We begin with a June 22 press conference, in which Donald Trump blames faceless, nameless enemies for the failed renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
Our theme music this week is Dirty Water, written by Ed Cobb and performed live by the Standells; copyrighted music licensed from Lickd.
The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on the National Mall as it appeared on June 16, 2026, chokes with algae and with bits of the liner floating to the surface. Photo credit: G. Edward Johnson/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
On Monday, a federal judge in Minnesota unsealed a ruling that six elected officials in Minnesota, including Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, were improperly subpoenaed in relation to resistance to federal immigration enforcement last winter. Patrick Schlitz, a George W. Bush appointee, said there was no plausible justification for this investigation aside from political retaliation.
New York City’s primaries are over: we saw big victories for candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, several of them dramatic upsets. Former city councilman Brad Lander defeated incumbent Dan Goldman for the nomination in NY-10; Assemblywoman Claire Valdez defeated Antonio Reynoso in NY-07; and in a major upset, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a doctoral student and pro-Palestinian activist, defeated Adriano Espaillat, a five term incumbent in NY-13 and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In NY-12, Micah Lasher dashed the dreams of multiple candidates, including Jack Schlossberg, in a $26 million primary mostly focused on the future of AI.
Yesterday, in a perhaps unprecedented act of petulance, Donald Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a major bipartisan housing bill that seeks expand the residential housing stock and limit the number of units that private equity companies can stockpile (hello, Jared Kushner!) The event was set up in the Capitol when, 90 minutes before it was supposed to start, Trump announced he would not sign it until Congress passed the SAVE Act, federal voting legislation that lacks the votes to pass in either chamber. Both majorities for the housing bill are veto proof—but will Republicans have the courage to not reverse their votes?
In Texas, nine protesters prosecuted as terrorists received decades-long sentences for a protest at a federal detention center that turned violent. They were prosecuted under a September 2025 executive order that designated “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. The sentences were longer than any sentence handed down for J6 defendants.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Claire’s favorite social media meme about the Reflecting Pool
News focus: President Renovation Strikes Again
Donald Trump has committed over $1.2 billion to 18 different construction and renovation projects around Washington: he has produced conflicting statements about where the money for them is coming from, has made his projects a destination for donor money at the same time as taxpayer dollars are diverted to meet ballooning budgets. The historic Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is only one of Trump’s efforts to put his stamp on the Capitol. It is an effort that has precedent: during Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms, he made Washington D.C. into a modern metropolis with federal dollars.
The Reflecting Pool has also become a metaphor for the President’s slumping popularity. Here is a timeline of the project, beginning on April 23, that has produced acres of green sludge and detached fragments of flag-blue pool liner.
A firm tied to Trump donor John Cafano got the no-bid contract, the bill for which came to over $16 million: Cafano, who resembles drag king Murray Hill, is a Mar-A-Lago neighbor. His company, Greenwater Contracting, won a no-bid federal contract last year to clean the Tijuana River—also a failure. The Reflecting Pool has been plagued with problems since it was created in the 1920s, and a new liner and filters were unlikely to address them.
Having claimed that the new pool liner was indestructible, Trump now blames vandals for the problem. He has surrounded the tourist attraction with security personnel, and threatened 10-year sentences for the mysterious figures he believes are responsible. U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro has vowed to prosecute the culprits. As the Anonymous X account pointed out, the Reflecting pPool is surrounded with security cameras, and any vandal should be easily detected; in other words, there is no evidence that this is anything but a renovation failure.
Yet, according to the Associated Press, in a court filing today a National Parks Service official attested that the liner was cut with a knife or other sharp object.
For historians, this is a relaxing, old-fashioned scandal: Claire and Neil point to Mayor William “Boss” Tweed’s court house at 52 Chambers Street in New York City, opened in 1881. Initially budgeted at $250,000, the Board of Supervisors began to smell a rat when the bill went over $3.1 million; an investigation showed that the project was a pass-through for payoffs and graft. Tweed was convicted of corruption in one of the unfinished building’s courtrooms in 1876.
However, it also seems like Trump, frustrated by problems of his own making, is returning to his roots to create the illusion of success. In 1975, in his first major Manhattan project, he bought the decrepit Commodore Hotel over Grand Central station and built the Grand Hyatt; and in 1986, he took over the renovation of Wollman Rink in Central Park.
Another gag at Donald Trump’s expense found on social media.
What we want to go viral:
Claire wants you to read (or listen tomorrow which is what she is doing) Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy (St. Martins, 2026.) Don’t miss our conversation about how this book does, and does not, teach us about the politics of gender on the Christian fundamentalist right, and why conservatives are so committed to the gender binary.
Neil is repping Spencer Kornhaber’s article about why a rapper is trying to take America back to the 1990s, “Vanilla Ice Knows When America Was Great,” (The Atlantic, June 24, 2026.)
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