It Sure Looks Like Trump Was the One Who Damaged Reflecting Pool

The most recent draining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has made President Trump’s claims of “vandalism” all the more doubtful.

The president made this claim after the “American Flag Blue” paint began to peel off in massive chunks and discolor the water, attributing the failed renovation to a “350-foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors.” Yet Monday’s draining revealed no such thing, only what appeared to be tire marks—likely from the president’s motorcade driving through the empty pool in May.

Even still, the president continues to double down on these spurious claims.

“ABC Fake News and its shaky anchor, David Muir, said that the Reflecting Pool was drained to address Peeling Paint (there is no paint, it was slashed with a knife, or box cutter, high grade colored waterproofing liner—it was VANDALISM!) and Algae Blooms (also caused by Vandals, but removed long ago!),” he wrote late Monday night on Truth Social. “In other words, the story was FAKE NEWS, but heavily slanted away from the real cause of the problem, Vandalism. It will be fixed soon, and better than ever. 60 monuments and fountains have been cleaned and fully renovated in D.C., and crime is at record lows! Washington has never looked better, or been safer!”

Six people have been arrested for alleged vandalism, even though one of them— former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn—contends that he was only grabbing one of the massive chunks of the pool’s lining that had floated up to the surface.

No one is buying this. In June, the president said that this so-called “gash” was just 250 feet long. Then it changed to 300 feet, 350 feet, and finally, 300 yards long, the size of three football fields. And yet all that has been revealed in this recent draining is what resembles tire marks, most likely left by the president himself, not vandals with box cutters. And to make matters worse, this failed vanity project has cost American taxpayers over $14 million.

The man Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday was not their intended target, Maine Senator Angus King said.

King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him that ICE had a warrant for a different person. This is similar to the case of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, who was also shot and killed by ICE last week.

“This development makes this tragedy even more disturbing and infuriating, and it underscores the reckless and haphazard manner in which immigration enforcement operations are being conducted in Maine and across the country. This has to end,” Maine Governor Janet Mills said on X Monday evening.

Just like in that case, ICE is claiming that the man, a 26-year-old from Colombia identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero by King’s office, tried to “weaponize” his vehicle by running into or ramming agents. Eyewitnesses dispute that account, and say that agents instead shot at the man’s car. Video shows the Kia sedan riddled with bullet holes, and it was still running afterwards. When agents finally stopped the car, the man’s body slumped to the ground as soon as they opened the driver’s side door.

An eyewitness told the Portland Press Herald that the man was “bleeding profusely from the head” when they pulled him out of the car.

“He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop,’” the eyewitness said. Agents surrounded the man on the ground in an intersection. Another witness told the newspaper that a young child, reportedly the victim’s daughter and no older than three years old, was at the scene crying in her Bluey pajamas.

In a statement posted to X Monday evening, the Department of Homeland Security said that “the vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.

“The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries,” the statement read. It made no mention of whether the driver was ICE’s intended target.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department has filed 31 federal lawsuits seeking to force 30 states and Washington, D.C., to hand over their unredacted voter rolls. As of Monday afternoon, its record is 0-13.

On Monday, Judge Thomas E. Johnston of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia dismissed the federal government’s attempt to acquire sensitive voter information from the state.

The judge, an appointee of George W. Bush, ruled that the Trump administration’s demand was legally deficient. It failed to provide a “factual basis” and “statement of purpose,” as are required by the statute invoked by the administration, Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960. For that reason, he wrote, the government had “failed to state a claim.”

The growing string of defeats suggests the administration is simply throwing lawsuits against the wall to see what sticks. None have so far.

In the 13 rulings against the administration thus far, judges appointed by various presidents, including Donald Trump himself, shot down his administration’s attempts to acquire voter data—which anti-authoritarian advocacy group Protect Democracy has described as “an unprecedented and unconstitutional incursion” that seeks to set the stage for “purges of eligible voters, election subversion in 2026, and the invasion of fundamental privacy rights.”

A scathing footnote in Johnston’s ruling lays bare the groundlessness of the Trump administration’s crusade: “Given the lack of an adequate basis or purpose, one is left to wonder what the real purpose was for the Justice Department to go to the trouble of filing civil actions like this one all around the nation,” the judge wrote. “Troubling though this question is, it is not before the Court at this time.”

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone Monday to finish out the Senate term of her belated brother, Senator Lindsey Graham.

“Today under the law, it’s my duty—and honor—to name someone to serve and replace this irresistible man, this irreplaceable man, this extraordinary man, for the remainder of his term,” McMaster said. “Lindsey took care of his little sister, in years long departed. It’s my honor to ask his little sister, Darline Graham, to finish his work for him now.”

