Starwashing’: How space companies use the greenwashing playbook while engaging in environmentally damaging practices by Marissa E. Yingling

 

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From launchpads to low Earth orbit and beyond, space companies and their affiliates are deploying a familiar marketing tactic – with a new twist. In a space economy projected to reach US$1.8 trillion by 2035, they sell space exploration narratives by appealing to a desire to expand humankind beyond Earth – while downplaying or omitting the negative repercussions for Earth and the space environment. Welcome to the age of starwashing.

You may have heard the term greenwashing, which describes when companies falsely claim that their practices or products are more environmentally friendly than they are, or when their green efforts are insignificant compared to their harmful environmental practices.

Some examples range from auto companies claiming that dumping cars into oceans benefits fish to plastics companies asserting that their products are more easily recycled than they are.

Today, greenwashing often disguises the true nature of corporate activity by appealing to the increasing number of people who care about environmental sustainability.

But greenwashing practices don’t end with those who care about the Earth. As a social work researcher interested in the consequences of commercialism both on and off Earth, I’ve studied how space companies are using similar strategies. Instead of appealing only to a sense of environmental responsibility, however, they also appeal to your sense of cosmic wonder. I call this practice starwashing.

Starwashing can also appeal to an interest in learning about life’s origins, Earth’s place in the universe, or the desire for humans to explore places beyond our planet. For example, positioning a space-related idea, activity, product or policy as a benefit to “all humankind,” even if it could damage Earth or the larger cosmic environ

For the benefit of Earth?

Blue Origin is a leading space technology company. Its mission states that it aims both to colonize space and “restore and sustain Earth.”

 

The company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, envisions building space habitats that could house billions as a solution to environmental catastrophes on Earth. He’s also outlined a vision for moving industry off Earth, most immediately to the Moon.

Bezos’ other company, Amazon, has a carbon footprint larger than dozens of nations, including Ireland, Bolivia and Norway. At face value, moving some of Amazon’s activities into space to lessen its carbon footprint may seem environmentally desirable.

But even if having a fraction of the human population live and work in space one day far in the future were possible, it would not fix pressing environmental crises such as wildfires or climate change in the near term.

Blue Origin also makes misleading claims about its rocket fuel. Its New Shepard rocket, it says, is “for the benefit of Earth,” with the company claiming that nearly all the rocket fuel’s dry mass is reused. Its engine’s combustion results only in water vapor, with no carbon emissions. But water vapor can amplify atmospheric warming that other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide cause, which the statement omits, and on which Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.

Mining the Moon

Companies are also racing to extract resources from the Moon for what some, including Blue Origin, say will enable lunar development by reducing trips to and from the Moon. Other companies aim to harvest valuable resources such as helium-3.

These activities will require more frequent rocket launches, which will increase demand for launch sites that use more coastal land and, potentially, ocean waters.

Such ventures will also affect the environment of the Moon. The lunar surface area is less than the combined surface area of North America and South America, and desirable resources are restricted to certain locations – far from limitless. Prime landing locations are also priceless scientific sites that human ventures could endanger.

At an annual Space Resources Week event in Luxembourg, businesses have publicly discussed how to make mining other celestial bodies, including the Moon, more palatable for the public. While the host has suggested coming up with a word that sounds “more beneficial,” venture capitalists have proposed a marketing campaign to divert the focus from environmental damage off-Earth by espousing space’s promises for pharmaceutical research and wireless connectivity.

A crowded low Earth orbit

Artificial intelligence, referred to by financial experts as a “key” ingredient for space economy growth, is also relevant.

Bezos and Elon Musk both have companies that build and rely on resource-intensive data centers based on land. They’ve espoused plans to construct solar-powered orbital data centers and to help other companies such as Google do the same. They frame these plans as environmentally beneficial because an orbital data center wouldn’t require the same amount of water or electricity as a data center on Earth.

But orbital data centers, made up of satellite clusters, would add to an already-crowded space environment.

 

Blue Origin has already launched thousands of new internet satellites to keep pace with Musk’s company SpaceX, which has launched tens of thousands of satellites and plans to launch 1 million to power AI data centers. These satellites can threaten Earth-based astronomy, pollute Earth’s orbit with debris and damage the ozone layer when they burn up in the atmosphere.

In February 2026, Musk admitted that terrestrial AI data centers impose unsustainable “hardship on communities and the environment.” But his company continues to build them, and analysts suggest that he took SpaceX public to fund AI ambitions, not space travel. While the SpaceX brand relies on exciting notions of sending people into space, the company leases unused computing power to AI competitors at its Colossus data complex in Memphis, Tennessee, where environmental groups have alleged the center’s emissions violate the Clean Air Act.

Star appeal

Companies sometimes use “stars” – as in celebrities – in these starwashing practices. In 2021, SpaceX partnered with businessman Jared Isaacman, who is now the NASA administrator, to advertise seats on the first all-civilian flight to orbit, Inspiration4. They ran a Super Bowl commercial that showed the Earth reflected in an astronaut’s helmet, accompanied by singer Celeste’s soulful rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

Blue Origin transformed celebrities into space tourists to display its launch capabilities. On April 14, 2025, it helped an all-female crew, including pop star Katy Perry, fly to suborbital space for four minutes. W

Benefiting ‘all humankind’

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 obligates nations to explore space for the benefit of all countries as the “province of all mankind.”

SpaceX, for instance, purportedly aims to save humanity from future environmental catastrophes, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, by colonizing the Moon and Mars.

This philosophy bypasses intersecting environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss that are more probable near-term threats to Earth’s inhabitability than the kind of catastrophic asteroid impact estimated to occur once every few million years.

As U.S.-based space companies, principal among them SpaceX, receive billions in taxpayer-funded contracts, their environmental effects both on and beyond Earth will grow. An open question is whether all of humankind will reap the benefits of space, as the Outer Space Treaty asks.

A new movement?

In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew captured the first color photograph of Earth from space: “Earthrise.” It helped inspire the environmental movement of the last century, which included holding companies accountable for greenwashing.

This past April, the Artemis II crew captured the earlier photo’s counterpart, “Earthset.” This image of our blue marble setting behind the Moon captivated people across the world.

Whether it will motivate an off-Earth environmental movement – one that holds space companies accountable for starwashing practices – is yet to be seen.

hile Blue Origin showed off its New Shepard rocket, Perry promoted her upcoming tour. 

