The Trump administration has reached the stage of its Reflecting Pool saga where soldiers stand watch over a pond full of algae, and the internet has decided that image needs no embellishment to be devastating.

Video circulating Saturday, licensed through FreedomNews.tv, shows National Guard members in uniform posted along the edge of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool while tourists wander past and cleanup equipment idles nearby. The footage spread quickly, and so did the mockery, much of it from across the political spectrum.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele cut to the obvious question. Responding to a clip of the deployment, he asked simply, "Protect it from what, the algae?" Steven Huffman, posting the same scene, narrated it like a military success story, joked that the Guard and local police "have been dispatched to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to guard the algae" before concluding, "As you can see at the end of this clip, the algae is safe. Well done."

Others leaned into the absurdity of the optics. Physician Carolyn Barber wrote, "Rest easy, America. The National Guard has been deployed to ensure no one breaches the heavily defended algae pond at the Lincoln Memorial. The republic endures." Advocate Melanie D'Arrigo tied it to the administration's spending habits, predicting that "next thing you know, the algae will need a $600 million ballroom."

Beneath the jokes ran a more pointed critique about resources and motive. The account Republicans Against Trump labeled the scene "your tax dollars at work," framing armed troops at a decorative basin as a waste dressed up as security. Security researcher Robert Graham connected the deployment to the broader enforcement pattern that has accompanied Trump's vandalism claims, noting that "in support of Trump's conspiracies about his failures caused by sabotage, multiple police departments and the National Guard are now issuing citations merely for touching the water."

That last point captures why the images resonate. Over the past two days a 67-year-old cyclist has been arrested and another visitor reportedly cited, both for making contact with a pool the president insists was sabotaged by chemical-wielding vandals. The simpler explanation, that a rushed and overpriced renovation bloomed green and shed its paint, requires no soldiers at all. The administration has chosen the version with troops, and the country is watching armed service members guard standing water while critics ask the question no one in the White House seems willing to answer: guard it from what?

Rest easy, America. The National Guard has been deployed to ensure no one breaches the heavily defended algae pond at the Lincoln Memorial. The republic endures. https://t.co/IJxdigtYG4
— Carolyn Barber, MD (@cbarbermd) June 20, 2026

An ex-GOP lawmaker has heard enough about phantom left-wing saboteurs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and he is pointing at the only suspects who fit the evidence: the people Trump hired to clean it.

In a series of posts and a new video, former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger dismantled the administration's vandalism narrative by accepting one piece of it. Yes, he conceded, chemicals were used on the pool. The catch is who used them and why. "Just for those who are saying there was chemical sabotage to peel the paint in the reflective pool, you're right," Kinzinger wrote. "It's just, you guys did it to kill the algae."

His central claim cuts straight through the conspiracy theory. "The Trump administration dumped hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae and it stripped the paint," he said in the video, adding bluntly in a follow-up that "it was literally the people who painted it. They poured peroxide in it." In other words, the corrosive chemicals Trump blamed on radical leftists were the cleanup crew's own attempt to rescue a basin that had turned green within days of its multimillion-dollar makeover.

Kinzinger backed the point with a quick search result showing that highly concentrated, industrial-grade hydrogen peroxide acts as a strong oxidizer capable of breaking down the binder in paint and causing it to bubble and peel. That is the same outcome now floating across the surface of the pool, which the president has described instead as a deliberate "knife or blade" attack and a "250 foot long gash" carved into a national monument.

The contrast with how some Trump allies want to treat the matter is stark. Kinzinger was responding in part to commentator Jeff Storobinsky, who suggested that anyone "causing damage at the reflecting pool should face the same consequences of those who stormed the Capitol on 1.6." Kinzinger's reply amounts to a warning that such a standard would land on the administration itself, since by his account the damage was self-inflicted maintenance, not an assault by outsiders.

