Testing reveals that efforts to suppress one algal bloom seem to be fueling another.
A White House spokeswoman said the president was not involved in selecting Greenwater Services, the business owned by a trust led by John J. Cafaro.
President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan.
As National Park Service crews try to clean the algae that turned the water bright green, another problem has developed: The “American flag blue” coating is coming off.
President Donald Trump suffered a severe humiliation this month when the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was finally ordered by a federal court to remove Trump's name from the side of the building, clarifying that Congress only allowed Kennedy's name to be on the facility.Now, days later, tarps are still covering the spot where Trump's name was, and, according to The New York Times, it's starting to arouse suspicion. Some are even questioning whether the name was in fact fully removed at all.Matt Floca, the operations chief for the Kennedy Center, "filed a sworn declaration with a federal court later that day saying that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed," noted the report. And at least some letters were taken off, as "a New York Times photographer captured evidence through an opening in the tarp that the letter 'A' came off," as well as a "D" in a separate photograph.The Kennedy Center will not give a direct explanation for why the tarps aren't coming down, with one spokesperson saying, “The scaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels. Best, Public Relations.”Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), the Kennedy Center board member who sued over Trump-aligned officials' mishandling of the facility in the first place, told The Times, “Donald Trump is embarrassed. He lost in court, his name came down, and now he is trying to hide the result from the public.”It's the latest episode in a long saga of Trump efforts to assert control over the Kennedy Center, which has seen a collapse of ticket sales and the withdrawal of a number of performers as the facility has grown more explicitly MAGA-aligned.Trump also attempted to shut down the Kennedy Center for two years of "renovations" in response to the decline, which was also blocked by federal courts.
The federal government awarded a company owned by a Trump donor $1.7 million to install a new water cleaning system for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, records show.
President Trump’s efforts to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool have not gone smoothly, despite the president maintaining he has a lot of experience with pools. Questions have swirled about the no-bid, multimillion dollar contract given to complete the pool renovations, one of several Trump beautification projects in Washington, D.C., ahead of the U.S.’s 250th…
Pro-MAGA influencers erupted in outrage after CNN tested the bright green water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which President Donald Trump recently renovated.Trump ordered the landmark repainted "American flag blue" for $14.2 million — far exceeding his initial $2 million estimate. Algae turned the water green within days of the pool being refilled in early June.CNN sampled the water and had it independently tested, finding phosphate levels far higher than recommended for a pool holding 6.5 million gallons."They are having a field day out here," an algae specialist told the network.Florida's Voice chief content officer Eric Daugherty griped on X that "CNN is digging deeper into water color than they dug into hundreds of billions of fraud" — a post that racked up 2 million views."Pond scum gets the full investigative treatment," Benny Johnson, host of The Benny Show and a Turning Point USA contributor, fumed on X. "Massive fraud against the American taxpayer? Crickets."Kristin Sokoloff, co-host of the Dirtyside of Leadership podcast, was blunter. "CNN [is] obsessed with Reflecting Pool paint while America burns," she posted.Retired Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, a RedState columnist, mocked the network as "that crack journalistic enterprise that liberals and airports live on.""If only they cared this much about Hunter's laptop," Newsmax host Rob Schmitt snapped on X.
A business tied to a longtime Trump donor was given the no-bid contract to clean up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool this spring, reported The New York Times. The filtration work of the Ohio firm, ironically called Greenwater Services, has come under scrutiny because… well. You’ve seen the pool. Greenwater Services is owned by the J.J. Carafo Investment Trust, led by John J. Carafo. Carafo is a longtime Republican donor who Trump has described as a “fantastic man.” Carafo, who has skirted campaign finance law, also pleaded guilty in 2001 to conspiracy to bribe Democratic Representative James A. Traficant Jr.The $1.7 million contract was directly awarded to Carafo’s company by the National Park Service, bypassing the usual competitive bidding process. Katie Martin, a spokesperson for the Interior Department, said the department did not know about Carafo’s political affiliation when his firm was hired.“This company was selected because they had the expertise, work force and materials” needed to finish the job by the country’s 250th anniversary, she said to the Times. Carafo and Greenwater Services did not respond to the Times’ requests for comment.Because the president wants the reflecting pool “American Flag Blue” by July 4, other firms have been hired for their ability to complete jobs on a short timeline, like Virginia firm Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which was given a no-bid contract of $14.7 million to put bright blue waterproofing material on the pool’s floor. That paint is already peeling.At this point, it might just be easier to turn the flag green.