 

Democracy, climate and justice Samuel Alito by Dharna Noor

 Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining supreme court, analysis shows

Critics argue US high court justice should recuse himself from upcoming fossil fuel firms’ climate accountability case

 

The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows.

The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005.

The findings come as the supreme court prepares to take up a case in which the oil companies Suncor Energy and Exxon asked the justices to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against fossil fuel producers for the climate-warming effects of their products.

 

The supreme court said this month it will hear oral arguments in the case on 5 October, the opening day of its new term. The Trump administration, which is siding with the oil companies, has asked for 10 minutes of argument time. Court Accountability and other groups have called for a Senate committee to investigate Alito, the sole supreme court justice with holdings in energy companies, and said he should recuse himself.

He and the court rejected those calls.

Supreme court ethics rules focus specifically on investments in companies named in court cases. In May, a supreme court spokesperson told NBC News that Alito was not required to recuse himself from the Suncor lawsuit as his holdings do not include the companies directly named in the case, Suncor and ExxonMobil.

But Lisa Graves, co-founder of Court Accountability who authored the new analysis, said Alito’s oil-tied wealth provides grounds to question whether Alito can impartially weigh in on cases affecting the entire fossil fuel sector.

“You might have real appreciation for how that industry has helped make it possible for you to perhaps buy a second home on the water, or live a [certain] lifestyle,” she said.

The Guardian has contacted the supreme court and Alito for comment.

Mineral rights

Alito’s financial disclosures show his reported assets – excluding his home and other personal property – grew from about $1.1m in 2005 to between $3.4m and $8.4m by 2024. Federal financial disclosures report assets in broad value ranges.

During that period, his oil and gas holdings made him between $390,000 and $2.9m, Court Accountability’s review shows. Most of those gains came from a property in Grady county, Oklahoma, in which Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, holds a mineral interest.

Graves said Alito may have undervalued the worth of this property, because in 2017, a relative of the Alito family sold an adjacent plot for $800,000. “It’s reasonable to assume that means the value of the Alito property would have increased to around $800,000,” said Graves, but he continued to report its value at $100,000 to $250,000.

The justice reported two windfalls from rental income on the property in 2019 and 2022, with gains of between $100,000 and $1m in both years.

Alito’s wife agreed to lease the plot of land to the private oil and gas company Citizen Energy in 2022, the Intercept first reported. In 2024, that company was acquired for more than $2bn by Validus Energy, in which the hedge fund Elliott Investment Management holds a majority stake. Elliott was founded by Paul Singer, who ProPublica found had paid for a private jet ride Alito took in 2008 that the justice did not disclose. Alito later defended the trip, saying ethics rules did not require its disclosure.

No reporting or public documents indicate that a well has been drilled on the property, but a lease agreement shows the owners would have received three-sixteenths of the money from any oil extracted from the land.

“It raises concerns because you have a sitting justice who is hoping to get richer based on oil exploration of this land,” said Graves.

Singer’s Elliott Investment Management also owns more than 52m shares of Suncor, which are worth more than $2.3bn, watchdog groups have noted.

Another large portion of Alito’s fossil fuel gains came through inheritance. In 2004, the justice disclosed that he obtained a bequest of ExxonMobil stock valued between $100,000 and $250,000.

The Exxon stock was the highest value of any single liquid investment listed by Alito “by a good margin”, Graves said.

Alito appears to have since sold his stock in ExxonMobil, as indicated by the supreme court’s May statement to NBC News.

“But my view is that you shouldn’t be able to sell a stock just so you can sit on a case, even though that company’s profits have benefited you,” said Graves.

Alito is the only justice who has not yet submitted his 2025 disclosure document. The filing was due on 15 May. Justices can obtain a 90-day extension; if Alito received one, he should file the document this Thursday. Last year, he filed his disclosure in August.

Alito has had a variety of smaller investments in more than a dozen oil firms, including ConocoPhillips and its predecessor Phillips 66, Chevron and the energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan.

“A reasonable person would think if you’re invested in the industry that could benefit from the outcome of a lawsuit, then you could personally stand to benefit from the outcome, even if you don’t hold the stock in the specific company that happens to be the named plaintiff,” said Graves.

Alito’s record

Alito has a history of voting in favor of fossil fuel interests. In the landmark 2007 case Massachusetts v Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), he was one of four dissenting justices who argued greenhouse gas emissions could not be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Then in June 2022, when the supreme court decided West Virginia v EPA, Alito joined Neil Gorsuch’s majority in arguing that the EPA lacked broad authority under the Clean Air Act to mandate a shift away from fossil fuels.

More recently, he joined the majority in two 2024 decisions that overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine and could make it harder for agencies to defend expansive environmental regulations.

Alito has recused himself from other environmental cases. In January, he stepped away from a lawsuit focused on whether energy companies could be held responsible for Louisiana coastal degradation because he owns stock in ConocoPhillips, the parent company of a defendant in proceedings tied to the litigation.

In 2023, Alito also recused himself from considering a petition in the Suncor lawsuit, brought by the company and Exxon. That request was denied.

Later in 2023, the supreme court adopted its first-ever formal ethics code amid a slew of scandals involving senior rightwing justices. It states that justices should recuse themselves from cases where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned”, though it allows them to make that decision themselves.

 

Though Graves harshly critiqued that ethics code, saying it was “toothless” and “not worth the paper it’s written on”, she said it should in theory prevent Alito from weighing in on Suncor v Boulder in October.

“His impartiality may be reasonably questioned in terms of his affinity towards the industry that has helped build his nest egg,” she said.

 

Full TextNewspaper How the Reflecting Pool Mirrored Trump's Administration:Joselow, Maxine ; Fahrenthold, David A ; Pager, Tyler ; Williams, Clarence .

 

n January, the World of Concrete trade show drew 47,000 people to the Las Vegas Convention Center. One of them was the manager of a Trump Organization golf club in New Jersey, who had come seeking help with an enormous, unfamiliar task.

The manager, David Schutzenhofer, wanted ideas for how to fix the leaking, algae-ridden Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington.

Several vendors told him they knew just the guy to call: Rodney Jarboe, the president of the Missouri-based company Creative Polymers. Mr. Jarboe had worked on a bridge at another federal landmark, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

In an interview, Mr. Jarboe said he first spoke in March with Mr. Schutzenhofer, who made clear that the work would be rushed. President Trump, Mr. Jarboe said he was told, wanted the renovation project done in time for the country's 250th birthday on July 4.

''For this thing to be done in the time frame that was required, we almost had to have a contract and start manufacturing by the first week of April,'' Mr. Jarboe said. ''So it was a very tight deadline to make a decision.''

