Inside the exploding legal battle over Trump’s Reflecting Pool makeover

Since returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has been obsessed with giving the Washington D.C. area an extensive makeover —

from the Kennedy Center to a proposed White House ballroom to a proposed "triumphal arch" near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Trump's renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is drawing widespread criticism thanks to problems that include algae, dead ducks and peeling paint. And according to The Hill, the Reflecting Pool is the focus of an "multifront legal battle" that is "intensifying."

The Hill's Sophie Brams reports that "arrests for alleged vandalism" of the Reflecting Pools are "colliding with scrutiny of the renovation."

"As scrutiny grew, the White House deflected blame," Brams explains. "Administration officials claimed the water quality and aesthetic problems were the result of 'crazy and deranged lunatics' vandalizing the site, with Trump claiming chemicals had been poured into the water and a 300-plus-foot slit was cut into the bottom. 'They went down with probably a box cutter or a very sharp razor of some kind or a knife, and they cut, and then they started ripping it up,' he recently said in the Oval Office. 'You know why? Because they're sick people.' Experts aren't so sure."

Wayne Carmichael, who teaches biological sciences at Wright State University in Ohio, is pushing back against Trump's vandalism claims.

Carmichael told PBS News, "It is absolutely impossible that anyone could have inoculated that pool and shown an effect in literally hours. Absolutely a silly notion."

Trump allies in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including federal prosecutor and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, are pursuing criminal charges against people it claims are guilty of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. One of them is Bethesda, Maryland resident David Hearn, who was indicted on destruction of property charges by a federal grand jury but has denied any wrongdoing.

In an official statement on July 2, attorneys Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann said of Hearn, "Davey Hearn is innocent. These charges are outrageous and should be alarming to every American. This indictment reflects the administration's effort to shift blame for their own failures."

Brams points out that the legal issues surrounding the Reflecting Pool include not only criminal cases, but also, a civil lawsuit against the makeover. In a lawsuit filed on May 11, the Cultural Landscape Foundation and its founder, Charles Birnbaum, argued that the makeover is a violation of the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

In a July 2 statement, the Cultural Landscape Foundation said, "The persistent problems with the pool are the product of Defendants' rushed and poorly conceived plans. And every day that Defendants forge ahead without following the procedures required by law, Plaintiffs and others are deprived of information and ability to participate in the review process that Congress provided for by law."

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