In the midst of the architectural projects that US President Donald Trump is pushing in Washington, DC, during his second term, his talk emerged about the legacy he wants to leave behind, as he admitted that he is building some of these projects, including the “Arc of Triumph,” as memorials linked to him personally, considering that no one will build them after his passing, according to CNN.
Trump did not deny, during a recent interview, that he is building memorials for himself, as he said in response to a question about these projects, including the “Arc of Triumph”: “That is true. No one will do it after I'm gone. When I leave, no one will do it.”
The US President focused heavily on building a ballroom in the White House, along with a number of other projects, during his second term. This focus has dissatisfied some Republicans in Congress and Trump's advisors, some of whom said that interest in the ballroom may harm the Republican Party's chances in the midterm elections, and may also make it difficult for them to adhere to the rhetoric they are adopting.
But Trump defended the project, and said in the interview that “the people should be grateful” for the celebration hall.
The president added: “A lot of people told me: Don’t do this interview. But I am proud of the work I do.”
Trump also defended the idea that the ballroom is necessary for national security, stressing plans that include constructing a helipad on the building's roof, an underground shelter, as well as installing bulletproof windows.
Meanwhile, the US administration is scheduled to begin construction work on the arch, which is 250 feet tall, near Arlington National Cemetery in the next two weeks.
But in the end, as sources told CNN earlier this year, the whole matter is related to the president's legacy, and what his impact will remain after he leaves office.
“Look at Donald Trump’s life, look at what he accomplished: He built things that no one will ever tear down,” a source close to Trump told CNN in May, noting that even if his successors rescinded his policies, the ballroom would likely remain standing.
The source added: “The only thing they will not be able to demolish is the eastern wing. This is his lasting effect. "That's why he cares so much: because it's his legacy."
In the “Tell Me, South” exhibition, the visitor is required to listen. The walls here are the ones that speak and tell the stories of the people of the south and their memories of their villages, on a journey that restores the human relationship with the place and the feelings and belonging it contains.
Through a visual and audio archive distributed on the two floors of “Beirut House” in the Sodeco area in Beirut, the visitor embarks on a humanitarian tour par excellence, listening, watching and reading touching stories about the connection of the people of the South to their land. It is a deep-rooted love relationship between them and their villages, which remained steadfast in the face of war.
The exhibition was prepared and coordinated by the “Tell Me” project at Beit Beirut, in cooperation with photographer Adib Farhat, and brings together artistic and research works that come from different backgrounds and experiences, and revolve around the collective memory of the people of southern Lebanon.
It includes a variety of materials and works, including home archives and family photos from villages and towns in the south, in addition to artistic and research works, films and audio-visual equipment, as well as rare historical documents, letters and photographs. Some of the works also address maps and digital archiving, while interactive spaces have been allocated that invite visitors to share their stories and memories and add them to the exhibition.
A number of visual artists will participate, in addition to Adeeb Farhat, including Batoul Faour, Farah Barro, Rabab Shams El-Din, Rawan Mazeh, and Sama Baydoun.
From the first moment of entering the exhibition, the visitor feels the importance of this encounter with a documented collective memory. Sometimes he interacts with it through a photograph, and at other times through household items, mortar, house keys, and drawn paintings. Through videos and artistic installations, he embarks on a visual journey in which the details of daily life intersect with the memory of the place. All elements of the exhibition were collected from the ground, becoming witnesses to the stories of their owners. Between a crooked stone here, a handful of dirt there, and a broken cup of coffee, the visitor finds himself faced with small details that store a big story, as if he is touring the villages of southern Lebanon that witnessed successive wars, while he is still in the heart of the city.
The exhibition covers a long era of wars experienced by the region and its people, from the 1980s until today. The visitor wanders among the remaining traces of those years, and what survived their cruelty and vicissitudes.
The contents of the exhibition seem like a handful of relics of a past life, which people collected from among the rubble and destruction and kept, as if it were the last thing linking them to their places. Simple things in appearance, but in their details they carry stories of homes and villages, and store moments of life that the war could not completely erase.
Between the sections, we visit examples of southern homes, and read newspaper clippings and letters collected by Adeeb Farhat in his artistic archive. Through various titles, including “Lines of Westernization,” “But the Pomegranate Season is Approaching,” “Keys Without Homes,” and “After Dinner,” the visitor tours the corners of the remaining stories.