Those initial conversations about the Reflecting Pool, which have not previously been reported, kicked off an ad hoc plan by the Trump administration that involved coating the pool with a sheet of blue polyurea, which the president promised would make it beautiful. Within months, though, the pool was drained and ugly -- the butt of jokes and memes.

Many of the details of the saga are reported in this article for the first time. They show that the pool, which was supposed to reflect the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, became a striking reflection instead of the second Trump administration's willingness to skirt laws, expend millions of dollars, ignore facts and punish truth tellers in service of the president's demands to put his mark on the capital.

The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, handed out no-bid contracts and squelched doubts about the costs and risks. An employee from Mr. Trump's private business life, Mr. Schutzenhofer, played an off-the-books role in government decisions. A top federal housing official, Bill Pulte, brought Mr. Trump memes that encouraged him to keep going.

And when Mr. Trump sought to blame the project's failure on shadowy vandals, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, backed him up by charging members of the public with crimes, only to have the cases fall apart.

Then, in place of accountability, there were falsehoods on top of falsehoods, part of Mr. Trump's longtime strategy of not admitting mistakes and treating concessions of error as signs of weakness.

To understand how the Reflecting Pool repairs veered off course, The New York Times reviewed dozens of internal government documents, including confidential reports raising concerns about the project's costs and workmanship, and spoke to more than 20 people familiar with the project.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, did not answer a list of emailed questions, but said in a statement: ''For years, the Reflecting Pool sat neglected, plagued with algae and leaking millions of gallons of water. Fixing it was common sense. It's another example of President Trump restoring our nation's capital for the American people.''

The Interior Department has also defended its handling of the project, saying that it followed the law and used expedited processes to meet a tight deadline. ''President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who fixed the Reflecting Pool permanently before deranged people vandalized it,'' Katie Martin, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement.

A Novel Solution

At the start of Mr. Trump's second term, the Reflecting Pool had two longstanding problems. It leaked tens of millions of gallons every year. And it turned green, especially in the summer, as algae thrived in its stagnant, shallow water.

But neither Mr. Trump's first administration nor the Biden administration had treated these issues as a crisis. They made plans to fix it, but never carried them out.

That changed last fall. The day before Thanksgiving, Mr. Trump suggested on social media that the Park Service would overhaul the Reflecting Pool after workers finished a routine cleaning.

To lead that effort, Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Schutzenhofer, who had run the president's club in Bedminster, N.J., since 2006 -- and had a background in hospitality but no formal training in engineering or architecture.

After attending the World of Concrete, Mr. Schutzenhofer settled on a plan to coat the pool's concrete slabs with a polyurea liner, Mr. Jarboe said. Though the Park Service had not previously contemplated such a plan, it later described the liner in contract documents as a ''seamless, monolithic, waterproof, antimicrobial and anti-algae system.''

But there was a problem of Mr. Trump's making: The president's steep tariffs on resins from China and other countries had limited the availability of polyurea coatings.

''Tariffs were reducing the amount of materials that could come into the U.S. to make this stuff,'' Mr. Jarboe said.

To address this problem, Creative Polymers partnered with Rhino Linings, a California-based company that made large quantities of polyurea coating at its factory in Texas. Rhino was also attractive because it made a coating in a shade called ''American flag blue,'' and the patriotically named hue delighted Mr. Trump.

In turn, a sales manager at Rhino called Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based company that had never won a government contract, and enlisted its help with applying the coating, according to a statement on the company's website.

Put more simply: documents and interviews establish how a first-time contractor was paid millions of dollars to apply a novel solution designed by a golf club manager to a national landmark.

''It's like asking the museum guard to restore a painting in the Met,'' said Charles Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit that has sued unsuccessfully to stop the work.

Neither Rhino Linings nor Mr. Schutzenhofer answered questions about their roles in setting up the Reflecting Pool repairs or in choosing Atlantic for the application.

Mr. Schutzenhofer also communicated in January and February with Greenwater Services, an Ohio-based company owned by a Trump donor's investment firm, about installing water-treatment equipment called nanobubblers to kill algae, according to emails reviewed by The Times.

Federal law required the project to face reviews from nonpartisan, career employees, to ensure that taxpayer money was not wasted and national icons were not damaged. The Interior Department swept those hurdles aside.

It approved a no-bid contract for Atlantic, even though multiple companies had expressed interest in bidding. It issued another no-bid contract to Greenwater, even though other firms could have supplied the nanobubblers.

It bypassed consultations with preservationists and other experts, even though a career employee said the project was significant enough to require it.

And it approved Atlantic's request to be paid a 20 percent profit margin, even though a Park Service procurement employee found that number ''inflated'' and ''excessive.'' The contractor got all it asked for, plus more than $1 million on top of that, for a total of $14.7 million.

In each case, the Interior Department cited the fast-approaching deadline as a reason to block any scrutiny. It was a neat act of bureaucratic jujitsu: Because the government started the project so late, it declared that no one else could further delay it by asking questions.

Otherwise, the department said, the pool might not be in good shape by Independence Day. In internal documents, the department called that possible outcome ''mission failure.''

On April 23, Mr. Trump introduced Mr. Schutzenhofer's plan to the public with an elaborate story. In this telling, Mr. Trump said he had found the contractor himself.

''What we're going to do is: I'm going to call all three of these people that have worked for me in the past doing swimming pools,'' he said in the Oval Office. He described how he had solicited offers from vendors to the Trump Organization before picking one that had worked on his golf club in Northern Virginia.

In fact, Atlantic, the main contractor, had never worked there, nor at any other Trump property, and the president later said he did not know the company.

Perhaps more important, Mr. Trump seemed not to realize that the 2,000-foot-long Reflecting Pool might not operate like a recreational swimming pool.

The 100-Year Liner

Soon after Atlantic began applying the blue coating to the Reflecting Pool, problems began to appear.

Government documents obtained by The Times showed that the firm's first efforts to plug the leaky gaps between the pool's concrete slabs failed. Blisters and small holes appeared in the blue lining.

Mr. Trump continued to defend the project. He was encouraged by Mr. Pulte, a bulldog for the president who oversees the low-profile Federal Housing Finance Agency, and who seized on Mr. Trump's fixation with the Reflecting Pool, sharing images of how it had decayed under past presidents. Mr. Pulte did not comment to The Times on his role.

The president loved the images and posted a flurry of them on Truth Social, his social media site. He wanted to fix what his predecessors had not.

