WASHINGTON — If you live in Washington, D.C. — and maybe even if you don’t — you know the White House is a massive construction site, the ailing Reflecting Pool is hidden behind fencing and the Kennedy Center is no longer hosting the best of the arts.
What’s new is that the cost of these projects continues to climb.
President Donald Trump’s reshaping of the U.S. Capital, which also includes gilding bronze statues and plans for a massive arch, has already caused consternation here. But it’s the taxpayers in Minnesota and across the country who will foot the bills.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post, citing confidential contracts and other documents, reported that the administration is now planning to spend at least $927 million on White House campus projects, including the East Wing, with most of the money coming from taxpayers.
Also this week, White House officials asked the Justice Department to weigh the possibility of bringing a new criminal case against David Hearn, the former Olympian who was accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, after federal prosecutors dismissed charges against him earlier this month.
Related: D.C. Memo: Trump roils the waters with demolition at White House
That dismissal was based on information that the damage was caused by a “botched installation” by a contractor, not vandals.
Yet Trump continued to say the disaster was caused by vandals, even as he admitted on Truth Social that there “may have been some contractor difficulty.” About $14 million was spent to try to upgrade the pool and it’s not clear how much more it will cost to fix the botched job.
The Trump administration also spent $5.1 million to put gold leaf on two iconic “Arts of War and Arts of Peace” equestrian statues that stand at the Lincoln Memorial Circle. The statues were donated by Italy to the city in 1951.
And the Trump-appointed board of the Kennedy Center once again voted to move forward with Trump’s controversial plan to close the building for a $250 million renovation that will last two years.
The board, which is headed by Trump, also voted to carve the president’s name on the marble of the Kennedy Center in the form of an engraving that says: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”
The general election is off to a fast start
Minnesota is only a few days into its general election season, having determined in Tuesday’s primaries which Republicans and Democrats will run for office in November’s general election.
Yet super PACs are already buying up airtime and funding digital ads.
A group called the American Action Network that is aligned with GOP leaders in the U.S. House announced Thursday that it was spending $22 million on TV and digital ads in 41 congressional districts, including Rep. Brad Finstad’s southern Minnesota 1st District,
Finstad is facing a stronger-than-expected challenge from Democrat Jake Johnson in that reliably “red district.”
The ads echo Finstad’s praise of Trump’s tax cut package, which has temporarily rolled back federal taxes on tips and on some Social Security income. The ads also accuse Democrats of adopting extremist policies.
Meanwhile on Aug. 5, a week before Tuesday’s primaries, a Democratic group called Win Senate reached out to the state’s TV stations to prepare to buy time slots for an ad blitz supporting the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, which turned out to be Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, and attacking Michele Tafoya, the GOP candidate for that seat.
Democrats, who are in the minority in the Senate, need to flip four seats to take control of the Senate while keeping all “blue” states in their hands. But the outreach to the state’s TV stations seems to mean that Democrats want to ensure there’s no problem in keeping Minnesota in their column.
The leader of the Senate Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer, however, may be of two minds when it comes to a Flanagan victory. The New York Democrat wants to become Senate Majority Leader should the chamber switch hands. But Flanagan has joined calls to replace Schumer with someone else.
Flanagan has said she’d prefer a “progressive champion” to lead Senate Democrats.
Feds probed MN labor unions, immigrant advocates
Meanwhile, as the New York Times and other outlets reported, four days after Alex Pretti was fatally shot while filming officers during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the Homeland Security Department quietly opened an investigation at its office in St. Paul.
As the Times wrote: “The target was not the Border Patrol agents who had killed Pretti, a 37-year-old government nurse, in late January. Instead, it was several left-leaning political organizations — labor unions, a climate change group, socialist collectives — that investigators believed had provided help and money to what they described as the ‘violent opportunists and agitators’ on the street.”
Some of the groups under investigation included immigrant advocacy groups, such as Monarca, a local of the AFL-CIO and other labor groups, including the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees.
So far, the Times said none of the 18 Minnesota organizations targeted by the Homeland Security inquiry, conducted with the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, have faced charges.
If you can’t access the Times article, we also posted the AP’s story.
In other news:
▪️ Reporters Trevor Mitchell and Maddie Robinson wrote that Cedrick Frazier and Anders Folk both advanced through Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary for Hennepin county attorney, setting up a November race that will likely serve as a referendum on the progressive policies of Mary Moriarty, who chose not to run for reelection after serving a single term.
▪️ Maddie Robinson also wrote about Kratom, a substance derived from a tree found in Southeast Asia that is increasingly used as a recreational drug or to self-treat pain, anxiety and opioid abuse. But it can cause dependency and lead to overdoses.
▪️ After the dust cleared on Tuesday’s elections, a question remained: How did Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan win such a resounding victory in the Senate primary over Rep. Angie Craig?
▪️ And Matthew Blake wrote about how Minnesota Republican voters shrugged off the endorsements of Donald Trump and the state GOP to elect state House Speaker Lisa Demuth as their choice to run for governor.
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