His broader frustration was with a movement he says cannot tolerate the idea that its leader made a mistake. They are "unable to see a flaw in their God king," Kinzinger wrote Saturday, choosing an elaborate sabotage story over the simpler truth that a rushed, overpriced renovation failed on its own. The peeling paint, in his telling, is not evidence of a crime. It is evidence of a cover story falling apart in real time.

I have to do another video on the reflective pool debacle. They are trying to say it was sabotaged by the left. They are unable to see a flaw in their God king. The Trump administration dumped hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae and it stripped the paint. pic.twitter.com/jGCha2yGoX
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) June 20, 2026

Donald Trump returned to his favorite subject Saturday evening, and his account of the great Reflecting Pool conspiracy grew more elaborate with every sentence. In a lengthy Truth Social post, the president announced that "many additional people have been arrested" over what he called "the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool," then offered a list of crimes that has expanded well beyond the algae and peeling paint that started the whole saga.

According to Trump, the vandals did not merely tamper with the water. They "took some form of knife or blade" and carved a "250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade," and they "poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool." He framed the alleged sabotage as an insult to history, writing that the damage was "a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly." He added that he met with contractors and may be "forced to release and drain much of the water" to complete repairs.

The president also delivered a characteristic burst of self-praise wrapped around a shaky history lesson. He claimed the pool "hasn't looked or worked like this since 1922, when it was originally built," insisted his version "worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish," and declared it had never been "so beautiful as it was just one week ago." That timeline quietly undercuts itself, since a structure that worked perfectly a week ago would most likely not need to be drained and repaired now.

What Trump did not provide, once again, was evidence. The only confirmed arrest so far is David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian charged with a misdemeanor after he touched a piece of paint that had already come loose, an accusation he denies. A second man was reportedly cited for putting his hand in the water. Neither episode resembles a knife-wielding chemical attack on a national monument.

Larry Sabato is not questioning whether Donald Trump still owns the Republican Party. He thinks the party should just go ahead and put the president's name on the door.

Speaking with Alex Witt on MS NOW Saturday, the University of Virginia political scientist and Crystal Ball editor said Trump remains firmly in control of the GOP, which Sabato suggested be "renamed the Trump party." He tied that grip directly to the movement around the president, calling it "part and parcel of the cult, the MAGA cult." Trump does not win every primary fight, Sabato allowed, but his endorsed candidates stay competitive and he can often shove them over the line.

Then came the part Republicans should worry about.

A MAGA base, Sabato argued, tops out at roughly 35 percent of the electorate, and no one wins a general election on that alone, no matter how fired up the turnout. "That's where Tump has really been falling short," he said. The president is unpopular with Democrats, which surprises no one, but Sabato zeroed in on a group that actually decides elections: independents. They usually break close to evenly, he noted, around 55-45 at most. Trump, in some surveys, is carrying an unfavorable or poor job-approval rating of 65 to 70 percent with that group. "That's where it's going to hurt republicans this fall," he said.

The conversation turned to Georgia, where Rep. Mike Collins won the Republican Senate runoff with a late push from Trump and will now face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Sabato pointed to a Politico framing that Democrats had landed the opponent they wanted, and he did not hedge on it. Ossoff is "clearly the favorite," he said, and the race is "not a toss up."

Sabato did not pretend the outcome is sealed. Things can go sideways, he acknowledged. But he described an Ossoff who is making an impression well beyond Georgia, recounting a recent non-political gathering where people kept telling him they were impressed and wanted to see Ossoff run for president. He paired that with the senator's campaign war chest, then turned to Collins, who he said was the weaker choice and has "some rough edges, and that's putting it kindly." Suburban Republicans, in his read, are not exactly thrilled to vote for the man.

The bigger picture is what should keep GOP strategists up at night. Asked where Senate control is heading, Sabato reached back a year, when almost no Democrat and zero Republicans believed the chamber would even be in play. Now, he said, it is genuinely competitive. Democrats still need a lot to break their way, with Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and possibly other states all in the mix, but he insisted the path is real and visible in a way it simply was not twelve months ago.