The renovation was declared finished in early June.

''This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years,'' Mr. Trump wrote on social media on June 5.

It began peeling within the week, according to a recent court filing. (Atlantic has declined to comment beyond saying that the damage affected a ''very small part'' of the liner.)

Making matters worse, the algae returned with a vengeance, turning large portions of the pool bright green. One reason: The nanobubblers had been removed when the Lincoln Memorial hosted a promotional event for the Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts at the White House, another pet project of the president's.

Mr. Trump responded by falsely claiming that vandals armed with a ''box cutter or a knife of some kind'' had cut a 300-foot gash in the coating. He added that people also ''threw a little fertilizer in the water,'' though the government never provided evidence to support this dubious explanation for the algae.

The Park Service had reported an incident of vandalism at the pool to the police, but it involved cuts in a 20-foot section of gray caulking around the pool's rim. An Interior Department spokeswoman later said that the cuts to that caulking actually totaled 350 feet. But that was not the kind of damage that Mr. Trump alleged -- long man-made gashes in the blue lining.

Mr. Burgum, a billionaire former North Dakota governor, pushed the narrative about vandals damaging the blue lining publicly, but also privately to Mr. Trump, according to two White House officials who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about internal matters. It fit in neatly with Mr. Trump's view that Washington was overrun with crime.

Ms. Martin, the Interior Department spokeswoman, declined to answer questions about the damage to the liner, but said in an email that ''Secretary Burgum never misled the president and was very clear in all of his comments on the pool.''

These might not have been the most consequential misrepresentations the administration has made, but in a way, they were some of the boldest. The proof was not in some secret file, but on the National Mall, where anyone could look. And look they did.

As videos of the peeling blue liner circulated online, the gap between reality and the Trump administration's account grew obvious. Late-night comedians told jokes. Bartenders whipped up Reflecting Pool cocktails, with matcha for the algae and blue fruit roll-ups standing in for the liner. A local activist, Nadine Seiler, began patrolling the Mall with a sign that said ''Team Algae.''

Then the administration began to arrest people.

Sophie Dennison-Gibby, a 49-year-old veterinarian, was walking along the side of the pool on June 20, enjoying a rare afternoon off. She said she stopped at a section where there was no more lining visible -- the pool had peeled down to bare concrete -- and spotted a free-floating piece of lining about the size of her palm.

Worried that an animal would eat it, she reached in to remove it. Then an officer wearing a vest that identified him as a deputy U.S. Marshal approached and asked if she had put her hand in the water. She said yes.

''He said, 'Now I'm going to have to arrest you,''' Ms. Dennison-Gibby recalled. She thought she was being stopped for littering, and tried to explain: ''I took it out. I didn't put it in.''

She was charged with a misdemeanor count of destruction of property, which carried a possible penalty of up to six months in jail. As a result of the charge, she had to pay $6,000 in legal fees and worried about the impact on her business and her veterinary licenses. She struggled with what to tell her school-age daughter.

Ms. Dennison-Gibby, a naturalized citizen who came to the United States from Britain 22 years ago, was aghast when she saw a video of Mr. Trump celebrating her arrest.

''The most powerful person in the world, sitting there, very pleased that there have been arrests over vandalizing of the Reflecting Pool, one of which was me,'' Ms. Dennison-Gibby said.

At least seven people were charged with vandalizing the pool. The most serious charge was filed against David Hearn, a former U.S. Olympian who was arrested on June 19 after he allegedly yanked up a piece of the liner two feet square. He was indicted on a felony charge of destroying federal property worth more than $1,000. He faced up to 10 years in jail if convicted.

Ms. Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, announced Mr. Hearn's indictment at a fiery news conference, saying she was in a fight against ''unchecked vandalism and civil disorder.''

A Remarkable Filing

The new charges meant that the Reflecting Pool mess had moved from the realm of the political to the courtroom, where Mr. Trump's success has been less assured.

In a court hearing that had been scheduled for this week, Mr. Hearn's lawyers planned to show that Park Service employees knew the pool had been badly damaged before Mr. Hearn had reached into the water.

Ahead of that showdown, Ms. Pirro reversed course.

In a remarkable court filing on Friday evening, Ms. Pirro wrote that the Interior Department had misled her prosecutors about the extent to which vandals had caused the pool's problems. Instead, she wrote, ''the damage was the result of a botched installation.''

The filing provided a far more detailed accounting of the pool's problems than the Interior Department ever had, saying the coating application became ''rushed and flawed'' as workers raced to make up for weather delays.

Ms. Pirro moved to dismiss the cases against Mr. Hearn, Ms. Dennison-Gibby and at least two others. On Thursday, a federal judge granted prosecutors' request to dismiss the case against Mr. Hearn.

But there was a consequence for such a public denouncement of Mr. Trump's project.

The president seethed at Ms. Pirro, a longtime friend who had left a cushy job at Fox News to fulfill the president's promise to clean up the city. Mr. Trump slammed her publicly, telling reporters that she was ''folding like an umbrella'' and ''choking.''

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump brought Ms. Pirro and Mr. Burgum together for a meeting in the Oval Office, along with Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, and David Warrington, the White House counsel.

Ms. Pirro, raising her voice, confronted Mr. Burgum and accused him of misleading the president to protect himself and his department. Mr. Burgum did his best to defend himself, but spoke less than the loquacious Ms. Pirro.

Ms. Pirro left the White House later that evening with her job still safe, at least for the moment. Mr. Trump told reporters this week that he had not decided whether he would fire her.

By then, the Reflecting Pool was in a sorry state.

It was fenced off in late June, ahead of the 250th anniversary, exactly the ''mission failure'' that the administration had wanted to prevent.

The Reflecting Pool was then drained so it could be repaired again. Atlantic said in a statement that it would honor its warranty.

Then, instead of a giant mirror, visitors looking out from the Lincoln Memorial saw only a dry expanse of American flag blue, covered in dead algae, with torn pieces that waved in the wind

Haunted by Hoover, Trump searches for an endgame in Iran by Franco Ordoñez

 

President Trump is confronting a question that has haunted presidents throughout history: how a war — one that has gone on longer than predicted — can reshape a presidency.

Behind the scenes and in public remarks, Trump has acknowledged seeking an agreement to end the Iran war in hopes of escaping comparisons to former President Herbert Hoover, the Republican whose name became synonymous with economic collapse after the Great Depression.

"I've studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great," he said at the June G7 summit in France. "Not too many are great and some really bad. We had one just recently. The one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that and who knows what would have happened. But bad things happen."

