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Inside the Oval Office: What Biden décor did Trump ditch?

Inside the Oval Office: What Biden décor did Trump ditch?

When a new president moves into the White House, they have free rein to redecorate as they see fit.  As President Donald Trump participated in inaugural ceremonies on Monday, dozens of staffers worked furiously at the White House to move former President Biden’s personal items out and Trump’s in.  Some of the decor seen in the Oval Office belongs to the president – such as the family photos both Biden and Trump displayed behind the Resolute Desk. But other items, like portraits of former presidents, the tables, chairs and curios belong to the White House Collection and are selected by the president to be featured during their term. The look of the Oval Office, from the carpet to curtains and artwork on the walls, is entirely the president’s choice. Here’s a look at what Trump has kept and what he’s ditched from his predecessor: ‘TIP OF THE SPEAR’: TRUMP RAMPS UP UNSCRIPTED MEDIA BLITZ AFTER YEARS OF RECLUSIVE BIDEN DUCKING QUESTIONS All but three U.S. presidents since 1880 – LBJ, Nixon and Ford – have used the famous desk that was gifted to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria that year. Trump used it in his first term, as did Biden, and Trump was pictured signing a flurry of executive actions at the desk on his first day in office on Monday. When Biden assumed office, he hung a large portrait of progressive hero FDR over the fireplace, which became the focus of the room. Biden’s intent was to honor Roosevelt, who guided the nation through the Great Depression and World War II, as the U.S. faced another crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.  FOX EXCLUSIVE: TRUMP SHARES LETTER BIDEN LEFT FOR HIM Trump has removed the portrait and replaced it with one of President George Washington, which hung in the Oval Office during Trump’s first term, The Wall Street Journal reported.  A bust of civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. displayed by both Trump and Biden will remain in the Oval Office for Trump’s second term, according to the Journal. A collection of Trump family photos now sits on a small table behind the Resolute desk. Among them is a picture of the president’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, and a portrait of his father, Fred Trump. Also displayed are a photo of Trump’s eldest three children in formal evening wear; a photo of Trump with his daughter Ivanka when she was a girl; and a photo of Trump with first lady Melania Trump when their son Barron was a baby.  WHY TRUMP’S HOLDING WEEKEND RALLY IN LAS VEGAS LESS THAN A WEEK INTO NEW ADMIN Biden family photos were previously arranged on this table, including one of his adult children, Beau, Hunter and Ashley Biden.  A portrait of Benjamin Franklin that Biden added to the Oval Office to signify his focus on science will remain there during Trump’s term, the Wall Street Journal reported. Trump has swapped out a bust of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that Biden placed near the fireplace in favor of a sculpture of President Andrew Jackson called, “The Bronco Buster,” by Frederic Remington. The Jackson sculpture also featured in the Oval Office during Trump’s first term, according to the Journal. A bust of Winston Churchill that Biden had removed is back at Trump’s direction. The bronze bust by British American artist Jacob Epstein has been the focus of past controversy. Then-London Mayor Boris Johnson had claimed that President Obama removed the bust upon taking office in 2009 – but the White House refuted that claim in 2012, observing that the bust had been placed just outside the Oval Office in the White House’s Treaty Room.  A new painting of President Andrew Jackson provided by the White House art collection features prominently in Trump’s Oval Office, according to WSJ. Trump has long admired the nation’s seventh president, a populist and disruptive figure whose election Trump once said “shook the establishment like an earthquake” – not unlike his own victories. Trump is one again prominently featuring flags representing each branch of the armed services in the Oval Office.

Trump’s federal DEI purge puts hundreds on leave, nixes $420M in contracts

Trump’s federal DEI purge puts hundreds on leave, nixes 0M in contracts

FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s executive order terminating all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs has already sidelined 395 government bureaucrats, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital.  Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed up by Elon Musk, wrote on X Friday that approximately $420 million in current/impending contracts, mainly focused on DEI initiatives, had also been canceled.  After Trump signed the order on the day of his inauguration, the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) notified heads of agencies and departments that they must begin taking steps to close all DEI offices by the end of the day Wednesday, and place government workers in those offices on paid leave. It is not yet clear when or if they will be terminated. ATF ACCUSED OF ‘CIRCUMVENTING’ TRUMP ORDER TO PLACE DEI STAFF ON PAID LEAVE Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management Charles Ezell sent a memo to heads and acting heads of departments and agencies on Tuesday evening directing them that by the end of business on Jan. 22, they were to inform all agency employees of the DEI shutdown. In addition, they were instructed to tell workers directly involved in DEI they were being placed on paid leave immediately, take down all DEI-related websites and social media accounts, cancel any related contracts or training, and ask employees to report any efforts to disguise DEI programs by using coded or imprecise language. The memo also directed the heads of agencies and departments that by noon on Jan. 23, they were to provide OPM with lists of all DEI offices, employees, and related contracts in effect as of Nov. 5, 2024. By Friday, Jan. 24, at 5 p.m., agency heads were required to submit to OPM a written plan for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding DEI employees and a list of all contract descriptions or personnel position descriptions that were changed since Nov. 5, 2024, to obscure their connection to DEI programs. 3 IN 10 VOTERS THINK ENDING DEI PROGRAMS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, POLL SHOWS, AS FEDERAL DEADLINE LOOMS The executive order was among dozens Trump signed on his first day in office, including the government only recognizing two genders and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.  He also issued two other executive actions on Tuesday targeting DEI – an executive order to end discrimination in the workplace and higher education through race and sex-based preferences under the guise of DEI and a memo to eliminate a Biden administration policy that prioritized DEI hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Trump’s Monday executive order rescinded President Joe Biden’s one on promoting diversity initiatives, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” which he signed on his first day in office.  Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Landon Mion contributed to this report. 