His parting warning was aimed at Democrats as much as Republicans. To matter in the Senate, where every state gets two seats regardless of size, the party cannot keep itself penned into blue enclaves. The opening Sabato sees is wide enough to run through this fall. Whether Democrats are built to do it, this cycle and beyond, is the question he left hanging Saturday.

Anthony Scaramucci wants people to revisit a single answer Donald Trump once gave a journalist, because in his telling it explains the entire playbook the president has run ever since.

The former White House communications director, who lasted around 11 days in Trump's first administration before becoming one of his more relentless critics, resurfaced an exchange between Trump and "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl. As Scaramucci recounted it, Stahl asked Trump why he kept branding the press as fake news, and the answer was unusually candid. "I do it because I need to discredit you," Scaramucci quoted Trump as saying, "so that when you say negative things about me, nobody believes you."

For Scaramucci, that is not an offhand remark but a confession of strategy. "That is EXACTLY what he's done," he wrote, arguing that Trump figured out long ago that he "can bully his way through any rule" and that if he keeps pushing harder, people eventually relent. The deeper problem, Scaramucci suggested, is one of character rather than politics. "Most of us grew up with values, ethics, and integrity," he wrote. "That is not Donald Trump."

The post lands with particular weight because of who is making it. Scaramucci once defended Trump on national television and inside his West Wing, which makes his portrait of a man who governs by exhausting his opponents read less like partisan sniping and more like an insider describing a method he watched up close.

His closing line framed the anecdote as a warning rather than a grievance. For most of Trump's life, Scaramucci wrote, the strategy of relentless pressure worked because people gave in, and the only way to break the cycle is to refuse to play along. "We must stand up against it," he wrote.

It is a familiar argument from Trump's critics, but rarely is it grounded in a quote the president reportedly volunteered himself.

A man was cited by authorities merely for touching Trump's Reflecting Pool, according to a journalist's published video.

The Trump administration's defense of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has reached the point where reaching into the water can apparently earn you a ticket. Breaking-news reporter Oliya Scootercaster posted footage Saturday afternoon, licensed through FreedomNews.tv, showing a man seated on the grass at the pool's edge as a U.S. Park Police officer writes him up while a mounted colleague looms nearby. According to Scootercaster, the man said his citation was for putting his hand in the water.

The clip, which racked up more than 30,000 views within hours, captures the absurd security posture that has descended on a decorative basin. Officers on horseback now patrol the perimeter, and the cleanup crews share the space with a law enforcement presence better suited to a crime scene than a tourist landmark. All of it stems from a renovation the president ordered, a project that ran past $14 million and was supposed to leave the pool painted "American flag blue" in time for the country's 250th anniversary, only for the water to bloom green and the new surface to peel apart almost immediately.

This is at very least the second known enforcement action in recent days. Also recently, Park Police arrested David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian, on a misdemeanor charge after he touched a piece of paint that had already detached from the bottom. Hearn insisted he destroyed nothing. Now another visitor has reportedly been penalized for the crime of dipping a hand into a public pool.

Trump has spent the week insisting vandals and "radical left lunatics" are responsible for the mess, promising arrests and "years in jail." What the cameras keep documenting instead are federal officers apparently guarding green water as though it were a national treasure.

A journalist went down to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to see Donald Trump's renovation up close, and the most damning review came from the wildlife. The reflecting pool is "worse than you think" it is, ex-lawyer Aaron Parnas says in a video posted this weekend that drew nearly 40,000 views. "The ducks won't swim in it at all."

What the camera captured does not flatter a project the administration sold as a centerpiece for the country's 250th anniversary. Parnas pans across water that should be a crisp "American flag blue" and finds it a swampy green instead, with debris drifting on the surface and sheets of paint peeling away from the bottom. "This pool is blue, by the way. It's supposed to be blue," he says dryly, dipping a gloved hand into the murk. "I'm going to go sanitize my hands now, because that was gross."

The footage also shows what taxpayers are now funding to undo the damage. National Park Service crews in protective gear work the edges with aeration pumps and vacuums, scooping algae out of a basin that turned within days of being refilled. Parnas notes that ducklings perched on the side of the pool won't even get in the water.