 

Those remarks were more than an offhand remark. They reveal his sensibilities of what it means to be a good president and how he hopes to be remembered by history. It's recognition that he may be judged not only by what happens on the battlefield, but by the impacts on inflation, gas prices and voters' lives at home.

Historic parallels

Trump, born in 1946, grew up during a time when Hoover served as a cautionary example of what not to do during difficult economic times.

Hoover stuck to his Republican principles that the government shouldn't meddle in the economy — a decision many saw as one of the worst political mistakes of the 20th century.

"Trump often reveals what he's thinking with these comments he makes," said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former White House aide to George W. Bush. "They sound like asides, but I think they're indicative of his upbringing. He grew up in a period where Herbert Hoover was a very negative thing to be."

Trump is not the only Republican to face those fears.

During the financial crisis of 2008, President George W. Bush raised his own concerns in an Oval Office meeting congressional leaders urging them to approve his plan to stabilize the financial markets. Bush argued that it was better to take action — or risk being compared to Herbert Hoover.

 

"We're going to act. I'm not going to be Herbert Hoover," Bush told the leaders, presidential historian Russell Riley wrote in his book Inside the George W. Bush White House: An Oral History.

Ronald Reagan also faced Hoover comparisons during the recession of 1981 and 1982, but escaped the association when the economy rebounded.

"Any Republican president who gets hit with bad economic times faces the danger of being tagged as Herbert Hoover," Troy said. "You don't really hear people saying Jimmy Carter was Herbert Hoover. It's constantly something that happens to Republican presidents."

Urgent concerns

For Trump, that concern is more urgent as the war takes its toll on energy and inflation.

The risks of recession are higher today than they were prior to the war, but they're also not off the charts, according to Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG. But she said the risks get higher the longer that inflation persists and the Fed leaves it unaddressed, noting that inflation has persisted for five years.

Still, she cautioned against treating today's economy as a replay of Hoover's experience — noting the economy was much different then and there are much better tools today to prevent such a catastrophe.

"It's hard to get back to a Hoover-type situation where there are all these Hoovervilles," she said. "There were so many policy mistakes made back then that caused that situation and how it played out."

But the president has long understood that his political success may be defined by the performance of the economy – and he knows that a prolonged war can often reshape a presidency in unexpected ways.

Kevin O’Leary wants to atone for his data center sins by Josh Einiger and Olympia Sonnier

 

If built, it would be one of the world’s largest data centers, a sprawling plant in the vast open space near Utah’s northern border. The fact that it exists only on paper has not calmed the furor aimed at the celebrity investor behind it.

The quiet approval in May of Project Stratos, fronted by developer Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame, immediately blew up in the faces of the longtime politicians who supported it; Republican voters ousted several of them in primaries the very next month, including the president of the state Senate.

The ongoing outcry has mired O’Leary in a war of words with local critics and solidified the proposal as a cautionary tale as developers and tech companies race to build more such centers to meet the energy demands of AI.

If there is one thing O’Leary and his Utah detractors finally agree on, it is that his company failed to provide enough information and reach out to locals before announcing the gargantuan plans.

“We really screwed this up,” O’Leary admitted to MS NOW. “We have not communicated what we do.”

O’Leary’s PR debacle in Box Elder County, in the watershed of the Great Salt Lake, is thrown into even sharper relief by the fact that on the other side of that shrinking body of water sits a data center that sailed through with hardly any controversy at all. It’s what locals and industry observers consider a poster case for proper community outreach.

 

When Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — decided to build a data center in Eagle Mountain, Utah, developers engaged city leaders early on.

“I think we did set some clear expectations in the beginning,” said Mayor Jared Gray, who told MS NOW the city reached deals on everything from taxes to power use. 

Meta, which broke ground in 2018 and opened the facility in 2021, has provided conservation grants to 20 organizations throughout Eagle Mountain, Gray said. The company also invested millions in local schools, underwriting a hydroponic garden for the high school and laptops for every high school student.

 The resulting vibe in town? “Man,” Gray said, “these guys really do what they say.” 

Meta operates 32 data centers nationwide, and to be sure, it has come under fire elsewhere. In Georgia, concerns over water quality attracted the ire of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the company has taken criticism over its secretive real estate deals in Louisiana. 

In Eagle Mountain, however, residents consider Meta a good corporate neighbor and themselves lucky compared to their counterparts in Box Elder County.

 

“We here in the West have a history of overcoming hardships and challenges,” including fending off outsiders, said Mare Burningham, who got a Meta grant to study the migration patterns of deer in Eagle Mountain. “I think [O’Leary] just set himself up for a really big fight [in Box Elder County].”

At issue with Project Stratos: the proposal’s sheer scale and its location in the Hansel Valley near the Great Salt Lake, which has lost three-quarters of its volume in a few decades.

 

O’Leary originally planned to buy 40,000 acres, twice the size of Manhattan. Amid community outrage, he scaled back the size in half, but he still plans to utilize as much as 9 gigawatts of power.

“As proposed, this particular project would utterly transform this entire landscape,” said Dr. Robert Davies, associate professor of physics at Utah State University, who has emerged as one of the leading critics of the project. 

Davies likened the power consumption to two states of Utah or three New York Cities, and suggested the heat output could dramatically increase temperatures in the valley and accelerate evaporation near the lake.

O’Leary, who initially lashed out publicly at critics like Davies and others, has since struck a more conciliatory tone despite ongoing litigation over the project. He told MS NOW he still intends to submit permit applications, which would provide much of the information people are so desperate to see. He said he wants to win over the state.

Three months after his project won that initial approval, however, O’Leary’s company has yet to deliver those plans, or even say what entity will ultimately use all the data capacity he intends to create.

“I got a lot of work ahead of me,” he said. “If I’ve said anything that offends you, yes, I apologize. If I’ve done anything that you think has been unfair, I apologize. But I also, with that, would say I want you to lend an open ear to what I’m going to show you in the months ahead.”

 

How long will the Grateful Dead's songs survive? by Headshot of Isabella Gomez Sarmiento

 

Bob Weir believed that the songs of the Grateful Dead had a life of their own.

"It's my firm belief that these songs are visitors, that they're living critters," the band's co-founder and rhythm guitarist told NPR in 2022. "They're visitors from another world, another dimension or whatever you want to call it, that come through the artists to visit this world, have a look around, tell their stories."