Each participating artist was committed to highlighting his relationship with his town and its land, based on the stages in which he lived, and translated this relationship with family photographs or a dinner table empty of its people. We also focus on the meaning of the loss of places and homes through huge artistic installations, one of which hangs a set of keys, referring to homes whose owners are no longer able to return to them.
In a corner that artist Rabab Shams El-Din dedicated to the anniversary of the pomegranate harvest season, she uses photographs of the people of her town harvesting its fruits, recalling a season linked to their land and customs. As for the artist Farah Berro, she created a living room made of simple furniture and a set of tools and objects that she brought from her home in the south, and surrounded it with an atmosphere that recalled the customs and traditions that she practiced daily in her mornings with the neighbors. Among them stand out is a decorated Arabic coffee cup, and pictures of her house with a facade decorated with arches, along with pictures of eating “meat with dough” and olive trees that evoke her hometown of Kafr Kila.
In a special corner of the southern kitchen, the visitor encounters household items and tools that recall the village character that distinguishes the kitchens of the Lebanese village. From the “ant” cupboard to the aluminum pots and the sink curtain made of yellow fabric, another journey begins into the details of daily life that were associated with southern homes.
The exhibition includes an interactive aspect that allows visitors to participate directly in building the archive, by writing stories, letters, and details of life related to their villages and places. It is accompanied by a program of tours, meetings, and dialogue activities that are announced successively, with the aim of expanding the space for participation and making room for more voices and stories.
The largest longitudinal U.S. study has begun to image the brains of children and adolescents with the goal of understanding the impact of drugs and alcohol on the developing brain. But one of her most surprising findings so far has nothing to do with drugs, but rather what poverty does to the brain in the developmental years.
Study started before drug use
According to a report published by the “Psychology Today” website, the idea of the study began in 2013 through a research initiative on addiction at the US National Institutes of Health. The first goal was to image the children's brains before most of them tried substances, and then follow them through the years when the risk of substance misuse was high.
In 2015, the study enrolled 11,880 children in 21 centers, aged between 9 and 10 years. Participants underwent brain imaging, cognitive and psychological tests, in addition to collecting vital samples and detailed assessments of their homes, schools, neighborhoods, health, and exposure to narcotic substances.
These children were to be followed repeatedly into early adulthood, with study data made available to researchers.
When the National Institutes of Health released its first large set of baseline data in 2018, Nora Volkoff, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, explained the importance of starting the study before substance use, since researchers could compare images of the same people's brains before and after use. Eight years later, this idea began to bear fruit.
The biggest surprise: Poverty leaves its mark on the brain
Perhaps the most striking finding in the study was not related to any drug. In 2026, Scott Marek, Nico Duesenbach, and their colleagues at the University of Washington School of Medicine will compare 649 biological, psychological, social, and environmental variables to brain structure and function in about 12,000 children participating in the ABCD study.
Of the 40 variables most strongly associated with brain function, 37 were related to socioeconomic status. Of the 40 variables most strongly associated with brain structure, 35 were so.
Factors such as family income, homeownership, neighborhood poverty, transportation, and community resources outweighed the influence of IQ, parenting style, medical history, and hundreds of other measures.
Dosenbach described social and economic conditions as the deepest imprint among the factors the team examined, while Marek described them as “the elephant in the brain.” Social and economic indicators explained about 16 percent of the variation in brain function, which is a remarkably large percentage in this field.
Poor children's brains don't look 'less intelligent'
The brains of children with fewer social and economic opportunities did not appear to be “less intelligent,” but rather looked more like the brains of tired, stressed, and stressed children.
The strongest correlations appeared in sensory and motor systems, areas affected by daily sleep loss and chronic stress, and not just in areas usually described as centers of intelligence.
After controlling for the effect of socioeconomic status, about 70 percent of the previously observed correlations between the brain and IQ were no longer statistically significant. This indicates the pivotal role that the social and economic environment can play in brain development.
Previous research within the ABCD study had linked poverty in families and neighborhoods to differences in the organization of white matter and increased water content in some brain areas, which may be linked to neuroinflammatory processes. Another study also found income-related differences in the size of the hippocampus.
Poverty and stress... a possible link to addiction
This does not mean that poverty causes addiction, nor does wealth provide immunity from it. But chronic stress, sleep disturbance, the prevalence and availability of drugs in the neighborhood, family tension, limited access to treatment, and lack of safe alternatives can all affect brain development and the chances of exposure to substances.
Thus, the same socioeconomic conditions that leave a measurable imprint on the brain may also influence who starts using early, who escalates to greater levels of use, and who gets help.