The science is not mysterious, whatever the White House would prefer. Shallow, sunny, stagnant pools bloom fast in summer heat, especially when nutrients from runoff and wildlife feed the growth. None of that has stopped Trump from blaming vandals, "radical left lunatics," and a reporter for the mess.

Parnas skipped the conspiracy theories and let the pool speak for itself.

"Just gross," he then added.

The White House is getting a harsh response from numerous observers to its latest claim about the Reflecting Pool.

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared on X that the press had lost its mind over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, she likely expected applause rather than a fact-check. Sharing a post that ridiculed the coverage, she wrote, "So true, and so sad. The liberal media is truly deranged." The line fit neatly into a broader MAGA effort to recast the pool's very public failure as a symptom of "Trump Derangement Syndrome." It did not land that way.

The most pointed rebuttal came a day earlier from author and columnist John A. Daly, whose post was amplified by former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Daly argued that conservatives had manufactured the entire spectacle before turning around to whine about it, writing that "as with the Epstein Files, MAGA made a huge media-story out of the Reflecting Pool, only to turn around and complain about how much media attention it's received after blowing up in their faces."

That observation cuts to the heart of why Leavitt's complaint rang hollow. The pool became a national story because the president personally made it one. Trump ordered the renovation that ballooned past $14 million, had the basin painted "American flag blue" for the country's 250th anniversary, and promoted it relentlessly. When the water bloomed green and the fresh surface began peeling away in sheets, he escalated rather than retreated, blaming "radical left lunatics," accusing an ABC News reporter of fueling the story, and claiming that "multiple individuals" faced "years in jail" for vandalism.

Political scientist Ian Bremmer conceded the coverage was excessive but pinned the blame squarely on the president, noting that the saturation existed "in part because president trump spent too much time on it when he should have been talking about more important issues."

Conservative Trump critics Tom Nichols piled on by circulating a chart that mocked the president's exaggerated claims about the reflecting pool's size."

"Yes it’s a mystery," Nichols wrote in response with the chart. Conservative lawyer George Conway added, "You're kind of right: Instead of talking about how your boss turned the reflecting pool into the world's largest Petri dish, we should talking how he signed an instrument of surrender to Iran at Versailles. Of course, the only reason why we're talking about the reflecting pool is because he was bragging about how he was fixing it."

Kinzinger also chimed in, "You guys made this a story. Brag about how awesome it is and a week later pretend you never cared anyway."

Leavitt wanted the public to believe the media had conjured this controversy out of nothing. But people pointed out that her own administration spent two weeks building it, brick by brick, and the people she blamed simply reported what the White House kept handing them.

You guys made this a story. Brag about how awesome it is and a week later pretend you never cared anyway https://t.co/64jnihbWFo pic.twitter.com/rnqjgPLU6n
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) June 20, 2026

Mary Trump has spent years telling anyone who will listen that her uncle cannot bear to be seen losing. This week she pointed to a tarp draped over the Kennedy Center as her latest exhibit.

In the newest edition of her newsletter, the segment she calls "Trump Trolls Trump," the clinical psychologist and niece of the president argued that the covering left over the building's facade was not about construction logistics. It was about ego. Crews began stripping Donald Trump's name off the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after a federal judge ruled the renaming illegal, and Mary Trump claimed the tarp stayed up for a revealing reason. Because he is "such an insecure, thin skinned baby," she wrote, "they left the tarp up so we cannot actually watch Donald's letters being removed."

It is the kind of read that lands differently coming from her than from an ordinary commentator. As the president's niece and the author of a bestselling book diagnosing the psychology of her own family, Mary Trump has built her public profile on the argument that her uncle's behavior is driven by a fragile need to never appear weak. The tarp, in her telling, is that need made physical.

