Didn’t see this one coming. President Donald Trump’s 250-foot triumphal arch just got a new job description. In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump said he’d agreed, at the “strong request" of the U.S. military and for “National Security purposes,” to convert the monument into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch. Say what, now?

The specifics, per Trump: the structure would house and rapidly deploy large numbers of drones, station snipers on the roof and plaza areas and store large quantities of sniper ammunition. The Pentagon, asked to elaborate, checked its notes and said it had no information beyond the president’s statement.

The arch is planned for a traffic circle near the Memorial Bridge, sitting between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery—which is to say, a sniper nest with a view of the nation’s most solemn burial ground. But it’s still being contested. Three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian are suing, arguing Congress never authorized the project, and Judge Tanya Chutkan has ordered the government to give 48 hours’ notice before any work begins. Critics including Rep. Don Beyer, D-Virginia, read the military framing as a pretext to survive that suit—the same national-security argument Trump deployed for the White House ballroom.

What’s still unknown is basically everything that matters: whether the conversion requires separate approval, what any of it costs, and what the finished thing even looks like since it keeps changing. The National Capital Planning Commission hasn’t given final approval and is expected to revisit the matter this fall.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot a man in the torso in north Austin, Texas, on Sunday. The man was taken to a local trauma center in serious but stable condition, officials said. What set it off is still contested. Police said the shooting followed a traffic stop, and separately described a foot pursuit. Councilmember Mike Siegel offered a different account: an unmarked ICE Ford Expedition rammed a blue Toyota Corolla before an officer opened fire.

The violence in Northwest Austin was the second ICE shooting to occur in Texas since July. The shooting added to a tally of violent interactions between people in cars and federal agents. More than 20 people have been shot since September, nearly all of them in their cars, and some fatally. About 100 protesters gathered at the scene, according to the AP.

The injured man, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, of Venezuela. His laywer told NPR he is married to a woman who has legal status to be in the U.S. He called his wife to tell her he had been shot inside his car and was yelling in pain.

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The check-in sign at a Bitcoin convention this spring at the Venetian in Las Vegas banned firearms, cigarettes, outside food and “bears” (the crypto term for anyone pessimistic on price). Inside, a largely male crowd in fluorescent orange was in a great mood, which was odd math: Bitcoin had shed nearly half its value over the previous year, sliding from a 2025 high around $126,000 to roughly $76,000. The attendees had a workaround. It wasn’t down. It was half-priced.

That reframing is the real story. Slate argues the real point is the economic pain and a collapse of faith in banks and American institutions. Insiders even have a verb for conversion: “orange pilling.” Speaker Peter McCormack put it plainly—pain is what brings most people to Bitcoin. Not any upside, just trauma.

Which makes the asset less an investment and more of an identity. A support group with a ticker. What happens when the half-price framing stops working? Well, that’s the part nobody’s talking about yet.