of Appeals for a final decision.

Under the second Trump administration, Clark has been serving as acting head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a part of the Office of Management and Budget that is responsible for reviewing executive branch regulations.

OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley said in a post on X that “this latest injustice is just another chapter in the Deep State’s ongoing assault on President Trump and those who stood beside him in defense of the truth.”

“JEFF CLARK has been harassed, raided, doxed, and blacklisted simply for questioning a RIGGED election and serving President Trump,” she wrote.

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At issue in the D.C. bar proceedings was a letter that Clark, as an assistant attorney general in the first Trump administration, drafted that said the Justice Department was investigating “various irregularities” and had identified “significant concerns” that may have impacted the election in Georgia and other states. Clark wanted the letter sent to Georgia lawmakers, but Justice Department superiors refused.

The board said disciplinary counsel proved that Clark made “intentionally false statements” when he continued to push for the Justice Department to issue the letter after being told by superiors that it contained falsehoods.

“Lawyers cannot advocate for any outcome based on false statements and they certainly cannot urge others to do so,” the board’s report said. “Respondent persistently and energetically sought to do just that on an important national issue. He should be disbarred as a consequence and to send a message to the rest of the Bar and to the public that this behavior will not be tolerated.”

Clark’s attorney, Harry MacDougald, argued during disciplinary hearings last year that the letter was part of the debate that normally occurs between lawyers and that punishing Clark in those circumstances would have a “chilling effect.”

Clark’s conflict with Justice Department superiors culminated in a contentious, hourslong meeting at the White House on Jan. 3, 2021, in which Trump openly considered installing Clark as acting attorney general, according to a Senate Judiciary report. Several officials in the Jan. 3 meeting told Trump they would resign if he put Clark in charge at the Justice Department.

Another close Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani, was disbarred in Washington last year, months after he lost his law license in New York for pursuing false claims Trump made about his 2020 election loss.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple shook off a thicket of tariffs and a botched entry into artificial intelligence to accelerate its revenue growth during its springtime quarter, but the trendsetting tech company still faces a bumpy road ahead that could lead to higher iPhone prices.

The April-June results released Thursday came against a backdrop of adversity that has been raising worries about the trajectory of a longtime tech kingpin.

Despite the doubts, Apple remains a moneymaking machine.

The Cupertino, California, company earned $23.4 billion, or $1.57 per share, during its fiscal third quarter, a 9% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 10% from a year ago to $94 billion. The company’s iPhone sales surged 13% from a year ago to $44.6 billion. All those numbers were well above the analyst projections that steer investors, helping to boost Apple’s recently slumping stock price by 2% in extended trading.

But the unexpectedly solid performance doesn’t necessarily mean it’s smooth sailing ahead for Apple.

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President Donald Trump’s trade war targeting foreign-made products such as the iPhone and Apple’s stumbling start in the pivotal transition to AI is causing investors to question if the company will remain at the tech forefront as the industry moves into a new era.

Before Thursday’s report came out, Apple’s stock price had plunged by 17% so far this year to wipe out more than $600 billion in shareholder wealth and knock the company off its perch as the world’s most valuable company. Meanwhile, the shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia have surged 32% this year and the shares of AI pacesetter Microsoft have gained 27%, propelling the market value to $4 trillion.

Even though Apple remains highly profitable, the tariffs that Trump has already imposed on China and other countries cost the company $900 million during the past quarter, with even more financial pain looming as his administration threatens to ramp up the fees.

Apple softened the blow of Trump’s tariffs on products made outside the U.S. during the past quarter by shifting its production of iPhones from China to India. But the administration intends to impose a 25% tariff on goods from India, a move that could intensify the pressure on Apple to raise the prices on the next generation of iPhones expected to be released in September.

Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to fulfill the AI promises it made last year when it unveiled an array of new iPhone features built on the revolutionary technology, raising expectations that the shift would spur millions of people to upgrade their old devices. But Apple still hasn’t delivered on an AI upgrade that was supposed to smarten up its often-bumbling virtual assistant Siri, one of the main reasons underlying the lackluster growth of iPhone sales.

“There are two big questions looming over Apple: How are you going to rejigger your business model to deal with the new tariff backdrop and then what is the company going to do to drive an upgrade cycle for the iPhone?” said Melissa Otto, a stock market analyst for S&P’s Visible Alpha.