RFK Jr.’s plan to combat addiction: ‘wellness farms’

RFK Jr.’s plan to combat addiction: ‘wellness farms’

While President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been scrutinized over his views on vaccines, farming, abortion and more, his perspective on treating one of the nation’s foremost health crises has received far less attention. Before joining Trump’s team, Kennedy campaigned for president on a plan to treat addiction by creating “wellness farms” funded by tax revenues from federally legalized marijuana sales. “I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go and get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also legal drugs,” Kennedy said at a virtual event during his campaign, billed as a “Latino Town Hall.”  Kennedy himself struggled with addiction when he was younger, including to cocaine and heroin, which he has spoken about publicly. He has heralded his faith and commitment to Alcoholic’s Anonymous’s 12 Step-program as his saving grace. Kennedy is a strong proponent of clean living as well, and said that the addiction treatment wellness farms he imagines would also treat people who are trying to get off anti-depressants, or other medications like those for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). DATE SET FOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR’S HEALTH SECRETARY CONFIRMATION HEARINGS   Wellness farms are not an entirely novel idea. They are based on a framework known as a “therapeutic community” model, which relies heavily on peer-to-peer support and behavioral solutions for addiction, as compared to medication-based treatment strategies like methadone or buprenorphine therapy, which work to cut out the intense cravings from opioids, to which addicts often attribute relapses. Many in the medical community, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health, consider such medication-assisted treatment to be the gold standard in addiction treatment.  AA also warns against the use of medications like buprenorphine to treat addiction.    Kennedy actually visited two places that align with this framework for a documentary he created about the crisis of addiction while he was running for president, titled “Recovering America – A Film About Healing Our Addiction Crisis.” Their addiction treatment framework, like Kennedy’s wellness farms, includes a focus on peer-to-peer recovery through giving addicts jobs and re-teaching them how to live in society without drugs. Kennedy has said that at his rehabilitation farms, addicts would grow organic crops, receive training in trade skills, and learn other ways to live in society without using illicit drugs.  One of the programs that Kennedy visited in his documentary about treating addiction was also a farm, where men learn how to tend to livestock, operate tractors and repair barns. Their days also consist of meditation, 12-step meetings and yoga, but addicts must go off-site to receive therapy and are not allowed to take any medications, like anti-depressants or buprenorphine. DIET AND NUTRITION EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON HOW RFK JR’S NOMINATION COULD IMPACT HOW WE EAT  The program, called Simple Promise Farms, is located in rural Texas. Simple Promise does not staff licensed therapists or medical providers on site, according to The New York Times, which spoke with the program’s founder, Brandon Guinn. Guinn told The New York Times that it is these peer-to-peer conversations where “the important work is being done . . . not with your therapist or your sponsor or your mentor, but from the shared experience of people that are struggling with addiction.” Keith Humphreys, a psychologist and drug policy expert at Stanford University, said that while there is nothing wrong with “therapeutic community” models, he questioned the exclusion of evidence-based treatments that have been proven to help people get off harmful, addictive drugs like heroin.   “Given how much is known, more than what’s being described is almost like [an] 18th-century kind of retreat. Given how much has been learned about the nature of the condition, about the things you can do with psychotherapy, the things you can do with medicine, why not have that? Why would you not want that?” Humphries asked. “It’s not that it wouldn’t benefit anybody,” Humphries added. He noted that the complex nature of addiction is challenging to address without modern treatment advancements and suggested that city dwellers may lack the desire or resources to relocate to distant farms for treatment. WHY CHINA AND MEXICO ARE THE RIGHT TARGETS FOR TRUMP’S ATTACK ON THE SCOURGE OF ILLEGAL DRUGS Humphries said that programs that refuse patients who take anti-depressants or other medications are actually quite common in the U.S. He pointed to a program that the federal government set up in the 1930s in Lexington, Kentucky, that followed this model, but also pointed out that its success rates were low. “George Vaillant did a study of 400 consecutive admissions [to the Lexington program], and 400 of them relapsed afterwards,” Humphries pointed out. “So that, of course, we know a lot more than we did then. So, why not take advantage of that?” Humphries also posited that Kennedy’s plan to fund the program through revenues from legal marijuana would be such a bureaucratic hurdle that it would be a difficult and long process to get these programs off the ground. “There’s like 500 practical steps and barriers in between all that, that I just don’t think this is going to happen,” Humphries said.  Fox News Digital reached out to Kennedy’s representatives for comment, in particular on his view about medically assisted treatment therapies, but did not receive a response by press time. 

Could the war between Russia and Ukraine end soon?

Could the war between Russia and Ukraine end soon?

US President Donald Trump ramps up diplomatic pressure to end the war. Russia and Ukraine are still attacking each other’s territory – with no sign of a letup on the battlefield. But the return of Donald Trump as US president is creating new pressure on both sides to end the war. Is that likely? Presenter: Nick Clark Guests:Leonid Ragozin – Independent journalist Michael Bociurkiw – Senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center Steven Erlanger – Chief diplomatic correspondent for Europe at The New York Times Adblock test (Why?)