Having completed adorning the walls of the Oval Office in gold, President Donald Trump is moving to another redecorating project: his signature wall on the southern border. The President has ordered Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to paint the 1,300 mile border wall black — not because he likes the color, but because, he insists, as he did during his first term, that it will make the metal bars too hot for undocumented immigrants to climb.

Five years ago, the cost of the project was put at $500 million to $2 billion. Today’s prices would likely make it more expensive, but based on past results and expert opinion, the outcome will likely be the same: it won’t work.

In May 2020, as the COVID pandemic ramped up and states were coming out of lockdown, President Trump ordered his “beautiful” border wall to be painted black.

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“The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it,” The Washington Post reported in early May 2020. “They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.”

The President was unrelenting.

“Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months. During a border wall meeting at the White House last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, the president told senior adviser Jared Kushner and aides to move forward with the paint job and to seek out cost estimates, according to four administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.”

The Post reported that estimates ranged from $500 million for two coats of a black acrylic paint to $2 billion for a “premium” powder coating.

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None of which, experts said, would do the job.

The black paint — $500 million or $2 billion — “won’t make much of a difference,” materials engineer Rick Duncan told the Post. “There’s no technical reason to paint it to make it hotter.”

Fast forward to this week.

Secretary Noem told reporters in New Mexico that the wall will be painted black, by order of the President.

“She went on to explain,” The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday, “that the change was being made ‘specifically at the request of the president,’ because ‘when something is painted black, it gets even warmer, making it even harder for people to climb.'”

Some areas that were painted before apparently did not stand the test of time.

Less than two years after the May 2020 decision to paint Trump’s wall black, The Washington Post reported that in March 2022 it had “observed several locations west of Sasabe, Ariz., where the wall’s black paint is already peeling off, less than 18 months after it was applied.”

Noem on Tuesday told reporters, “a nation without borders is no nation at all, and we’re so thankful that we have a president that understands that it understands that a secure border is important to our country’s future.”

“Now, if you look at the structure that’s behind me, it’s tall, which makes it very, very difficult to climb, almost impossible. It also goes deep into the ground, which would make it very difficult, if not impossible, to dig under, and today, we are also going to be painting it black,” she continued.

“That is specifically at the request of the president who understands that in the hot temperatures down here, when in something is painted black, it gets even warmer, and it will make it even harder for people to climb.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the entire southern border wall will be painted black, so it will get hot in the sun and “make it even harder for people to climb.”

“That is specifically at the request of the president.” https://t.co/fDAt90dmk6 pic.twitter.com/rZZZhZ3SVx

— ABC News (@ABC) August 19, 2025

READ MORE: ‘Erasing History’: Trump Scorched for Blasting Smithsonian Over Slavery

Image via Reuters

President Donald Trump’s newly confirmed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, announced her office will no longer prosecute certain violations of a D.C. law that makes carrying non-permitted rifles or shotguns in public a felony. The decision comes as Trump, insisting that Washington, D.C. crime is rampant and declaring a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital, has seized control of the Metropolitan Police Department and deployed more than one thousand federal agents — including FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE, and National Guard troops — to patrol the city’s streets.

“The new policy, which Pirro said was crafted by the Justice Department and its solicitor general, marks a break with past practice,” The Washington Post reported. “Prosecutors have used the D.C. law at issue — which prohibits carrying shotguns or rifles, with narrow exceptions for permit-holders — to charge defendants in several high-profile incidents, including a 2019 shotgun attack in Northeast Washington and the ‘Pizzagate’ shooter who targeted a restaurant in the city’s Chevy Chase neighborhood with an AR-15 rifle and a handgun in 2016.”

The move also comes as the Trump administration has made it easier to obtain gun permits in D.C., reducing the waiting time from months to just five days, the Post reported.

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Critics have denounced the move.

“It’s not about safety. It’s never been about safety. They don’t care about crime. They want control,” exclaimed attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

“More evidence that the DC police takeover has nothing to do with stopping crime,” wrote U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “It’s just about politics and suppressing dissent. They are literally refusing to enforce gun laws – because [they] have to pretend the gun industry’s ‘more guns keeps us safer’ BS is true.”

“Red-state National Guardsmen weren’t enough, we are going to have militia-types on the streets pretty soon,” warned Media Matters’ senior fellow Matthew Gertz.

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“Nothing makes you feel safe in the Nation’s capital quite like pardoning 1500 insurrectionists and telling them they can carry shotguns next time,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin remarked sarcastically.

“I don’t think prioritizing locking up delivery drivers because of their immigration status while letting people who illegally possess deadly weapons off easy is a good way to improve public safety!” commented attorney Steven Jessen-Howard.

Professor of law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance mockingly wrote: “No sandwiches, though,” referring to Pirro’s office reportedly charging with a felony a man who threw a hero sandwich at a federal law enforcement agent.

READ MORE: ‘Erasing History’: Trump Scorched for Blasting Smithsonian Over Slavery

Image via Reuters

President Donald Trump is signaling his focus on making America’s universities less liberal and more conservative may now be waning, and he’s setting his sights on another target: America’s museums.

Museums across the country are too “woke” Trump declared on Tuesday, specifically calling out the Smithsonian Institution, and angrily blasting it for discussing “how bad Slavery was.”

The Smithsonian is an independent group of museums and research centers established by the federal government that does not answer to the President.

Although he did not mention it specifically, one of the museums within the Smithsonian is the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,'” Trump announced. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

“We are not going to allow this to happen,” the President insisted, “and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the “HOTTEST” Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”

Constitutionally, no president has the power to dictate what museums across the country show, which stories they tell, or how they frame history. Other than signing a joint Congressional resolution, the President has little authority over who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents.

Critics blasted the President’s remarks.

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“It takes a single trip to any Smithsonian, including the American history museum and the African American history and culture museum, to know that the claim they feature ‘nothing about Success’ and ‘nothing about Brightness’ is categorically false,” wrote CNN senior reporter and fact-checker Daniel Dale.

“Slavery was very, very, very bad, and I hope that view continues to be reflected in our national museums,” declared The Washington Post’s James Hohmann.

“Trump supports slavery. Prove me wrong,” wrote U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). 

“Trump says the Smithsonian shouldn’t show America’s brutal past — things like centuries of slavery, Native displacement, Japanese American internment or forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women,” noted Democratic National Committee spokesperson Marcus W. Robinson. “Erasing history won’t erase truth. Another failure for his failed administration.”

Journalist Aaron Rupar mockingly asked, “why doesn’t the Smithsonian talk more about … the upsides of slavery?”

“Trump is angry that the Smithsonian Museum talks about how bad slavery was, which is a crucial part of American history,” observed political commentator and influencer Harry Sisson. “He’s now sending his attorneys after the museum. This is what dictators have done throughout history. Wake up, America.”

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele asked, “Ok @realDonaldTrump why don’t you tell us about the good side of slavery? You clearly have thoughts.”

Former Marine fighter pilot and former Democratic political candidate Amy McGrath added, “Teaching that slavery was bad in American history is now considered “woke.” Watch as all the republicans in office start to fall in line with this one.”

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health wrote: “It’s not surprising that Trump thinks there was an upside to slavery considering his supporters still wave the flag of the people who went to war against the United States to protect it.”

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