Graham passed away on Saturday night following what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” The next morning, a preliminary medical report found that Graham had died from a tear in his aorta due to the hardening of his arteries.

McMaster, addressing Nordone, recalled how she broke into tears when he initially asked her to serve in the wake of her brother’s death.

“Lindsey has always been there for me, and now I will be there for him,” Nordone said at a press conference. “I think this is what Lindsey would have wanted, and I plan to honor him in this way.”

Donald Trump recommended Nordone in a post on social media Monday morning, claiming that her appointment “would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”

McMaster is singularly responsible for tapping Graham’s replacement, as outlined by South Carolina law. Graham was up for reelection in November, having just won his state’s Republican primary last month. South Carolina Republicans have until mid-August to pick his replacement for the ballot.

Nordone does not bring any legislative experience to the role. Instead, the bulk of her experience has been related to disability services. According to Nordone’s LinkedIn, she worked for years as the director of public information for the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department, and currently serves as a commissioner for the South Carolina Commission for the Blind.

Nonetheless, other prominent South Carolinians have come out in support of Nordone’s appointment following Trump’s announcement. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott wrote on X that, after speaking with Nordone, he believes “there is no one better who understands Lindsey’s love for family, our state, and our country.”

Representative Joe Wilson told the New York Post that he has known Nordone “for years and she’s a constituent of mine.”

“I have faith in Gov. McMaster that he will make the right decision, but I would support the president’s recommendation,” Wilson told the Post.

McMaster’s appointment hands Nordone the power to serve out the remainder of Graham’s term, through January 3, 2027. It’s been just two days since Graham passed, but already a number of South Carolina Republicans have expressed interest in running for a full term in the seat, including Representatives Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman.

Nordone will have to settle into her new position quickly, as the coming week will require her to weigh in on several critical votes, including the National Defense Authorization Act—the preeminent funding bill for the military—and the confirmation of Todd Blanche to run the Justice Department.

The pace won’t let up through the rest of the summer, either: other major upcoming Senate duties include confirmation hearings for Jay Clayton for director of national intelligence, Erica Schwartz for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Keith Sonderling for secretary of Labor, and David Cummins to lead the Transportation Security Administration.

She will also likely take over her brother’s duties on the Senate Budget Committee, of which Graham was the chair, as a new reconciliation bill moves through Congress.

Other Senate priorities include a new Russia sanctions bill, an attempt to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and yet another effort to push through Trump’s voter suppression bill, the SAVE America Act.

Nordone and Graham shared a close relationship. In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Nordone described Graham—nine years her elder—as “kind of like a brother, a father, and a mother rolled into one.”

“Our mom got cancer and passed away, and about a year and a half later, we lost our dad too. I was just a kid,” Nordone recalled in a May ad spot for Graham’s campaign.

“He’s always been there for me, no matter what,” she said at the time.

In a CNN interview Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that after speaking to McMaster and Nordone, he believed her appointment would make “a lot of sense.”

“I’ll let the governor make an announcement,” he told the network, adding that “I think in many respects it would be a way of extending Lindsey’s legacy here and certainly something that—if that’s what they decide to end up doing—I think there’d be a lot of support for it.”

One obstacle House Speaker Mike Johnson faces in advancing the GOP agenda in Congress: Outgoing House Republicans are exhibiting a congressional variation of senioritis.

A new analysis by Bloomberg Government finds that, “overall, House Republicans who aren’t coming back next year have missed an average of 39 votes each, more than double the House’s overall average of 18 missed votes per member.”

House absenteeism is coming in large part from Republicans who lost in primaries or elections for another office. Such lawmakers have missed 60 of 595 House roll call votes, or about 10 percent, on average.

That group is made up of almost 10 lawmakers, Bloomberg notes, but it will soon grow, as Arizona Representatives David Schweikert and Andy Biggs are both vying for their party’s nomination for governor. “These reluctant retirees have missed, on average, more than triple the average votes of the rest of the House,” Bloomberg reports.

Representatives Nancy Mace and Wesley Hunt are the House Republicans who have played hooky the most. Mace, who lost her bid for her party’s gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina, has missed 105 votes. Hunt, who unsuccessfully ran in the GOP Senate primary, missed 156, but his attendance actually improved after his loss.

Bloomberg notes that these senior skip days aren’t solely a GOP phenomenon. But Republicans have evidently racked up most of them. And they are yet another thorn in the side of the House speaker, who’s dealing with intraparty strife as Republican insurgents such as Representative Anna Paulina Luna have blocked floor business in hopes of forcing certain far-right priorities.