 Weir described his philosophy as "hippie metaphysics" and his notion that the Grateful Dead acted as a vessel for the music, rather than its starting point, helps explain the band's longevity. The Grateful Dead endured an original run of 30 years, and by this point, its appeal has survived just as long in a world where the band itself no longer exists. The Dead's legacy is one that came to be defined, broadly, by collective ownership and responsibility — a sprawling, decentralized network of musicians, dancers and tapers (more on that later) that were all literally playing in the band, as the song goes. It's no wonder, then, that Weir always pictured the Dead's "critters" sticking around far longer than anybody on stage.

 "I can't help but think, after doing this work, that there's a good chance that these songs are going to be around in 200 or 300 years," he said during that 2022 interview. "That people will be talking about them and working off of them."

Weir spoke of this vision frequently, and it's one many fans continue to reference. He died earlier this year, which marked a devastating loss for Deadheads. Weir had spent the three decades since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995 shepherding the Grateful Dead's music to younger generations of fans and players alike, most notably alongside John Mayer in the group Dead & Company. Now, the Dead community faces a new phase, one without as many links to the original band. Bassist Phil Lesh, former vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux and Weir have all departed in recent years. Without them, drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart have been laying low.

 Going into the Grateful Dead's 61st summer, a clear question has emerged: not whether the music would continue, but how? Who would play it forward for the centuries to come?

 Some fans found one answer to that question off a winding road called the Bohemian Highway in Sonoma County, Calif., at a modest festival hosted by the family of Phil Lesh. On a sunny May weekend, thousands of Deadheads assembled in a clearing of redwood trees for The Terrapin Roadshow. Out in the parking lot, a few people set up tables to sell hand-dyed bamboo socks and quartz necklaces, holding up signs asking to be "miracled" into the show (a.k.a. the traditional Deadhead request to be gifted a ticket). Inside, patchwork quilts and rainbow-colored shirts dotted the grassy field. At the top of the hill, a kids' area was informally set up with play pens and bubble wands. Generations of families sprawled out on the lawn together, waiting for the music to begin. 

 Nicole Lauricella laid out a picnic blanket with help from her husband and children. Sporting a sizable Jerry Garcia tattoo on her shoulder, Lauricella watched her young granddaughter, Luna, twirl in the sun in a tie-dye dress. The Grateful Dead has long been a soundtrack to their family life, she said, and this moment feels like a new page in that lineage.

"It's nice when I can wrangle them all in and we can be together at an event," she said. "Now that [Lesh and Weir] have passed away, something like this is what we're trying to hold on to."

---

The Terrapin Roadshow is set to make several stops across the West Coast and in Colorado this summer. It features Lesh's son, Grahame Lesh, playing the Grateful Dead songbook with a rotating roster of musicians. In Monte Rio, Calif., he was joined by the Wolfpack, a string and horn section that often accompanied Weir. Lesh is currently the only child of an original band member performing and touring the Dead's music, but he explained that he doesn't see himself as a solitary keeper of the band's legacy.

 "My sense, in terms of the music continuing, is someone is going to be playing it. I don't necessarily feel any added pressure because of who my dad was to do that," Lesh said. There are, he pointed out, Dead cover bands in virtually every city in America. "What we can do is bring all these other musicians in and provide a place for them to be in the band and to take the music and then go out and spread the good word to their fans and the people that they play with."

 This approach follows the map charted by the Grateful Dead's original members. After Garcia's death, the "core four" — Weir, Lesh, plus drummers Kreutzmann and Hart — continued performing the band's songbook in a number of configurations with each other, and with other artists. This included many younger musicians like Billy Strings, Joe Russo and Mikaela Davis. The surviving members also sat in with tribute bands, including Dark Star Orchestra (DSO).

 In a typical situation, that wouldn't happen — the guys go hang out with the cover band. But we made friends with them," says Tim Walther, manager of DSO and promoter of several jam band festivals. "[DSO] is not trying to say they are the Grateful Dead. They're carrying the torch, so to speak."

DSO has been playing since 1997, but Walther says 2026 has been one of the group's busiest seasons yet. He says without a formal iteration of the Dead this summer, people are looking for a place to gather and hear their favorite songs. Producer and bassist Don Was, who performed with Weir in a trio called the Wolf Bros, says there's a special quality to the Dead's music that feels larger than life.

"There's something in there that really speaks to people and helps them deal with the craziness of life, the unpredictability of life, the chaos of life," Was says. "Conversational language doesn't begin to convey the depth of inner emotions that we have going on, but songs like the Grateful Dead's really help you sort through it all."

 On the night of Weir's passing, Was and his group the Pan-Detroit Ensemble had just begun their winter tour, which included a 50th anniversary tribute to the Dead's seminal jazz-inspired album Blues for Allah. Was says although he was shaken up by the news, he knew Weir would want him to go through with the performance and use music as a way to process both his and the audience's grief. So he did, both on that night and for the remainder of the tour.

"[Weir] felt that this was music that transcended fashion or a particular moment in time in San Francisco — the themes of the songs were relevant to the human condition," Was says. "He wanted people to continue to play these songs and relate to them. I really believe that'll happen just because they're such great songs to play and they mean something to the people on the receiving end."

 At the Terrapin Roadshow in Monte Rio, Lesh tapped into the grassroots northern California scene that his father built for the last decades of his life. For several years, the family operated a venue and restaurant in San Rafael named Terrapin Crossroads, where the legendary bassist and composer could often be seen jamming with local musicians or eating a burger and fries at the next table over. The fans here, his son says, are a lot of familiar faces from that scene.

"My dad and our family were doing smaller things by choice, but there was always the bigger thing happening at the same time. Now that there's not all the voices — Bob and my dad and Donna — it's up to everyone individually," Lesh says. "We'll see. Maybe there's not a big centralized stadium tour for everyone to follow, but 800 to a thousand people will come to this each day, and another few thousand will go see [cover band] Joe Russo's Almost Dead. It'll spread that way."

 Out in the crowd, many of the Deadheads said that improvising through this unknown moment is part of the fun. Susan Justice went to her first Grateful Dead show in 1976, though she saw Jerry Garcia Band play before that. She says for her, the important thing is that every performance follows the unpredictable spirit of the Dead.

 "We like to hear people play the Dead material with their own personalities," she said. "It's nice to hear other people play their own style of the music, as opposed to just trying to imitate."

