Trump’s Bid To Remake D.C. Monuments Runs Into Lawsuits, Algae, and Courtroom Defeats

President Trump’s sweeping effort to refashion Washington’s most iconic landmarks — and add his own — keeps hitting new roadblocks. From federal lawsuits and a stubborn algae bloom in the Reflecting Pool to a court-ordered name removal from the Kennedy Center and a ballooning ballroom budget, Mr. Trump is facing challenges at every step of his bid to renovate and rebrand Washington, D.C.The latest setback came Monday, when a coalition of preservation and cultural heritage groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging Mr. Trump’s proposed “National Garden of American Heroes” in West Potomac Park. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service of ignoring a congressional decree barring new commemorative works within the National Mall’s core.“The West Potomac Plan is unlawful. Congress has made clear that the National Mall is a ‘substantially completed work of civic art’ — not a personal sandbox for each president to renovate however he likes,” the suit reads. The same complaint also targets Mr. Trump’s planned “Triumphal Arch” — a planned 250-foot neoclassical monument featuring a gold “Lady Liberty” statue along with golden eagles and lions that critics have dubbed the “Arc de Trump” — as well as other renovation projects. The suit claims the administration has “shirked congressionally required procedures, cut the public and groups with relevant expertise out of their renovation plans, and obfuscated the source of funding.”The Interior Department has aggressively pushed back. “It is beyond comprehension why anyone would sue over an exhibition that celebrates American greatness by highlighting some of the most pivotal figures in our nation’s history,” a spokesman told ABC News.Mr. Trump’s troubles don’t end with statues. Just days after a $14 million makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was completed, workers were spotted scooping bright green giant piles of algae from the water — an untimely development following Mr. Trump’s praise of the “beautiful” and “clean” basin. Green patches spread on either end of the pool, near both the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial, prompting crews to deploy buckets of chlorine compound to fight the bloom.The White House blamed the supply lines. “What you are seeing is residual algae from the supply lines, which have been sitting dormant for eight weeks while construction has been taking place,” Interior Department spokesman Katie Martin said, calling it “part of the normal startup process.” Ms. Martin insisted newly installed nanobubbler technology would keep the algae from returning, adding that Mr. Trump “is an expert builder who has fixed the Reflecting Pool for good.” The project, originally pitched at under $2 million and one week of work, ultimately took six weeks and ended up costing seven times as much as originally projected.The president suffered a more public defeat early Saturday, when workers removed his name from the white marble facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The letters came down just after 3:00 a.m., drawing cheers from onlookers hours after a midnight deadline set by Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington, who ruled the rebranding unlawful.Judge Cooper found that the Kennedy Center’s board lacked the authority to unilaterally rename the institution — a power reserved for Congress under 1964 legislation dedicating the center to the assassinated president. “The ‘Trump Kennedy Center’ label adds an entirely new name to the center’s formal title,” Judge Cooper wrote, “and relegates President Kennedy’s name to second place.” Both a district court and a federal appeals court denied last-minute requests to keep the name in place pending appeal.Meanwhile, the cost of Mr. Trump’s planned East Wing Ballroom has surged to roughly $600 million — up $200 million from the estimate offered up by a White House spokesman last July. Critics say the escalating cost also breaks the president’s funding promises since about half is now expected to come from taxpayers. That marks a sharp reversal from Mr. Trump’s earlier pledge that he would personally pay for the entire project.“President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400 million, which will be a secure and appropriate venue for presidents for generations to come,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Washington Post.In March, the president requested taxpayers pick up about $150 million of the tab through the Secret Service and the White House Military Office budgets. White House officials say that because the renovation includes work on a secure bunker beneath the project, at least some federal funds, not private donations, must be used.“They have a budget in Secret Service and the military to do some of the work that you see right here,” Mr. Trump said in May. The ballroom, he said, “is not going to be paid for by the taxpayer. This is a gift to the United States of America.”Taken together, the mounting legal challenges, cost overruns, and public missteps suggest that Mr. Trump’s vision of remaking the capital into “the Safest and Most Beautiful Capital in the World” faces a far rockier path than he promised.

Trump’s Bid To Remake D.C. Monuments Runs Into Lawsuits, Algae, and Courtroom Defeats

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