Every single rhetorical overtone about eliminating waste — from DOGE to legislative “fiscal responsibility” — is at best in bad faith and on average a lie.
The administration has been making a lot of attacks and even executive orders on the Smithsonian for being unamerican and so on.
btw. Where is DOGE now ? Was it self-optimized to 0 employees now - like when there is no cost cutting needed anymore - than cost cutting agency is the most ineffective part of the government ;-)
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/youtube-agrees-pay-245-milli...
> YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump and other plaintiffs after he was suspended from the platform in 2021, according to a court filing.
> According to the filing, $22 million will be used to support Trump’s construction of a White House State Ballroom and will be held in a tax-exempt entity called the Trust for the National Mall.
The settlement is from that ordeal, not extorsion.
But yeah, funny that Youtube had to pay for it lol.
I don't think that's really peak corruption. He could have just kept the money.
It's simply a donation of a building. Not sure how you can spin that as corruption.
There's zero evidence of this. (And plenty of evidence to the contrary, like the YouTube settlement.)
> He could have pocketed the money.
He effectively is. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/09/09/preside...
Trump can either donate the money or pocket it.
I'm not sure why you linked his net worth gain, has nothing to do with this conversation of donating this specific building.
… obtained via the power and threat of the public office. There's a good reason all these suits started getting settled only after he regained office.
> I'm not sure why you linked his net worth gain…
Because he's growing his wealth via the Presidency far greater than $20M he's "donating" out of someone else's pocket?
Yes, because as Google admitted, the Biden administration was the one instructing them to do so, of course the suits started after the Biden admin.
https://deadline.com/2025/09/trumo-youtube-settlement-123656...
> According to the filing, the settlement “shall not constitute an admission of liability or fault on the part of the Defendants or their agents, servants, or employees, and is entered into by all Parties for the sole purpose of compromising disputed claims and avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigation.” Google/YouTube also did not agree to any product or policy changes.
Endeavor is located in California (at the California Science Center) and Enterprise is located in New York (at the Intrepid Museum). They should steal one of those and take it to Houston; not Discovery.
As a New Yorker I have a conflict of interest here, but I would favor moving Endeavor anyway since Enterprise is a fake shuttle that never went to space.
ghaff•1h ago
To be clear, there's not a good reason to move it as far as I can tell. And the default should just be to keep it where it is.
ceejayoz•1h ago
https://spacecenter.org/exhibits-and-experiences/independenc...
potato3732842•43m ago
ceejayoz•41m ago
I'd rather it hit pretty hard for much longer.
potato3732842•34m ago
If it were up to me I'd park it on a taxiway (or stick it in the parking lot at Dulles, lol) and give tours.
ceejayoz•33m ago
Outdoor storage for priceless, fragile artifacts is just plain odd.
potato3732842•32m ago
ceejayoz•31m ago
After irreparable damage?
> There will be new artifacts.
There are unlikely to be new Shuttles.
potato3732842•29m ago
ceejayoz•27m ago
Those have required extensive repairs from weather-induced corrosion etc. (https://www.collectspace.com/news/news-070218a-saturn-ib-roc...) or complete replacement (https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39387412 "deemed too far gone to be refurbished") and are far less fragile than the Shuttle to the elements. Even then, there's a time limit and they're hoping to move them inside:
"'We have discussed enclosing it, but those plans are not finalized yet,' said Protze. 'We brought the best of the best in to redo the rocket, inside and out, and so I feel confident that if it was to stay outside, it would be good for another 20 to 25 years.'"
potato3732842•10m ago
After decades of environmental wear from outdoor display it can be moved inside, assuming there's enough public interest to justify that. The degradation of visitor experience at that point is acceptable because the item is older, more "historical" etc. The restoration of the item and subsequent redisplay itself then generates further public interest and/or revenue (especially in the modern age of Youtube and the like).
People need to interact with the stuff that their parents or their parents parents remember in order to get exited about (and fund) preserving the (best of) stuff that nobody alive has any connection to. You need to let patrons today sit in the Huey grandpa served in order to get the money to restore the Ford Trimotor nobody alive has much connection to. This is the same situation but bigger. The fact that the shuttles were a national prestige project and their location is a subject of national politics may cause emotion to mask things but on a 10+yr timeline the reality is the same.
This is something that maritime museums have long since figured out.
ceejayoz•7m ago
> The public is less served and engaged and exited per visit/hour/etc seeing pristine vehicles from behind a rope in an air conditioned building.
The Smithsonian's responsibility is, in part, to many, many future generations of the public.
> Letting the public visit these things in the most ideal setting (which is typically whatever is closest to operating conditions)…
Again, that's either a hangar, or space. "Outside" is the spot it spent the least time, and visitors don't hugely appreciate a vacuum chamber from the inside.
> The degradation of visitor experience at that point is acceptable because the item is older, more "historical" etc.
That's essentially the opposite of how these things work.
rtkwe•24m ago
elil17•11m ago
jkestner•38m ago
the_snooze•1h ago
I guess they can disassemble/reassemble it or move it whole with huge flatbed trucks, but both risk damaging the vehicle.
bamboozled•59m ago
ceejayoz•36m ago
saghm•1h ago
Not long ago it would have been hard for me to imagine a president having a vendetta against specific museums, but given how transparent the executive order is, the only question is whether he's petty enough to try to do something like this. Unfortunately I think it's pretty clear from past precedent that this is pretty plausible.
moron4hire•58m ago
potato3732842•58m ago
It's also the better campus IMO. The one in DC is basically a speed run of the stuff you see in a kids book that just highlights all the "firsts". The one at Dulles has all the cool displays of big or technologically unique stuff.
I agree access isn't great if you're trying to shoehorn it into a visit to all the typical DC monuments type stuff.
ghaff•52m ago
You need a lot of space for a really good aviation museum. It's no coincidence that the one in the Seattle area is on a Boeing campus near their big plant.
dabluecaboose•37m ago
I felt that I had to take a guided tour at the Udvar-Hazy center in order to get the full experience.
waterproof•24m ago
runako•55m ago
The proposed location charges $30-40 for adults and $25-$35 for children. $150 for a family of 4 to see the shuttle[1] feels steep? But also somehow taking a thing that is free/low-cost in most countries and making it expensive is on-brand for America, I guess.
1 - Yes, there are other things there, as there are at the free Smithsonian where the shuttle currently lives. For comparison, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is in New York City and kids enter free (adults are $30). Also, residents of the region are allowed to pay what they want for entry.
fluidcruft•52m ago
peaseagee•31m ago
_heimdall•49m ago
rtkwe•28m ago
For Udvar Hazy you can get there purely on public transport 7 days a week unlike in Houston, there's only a bus option in Houston and it doesn't run on the weekends and takes even longer than the equivalent trip out to Udvar-Hazy (90-120 vs 120-180 minutes for Smithsonian vs Houston locations).
https://airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center/direction...
https://www.tripadvisor.com/FAQ_Answers-g56003-d669494-t2695...
mcphage•20m ago
elil17•13m ago