 

Through two sets of songs, including "They Love Each Other," and a roaring rendition of the sequence known as "Help On the Way" > "Slipknot!" > "Franklin's Tower," just one solitary taper stood in the audience. The Grateful Dead famously allowed concertgoers to record performances; they would then trade those tapes with other fans, a sort of pre-internet marketing strategy that drew more and more people to concerts. Eventually, it led to entire taper sections at shows. John Chandler, who started seeing the Dead in the 1980s, said he feels a responsibility to keep that tradition going.

"There's a lot of people that are not taping anymore, which is unfortunate," he said. "But this stuff right now that we're getting — you can't let it slip away. You've got to preserve it, capture it and share it.

 For Lesh, this show is symbolic of a larger ethos around not just the music, but the entire culture that it spawned. In the heart of Dead country, just down the road from where lyricist Robert Hunter penned the words to "Dark Star," Lesh looked contemplatively at the forest surrounding the stage.

"My folks described the Grateful Dead as a big old oak tree. The roots were the jazz and the blues. You know, Jerry was a big banjo player and my dad [had] classical roots," he said. "The trunk is the band members, and the branches and the leaves are everyone inspired by them. That's what I am — all of us. It'll grow and grow. And, you know, not every tree lives forever, but it outlives all of us."

How Trump’s claims of vandalism at the renovated Reflecting Pool crumbled by Dan Diamond,Liam Bowman,Salvador Rizzo and Jake Spring,

 

Standing on the basin of the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool in early May, President Donald Trump promised to fix the leaks and other problems that had long plagued one of the capital's most recognizable landmarks.

"It's going to last, I would say 50 years," he said. "It'll last, it's going to last a long time."

 

Trump vowed to finish the job in time for July Fourth celebrations on the National Mall. He and his aides cast the project, launched with a multimillion-dollar no-bid contract and without the normal review process, as a demonstration of how quickly the longtime real estate magnate could transform Washington.

Trump's changes instead lasted a few days. The basin's coating began to visibly peel, with chunks of Trump's new pool liner, tinted "American Flag Blue," littering the surface and algae blooms clouding the water.

Since then, the administration's response - to blame "vandals" for the damage - has morphed into a political headache, raising questions about what leaders in the administration knew as the government pursued criminal charges against four people, including former U.S. Olympian David Hearn.

The president is furious at one of his most ardent supporters, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the nation's capital, for dropping vandalism charges against the four people in recent days. Prosecutors in a Friday court filing blamed the damage on flawed installation work and said the Interior Department had not shared critical information in a timely manner.

Trump lashed out at Pirro on social media and delivered a "very pointed" message in a phone call Saturday, a White House official said. On Monday, he renewed the criticism from the Oval Office, saying she had "folded like an umbrella."

The Reflecting Pool project, intended as a showcase for Trump's ability to quickly get things done, has instead become a speed bump in his second term. Its problem-riddled rollout comes as Trump presses ahead with larger and more complex projects that would remake Washington's skyline, including a new White House ballroom and a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch.

The pool was drained again July 10 for more repairs.

Government records "strongly suggest that a rushed and botched installation by AIC, the primary contractor," led to the visible damage in the pool's new liner, Pirro and one of her deputies wrote in the filing Friday. Pirro accused the Interior Department of withholding relevant documents that would have scuttled the investigation.

 The pool's problems had sparked tirades from Trump inside the White House, and the president soon grew angry for another reason: Pirro did not give the White House a heads-up about dropping the charges, a White House official said. The president spoke with her by phone Saturday to discuss the decision, a call first reported by CNN.

 

Trump publicly turned his ire on Pirro too, saying on social media he disagreed "100%" with her decision and again insisting that vandals were to blame. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum chimed in to agree that vandals "repeatedly" damaged the site, claiming the acts were caught on camera and insisting his agency had been forthcoming with Justice Department lawyers.

The White House and Interior Department declined further comment, referring to Trump and Burgum's posts. Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Outside observers for weeks had dismissed claims of widespread vandalism. A Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery and photos and videos taken in June during the renovation concluded that the basin's peeling was probably caused by application errors. Waterproofing experts who reviewed the evidence reached the same conclusion.

The administration publicly disputed that the coating had been improperly applied, but on Monday, Trump acknowledged some frustration with contractors' work.

"I'm not saying I was 100 percent thrilled with the contractor, but the contractor was rushing," he said in the Oval Office, noting that workers had a tight deadline. He saved his sharpest words for Pirro.

"I guess she choked. I don't know what the hell happened," he said.

Pirro, a former Fox News host, had been a staunch defender of the president before joining his administration, and in her current role had pursued several claims of wrongdoing involving Trump's perceived political foes - having setbacks in court along the way, including a failed attempt to prosecute a D.C. man for misdemeanor assault after throwing a sandwich at a federal agent last year.

 

The 20-page filing by prosecutors to drop Hearn's case was extraordinary not only because it contradicted what Trump and Pirro had said publicly about charges, but because it painstakingly outlined Interior Department documents showing problems with the liner's installation and how prosecutors came to feel deceived. Pirro reviewed and signed off on the motion after speaking with Michael Spence, the chief of the unit handling Superior Court cases in the U.S. attorney's office, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Norm Eisen, a lawyer for Hearn, said he did not accept the claim that the Justice Department was unaware of evidence indicating Hearn's innocence. Eisen cited public photographs and reports demonstrating that the damage probably stemmed from contractor errors.

"The idea that Jeanine Pirro and her office were somehow hornswoggled by Interior is not credible," Eisen said.

This account is drawn from interviews with Justice, Interior and White House officials as well as public statements and documents disclosed by the Trump administration in legal battles over the Reflecting Pool. Some of the people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss matters publicly.

Trump decided to revamp the century-old pool early this year, saying that friends had criticized the historic site's appearance and smell.

"I was getting complaints from people saying that it wasn't good," Trump told reporters. "I called Doug [Burgum] and he agreed."

The pool's last significant renovation began during the Obama administration, took several years and cost $34 million. Trump concluded he could do it much faster and far cheaper.

The president also believed he could personally drive the project, having transformed the relationship between the White House and National Park Service staff. Trump had torn down the White House's East Wing to build a planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition, begun planning a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery and envisioned other major projects on federal parkland, such as renovating several golf courses. The pool, in comparison, felt straightforward, Trump would tell allies.

The administration had also stripped away layers between on-the-ground Park Service employees and senior Interior and White House officials. Many senior Park Service employees left amid U.S. DOGE Service cuts last year that reduced the agency's staff by about a quarter, leaving fewer experienced officials between junior staff and political appointees.

Officials with little historic preservation experience wound up making construction decisions while Park Service staff with experience renovating the Mall would end up being sidelined.

