Trump’s Obsession With Reflecting Pool Vandals Comes Back to Bite Him

President Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to punish former Olympian David Hearn on the made-up vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool may backfire.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, was forced to drop the felony charges against Hearn on July 31 due to a lack of evidence, faulting Trump’s handpicked contractor for a shoddy renovation instead. But on Sunday, Trump was still pushing his false claim that Hearn actively vandalized the pool’s lining, claiming on Truth Social that a National Park Service career employee, “a highly credible witness,” watched Hearn “‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating.”

Hearn’s lawyers—Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund, Mary Dohrmann of Washington Litigation Group, and Steve Levin of Steptoe LLP—said in a statement Monday that they aren’t going to take “continued harassment” from the president.

“The government is continuing to attack an innocent man. Our first filing in the case on July 10 included photographic evidence from before Mr. Hearn touched the Reflecting Pool proving that he caused no damage,” the lawyers told Mediaite. “Our other filings provided even more proof. Finally, the U.S. Attorney’s own motion on July 31 admitted the damage was caused by a ‘botched installation and not vandalism.’ We are reviewing all legal remedies, including for this continued harassment. It is outrageous.”

This means that Hearn could sue Trump and the Department of Justice over the false claims, which the DOJ have already disavowed in court. There are a lot of unanswered questions over how Pirro’s office secured an indictment against Hearn in the first place with such faulty evidence. She later blamed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum for deliberately misleading her office about Hearn’s actions.

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reports that Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are looking to open an investigation into how Hearn was charged and demand documents from the Justice and Interior Departments relating to that decision. Hearn’s lawyers are also seeking access to transcripts of the federal grand jury proceedings. Trump’s tantrum over the failed Reflecting Pool renovations may soon turn into a big legal headache for him and his administration.

Taylor Farms, the source of this summer’s cyclospora outbreak that’s causing an explosive diarrhea epidemic, now has to recall multiple products over a salmonella risk. 

On Sunday, the Trump-linked company announced it was recalling a dozen different prepared food products, including jalapeño peppers, salsas, and guacamole due to salmonella contamination. Taylor Farms said the products came from Coast Citrus Distributors, and that the company was no longer sourcing peppers from one Sinaloa, Mexico, farmer. 

The recall comes a week after another salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeño peppers from Mexico, which has made at least 345 people sick in 27 different states and resulted in 36 hospitalizations. Restaurant chains including Chipotle and Qdoba have since stopped using the peppers. 

This summer has seen numerous food-borne illnesses spread across the U.S. following layoffs and staff cuts in regulatory agencies. The cyclospora outbreak has resulted in at least 18,517 cases across nine states listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a New Republic analysis, and two deaths were reported in Michigan last week. (State officials noted that cyclosporiasis is usually not a life-threatening illness, and that both people who died had underlying health conditions.) 

Last month, close to 1.6 million white shell eggs and brown cage-free shell eggs produced in Texas had to be recalled due to salmonella fears. The New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, has infested cattle in Texas and spread to other states, causing an estimated $1 billion in damages.  

Last year, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut a monitoring program for the screwworm and gutted the CDC team that would have handled the cyclospora outbreak. The people left behind, led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are now dealing with one crisis after another with little public confidence that more aren’t on the way. 

It seems President Donald Trump’s fascination with AI-generated images must be genetic. 

In two separate posts on Instagram Sunday evening, Eric Trump shared a series of photographs from the LIV New York Golf tournament at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. 

Both posts included the same picture of the president, who was photographed grinning beside two of his grandchildren—and the image appeared to have been altered using AI. 

The background of the photograph was warped into an improbable-looking armchair, and a hint of loose flesh could be spotted floating behind one of the grandkid’s ears.  

Looks like it was a very normal weekend with grandpa!

Donald Trump himself also posted an AI-altered image from his weekend at Bedminster—thinning his body, straightening his posture, and transforming his slack-jawed appearance into his once-signature steely look. 

In reality, photographs of the 80-year-old president revealed bruises on his arm. 

Trump’s affinity for self-aggrandizing AI slop wouldn’t matter so much if he were just someone’s elderly relative posting on Facebook. But the president of the United States is clearly more interested in leading his own fan club than he is in, well, governing. 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has bet big on video gamers to fix the country’s dangerous shortage of air traffic controllers—but it probably won’t pay off.

