Around Town 5/15/26: Local News, Culture and Events

JD Vance comes to Bangor, plans to save Maine taxpayers from “fraudsters” wasting our money. We talk w/ protesters outside the venue.

Trump’s Other ‘Vanity Projects’ Will Cost $162.5 Million—In Addition To $1.4 Billion Ballroom Possibly Funded By Taxpayers, Sara Dorn, Forbes Staff. May 13, 2026, Forbes

Let’s Get to the Bottom of Trump’s Expensive, No-Bid Contracts for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Public Citizen, May 12, 2026

Reflecting Pool Repairs to Cost $13.1 Million. Trump Had Promised $1.8 Million, David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater, New York Times, May 11, 2026

Report exposes sketchy no-bid deals as costs spiral on Trump’s vanity ballroom project, Jen Psaki, MS NOW via YouTube, May 6, 2026

Firm Building Trump’s Ballroom Got a Secret No-Bid Contract for a Nearby Job David A. Fahrenthold, Luke Broadwater and Andrea Fuller, New York Times, April 27, 2026

ICE, Inc.: The Top Companies Profiting from Trump’s Immigration Crackdown, Nick Schwellenbach, Luisa Clausen, and Aarushi Sahejpal, POGO (the news reporting division of the Project on Government Oversight), February 18, 2026

Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

Podcast: Play in new window | Download