Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
The East Wing of the White House was demolished this week, making way for a new $300 million ballroom. Panelists joined Washington Week With The Atlantic to discuss what authority Donald Trump may have to dismantle the historic structure.

When the president of the United States decides to demolish the East Wing of the White House to construct a ballroom, all that stucco and molding and wood has to go somewhere. So I tried to find it.
I’d heard that the dirt from the East Wing demolition was being deposited three miles away, on a tree-lined island next to the Jefferson Memorial called East Potomac Park. So yesterday I drove around until I saw trucks and men in construction gear.

Eight Sleep—often called Silicon Valley’s favorite bed—is like a full-body Fitbit. It is a $3,050 mattress cover filled with sensors to monitor heart rate and body temperature. For people who pay $199 to $399 for an annual subscription, the cover will automatically heat and cool itself throughout the night to keep the owner at a sleep-optimal temperature. The add-on base (about $2,000) raises the angle of the bed to make reading more comfortable or to help stop snoring.

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Why have Americans clung so hard to the dream of a fancy wedding? Hanna Rosin asked Xochitl Gonzalez, our staff writer who used to be a luxury-wedding planner, this question on the Radio Atlantic podcast in 2023.

In an industry prone to big emotional swings, artificial intelligence has produced a profound panic. Hollywood recently woke up to the news that fresh hell had arrived in the form of Sora 2, an OpenAI product that quickly and seamlessly creates videos with recognizable characters. Users can even insert themselves into the middle of the action—all for free, for now.

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In “Federalist No. 74,” Alexander Hamilton envisioned the presidential pardon as a “benign prerogative,” an act of mercy important enough to supersede all other laws.

Late on August 24, 1814, a troop of about 150 British sailors and marines arrived at the White House. They did not come as honored guests, though they would treat themselves as such. James and Dolley Madison, the official residents, had fled earlier amid preparations for an event in the formal dining room. The table was already set, the food prepared, and the British helped themselves to a sumptuous feast, toasting the future King George IV and commenting on the fine Madeira.

As a naval aviator, Alvin Holsey trained to conduct missions that required precise targeting. For years, his job was to fly helicopters over potential targets and, using radar and other detectors, assess whether they posed a threat to the United States; if so, he had to determine whether to launch an attack.
On September 2, Holsey, now an admiral leading the U.S.

The shutdown of the federal government that began on October 1, now the second-longest in history, has also been called the “most bizarre” and the “weirdest.” What makes this fight so unusual is that it is simultaneously the least angry of the five major shutdowns since 1990 and also the hardest to resolve.

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
Alone on the court, tennis players can seem uniquely vulnerable. When you watch team sports, so many moving parts can catch your eye, and the emotions of individual players are subsumed by the sheer number of stories on the field. The singles tennis player is on their own, a performer thrust into the spotlight each time the ball comes their way.