Duffy announced the results of DOT’s unorthodox hiring campaign to use a “supercharged” hiring process to recruit gamers Sunday night. Since launching in April, the DOT has reached 94 percent of its hiring goal, bringing in more than 2,000 new air traffic controllers—“the most in a single year.”

The secretary claimed candidates belonging to the “best and brightest” campaign were now “reaching the Academy quicker than any class before them, thanks to the most streamlined hiring process.”

But Duffy may be counting his chickens before they’ve hatched. Turning a trainee into a certified professional controller takes up to two years, and roughly one third of trainees never complete the process. Every unsuccessful trainee costs the government roughly $130,000.

While gamers may have the multi-tasking skills, high cognitive function, and spatial awareness the Federal Aviation Administration is seeking, will they be given the support they need not to rage quit?

Air traffic controllers experience extreme stress and burnout, and it doesn’t seem that the FAA is going to be able to fix that problem any time soon.

In May, the FAA announced that it would reduce its air traffic controller staffing target from 14,633 to 12,563, citing modernized staffing models. In reality, the agency planned to increase the amount of time employees spent managing air traffic after discovering that air traffic controllers had logged 2.2 million hours of overtime in 2024, costing the government roughly $200 million. Even with the reduced targets, the FAA remains short roughly 1,800 controllers. Nationally, about two-thirds of the FAA’s largest facilities remain below 85 percent of their staffing targets.

It’s also surprising that simply a “streamlined” hiring process would result in so many applicants being approved for training. Typically, less than 10 percent of applicants gain admission to the training academy in Oklahoma City.

The FAA announced in March 2025 that it had streamlined the process of hiring air traffic controllers by implementing a “fully automated” qualification process, allowing applicants to proceed individually, not in a group, and making the comprehensive medical and security checks concurrent. It’s not immediately clear why those changes would dramatically boost the number of successful applicants if the application process still includes pre-employment tests, including an aptitude test designed to weed out applicants lacking mental acuity.

Representative Nancy Mace went on an Islamphobic tirade on CNN Sunday and had to be given a lesson on the Constitution.

CNN’s Omar Jimenez was interviewing the South Carolina congresswoman, who finished fifth in the state’s primary for governor and will not hold elected office at the end of 2026. He asked her about some posts she made on X Friday in which she attacked Muslims holding political office.

“Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic,” Mace posted. When British columnist Owen Jones criticized her bigotry, she replied on Sunday: “If not wanting to be blown up, stabbed, or rammed by a car by a radical Islamist in the United States of America makes us Islamophobes, then so be it.”

Jimenez asked Mace if she was saying that every Muslim was a threat to the U.S., which she denied. She then went on a tangent on terrorism, attacking New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for associating with controversial figures (such as leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker). Jimenez pointed out that Mace didn’t make specific criticisms; she attacked Muslims as a whole.

Mace continued on her racist tirade, warning that “in the future, when our granddaughters are wearing burqas to school, we’re going to look back and say, ‘How did this happen?’” She also attacked the city of Dearborn, Michigan for “the call to prayer five times a day,” saying she didn’t want to hear it in an American city. That’s when Jimenez had to give her a lesson on the Constitution’s First Amendment.

“If you don’t want to hear it, that’s okay. The First Amendment protects from freedom of religion. You know, I grew up in a Christian household, I grew up in the south. Islam is not my religion, but I have Muslim friends, who, if that is how they worship, even if I don’t want to hear it, that is their right to hear it,” Jimenez said, to which Mace said it was fine in the privacy of their homes, but not on American streets.

Mace tried to steer the topic towards women being forced to cover their faces, to which Jimenez reminded her that she wasn’t being forced to do that, and that no Muslim elected officials were pushing anything resembling that. Jimenez then simply spelled out what the Constitution says.

“I appreciate you taking the time and explaining your tweet as best you could there, but the First Amendment is pretty clear on freedom of religion. Article 6, also, ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a test for political office,’” Jimenez said.

As out of line as Mace’s views are, they are not likely to face condemnation from any of her Republican colleagues. Islamophobia is mainstream within the party today, and will still be there when Mace leaves office in January.