By March, the National Park Service was fast-tracking the pool project at the White House's direction. The changes, which included applying a new tinted epoxy to its basin, did not undergo the normally required reviews because "there is no option other" than to speed the project to meet the administration's timeline, a Park Service official wrote in a March 30 document.

Trump unveiled the project in the Oval Office on April 23, releasing an accompanying promotional video later that day and calling it a "business study."

"It will look far more beautiful, more beautiful than it did in 1922 when they built it," Trump said. Rather than spend years and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, he said, his renovation would cost less than $2 million and take less than two weeks. That cost would later balloon.

Almost immediately, historic preservationists and past administration officials cautioned Trump was moving too quickly.

Charles A. Birnbaum, who heads the Cultural Landscape Foundation, an education and advocacy organization focused on historic sites, said after Trump's announcement that he didn't understand how "something so important could be changed without testing" the new materials.

"The notion has been, do the work and ask questions later," Birnbaum said, referencing Trump's other local construction projects, such as his demolition of the White House's East Wing to build a new ballroom. Birnbaum's group also sued to stop the pool project, although a judge rejected an injunction.

The work on the pool began May 5, as contractors cleaned the site and began spraying a specialized protective coating, Rhino 406, on a portion of the basin, according to the Justice Department. Then on May 6 it rained, forcing workers to pause for a day.

Behind the scenes, warning signs came quickly.

"It appears AIC is significantly behind schedule," an employee with a contractor responsible for monitoring AIC's progress wrote in an email shared with Interior Department officials on May 7, according to the Justice Department.

More delays followed. Rain repeatedly halted work, and contractors ran out of Rhino 406 on May 18, forcing another pause until more supplies arrived, according to the Justice Department.

The job was largely complete by June 7, and workers began refilling the pool. A final inspection was held June 9, the Justice Department wrote, as the pool officially opened - one month later, and costing more than $12 million more than Trump had originally promised.

The cleaned-up pool initially won some bipartisan praise, and the president posted a flurry of photos to his social media account. Trump also shared images of the pool looking grimy and filled with trash - saying that was its appearance under predecessor Joe Biden - compared with a pristine pool that he said was due to his leadership.

"Everybody's looking at that reflecting pool; they can't believe it reflects," Trump said in the Oval Office the following day. "When I'm here, it'll be perfect."

The next day, a Park Service engineer concluded that the pool's new liner had already begun to peel, blaming contractor error, according to documents released Friday by the Justice Department.

Soon, passersby noticed the peeling too. Hearn told The Post that when he visited the pool on June 19, he saw a piece of liner that was already partially detached from the pool bottom and reached into the water to see what it felt like.

He was quickly arrested by U.S. Park Police officers and charged with vandalizing the site. More arrests followed.

The charges gave administration officials cover for their claim that the pool's problems stemmed from deliberate damage. But none of those arrested were accused of the most serious conduct that Trump publicly alleged - using blades or chemicals to damage the liner.

"They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool," Trump wrote on Truth Social on June 20, increasing the length of the gash to 300 and then 350 feet in subsequent posts.

Frank Lands, the Park Service's deputy director, also told a federal judge in a separate case on June 24 that foam sealant on the pool had been "cut with a sharp knife or razor." Lands, a former Army deputy garrison commander who joined the Park Service in 2021, had become a central figure in carrying out Trump's policies in Washington. He declined to comment to The Post.

Pirro, whose office handles prosecutions of both local and federal crimes in D.C., initially framed the alleged vandalism as an assault on Americans' shared heritage. She visited the pool on July 1 to inspect the damage, according to court records. When a grand jury indicted Hearn the next day on a felony charge of destruction of property - the sole felony vandalism charge pursued in connection with the pool - Pirro gave a news conference and later a Fox News interview in which she described him "forcefully and violently" tugging at the liner with both hands and shouting at a Park Service employee who told him to stop.

"I didn't charge anything harshly," she told reporters at the time, adding that "there was tremendous damage."

But inside the U.S. attorney's office, frustration was building with Interior officials, who had yet to furnish the information prosecutors were requesting about the damage to the pool. All the prosecutors had were a set of "bare-bones" police reports from the Park Service officers who had arrested Hearn and three other defendants who were charged with misdemeanor offenses, according to a Justice Department filing.

When Hearn's defense team toured the site on July 17, Pirro visited again. With the pool drained, prosecutors could see the damage more clearly, according to her office's court filing. The peeling wasn't just around the edges, court papers say, but in the middle of the pool too - spots that would have been very difficult for vandals to reach.

Pirro said her office immediately requested Interior Department records about the liner installation process.

"These documents indicated a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool," Pirro's office said in the court filing. The records included emails and reports documenting the liner's installation flaws, rain-related setbacks, blistering and peeling - all of it in writing before the charges had been filed in court.

"Had [the Interior Department] been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment," the filing said.

Prosecutors also dropped the charges against the three people facing misdemeanors.

One of them, Justin Carreno, lost his job as a government contractor because of the case and suffered reputational damage, according to his lawyer David Benowitz.

"The charge never should have been brought in the first place," Benowitz said.

The Justice Department could try to charge the cases again, but it would be difficult given prosecutors' conclusions in the filing.

Trump has seemingly continued his own investigation.

On Saturday, the president shared security footage on Truth Social that showed people with their hands in the reflecting pool. "Look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool," he wrote. "The material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!" The video shows three people reaching into the water along the north edge of the pool, but it is not clear whether anyone is holding a knife or a box cutter.

The video appears to be a longer version of a clip previously shared by the U.S. Park Police on June 24 seeking the public's help identifying a person in the footage. Police said it was recorded on June 19 at 3:36 p.m., roughly an hour before Hearn was approached by officers.

The saga has angered congressional Democrats, who have launched investigations into Trump's project and say that passersby never should have been arrested, and left some Republican lawmakers bemused and befuddled.

"It's pretty close to a textbook definition of kakistocracy," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California), the top Democrat on a House committee that oversees the national parkland where the Reflecting Pool is located. "Pirro is between the proverbial rock and a hard place - getting fired if she tells the truth, or getting disbarred if she continues to lie."

Among the Republicans struggling to make sense of the episode was Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana).

"The whole thing is a multiple vehicle pileup," he said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," musing about Trump and Pirro's motivations. "I don't know why she filed the suit without doing a full investigation. She says she relied on the Department of Interior. But she was smart to pull it back."

The pool is closed until Aug. 10 for more renovations, the administration has said in court filings.