The underlying events are not in dispute. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper determined that the president's name had been illegally added to the center, after a board stacked with Trump loyalists voted in December 2025 to rebrand it. The court ordered the name removed and blocked the administration's plan to close the venue for a lengthy renovation. After a last-minute scramble of appeals and a requested extension blamed on thunderstorms, workers began prying the lettering off the facade in the early hours of June 13, with scaffolding and tarp covering the wall.

Mary Trump found the cover-up almost too fitting. The same tarp meant to spare her uncle the indignity of watching his own name come down, she noted, also blocks the public from seeing the name of the man the building was actually built to honor. "We cannot see the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy," she wrote, "the man for whom the Kennedy Center was actually named."

She returned to the theme that animates her entire project: a man who treats every loss as something to be hidden, spun, or blamed on someone else. Throughout the newsletter she refers to him only as "Donald," a small but deliberate choice that keeps the family relationship in the frame and strips away the deference of his title.

Her broader point was not subtle. The week, she argued, was a parade of self-inflicted embarrassments dressed up as strength, "corruption masquerading as governance" and "incompetence disguised as confidence." The Kennedy Center tarp simply gave her the cleanest image for it.

The claim that the tarp was kept up to shield Trump's feelings is Mary Trump's interpretation, not a stated explanation from the administration, which has cited the appeals process and the building's condition.

Of all the people Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could have compared Donald Trump to, he reportedly landed on the one name engineered to make a Republican flinch: George Soros.

According to "Regime Change," the new account of Trump's second term by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Bessent told associates that Trump reminded him of his old boss, the billionaire investor and Democratic megadonor the right has spent two decades casting as its all-purpose supervillain. "They are the same animal," Bessent said, per the book.

That is a striking thing for any sitting Trump official to put into words, and it lands even harder coming from Bessent, who built part of his Wall Street career working for Soros before he ran the Treasury. When he went looking for something to capture Trump, in other words, he picked the man whose name conservative fundraising emails use as shorthand for everything they claim to be fighting. The comparison is, by the book's account, his private assessment of the president he serves.

The Soros line is the most quietly damaging revelation, but it is not the only one. "Regime Change," set for worldwide release Tuesday, also reports that Bessent had blunt and unkind things to say about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the run-up to the infamous February 2025 Oval Office meeting.

Bessent, the authors write, had strongly urged Trump not to even let Zelenskyy into the White House until he had signed a minerals deal the treasury secretary had drafted. Behind closed doors, his language about the wartime leader was harsher still. "I've dealt with this little f------," Bessent reportedly told associates, calling Zelenskyy "tricky," describing him as "the special-needs child for the Europeans," and saying he was "acting like Mr Bean on crack."

Zelenskyy came anyway, and the meeting collapsed in real time as Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated him for insufficient gratitude and for not wearing a suit. Bessent was also in the room. Afterward he told Bloomberg that Zelenskyy had scored "one of the great diplomatic own goals," professing himself "shocked, shocked" at the visitor's conduct.

Democratic strategist James Carville is predicting an upset in deep-red Mississippi, declaring that Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is rattled by her Democratic challenger.

"Cindy Hyde-Smith is as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs," the famed Ragin' Cajun wrote in a fundraising email for Scott Colom, the Lowndes County district attorney challenging Hyde-Smith in November.

Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton's 1992 win, vouched for Colom in characteristically blunt terms. "This isn't my first rodeo. I know a winner when I see one," he wrote, predicting that "Mississippi is going to have a Democratic Senator by the end of 2026, and his name is Scott Colom." He argued Hyde-Smith is "one of the most vulnerable Senators in office," claiming Colom had already outraised her and pulled the race into "a statistical tie."

There is some real evidence the contest has narrowed. An April poll from the SPLC Action Fund and Impact Research found Colom trailing Hyde-Smith by just 3 points, a sharp tightening from a 13-point deficit the previous June, as Colom's name recognition climbed. The two also have history: Hyde-Smith blocked Colom's nomination to a federal judgeship during the Biden administration, citing his past ties to a George Soros-funded PAC.

But the broader picture remains daunting for any Mississippi Democrat. No Democrat has won a Senate race in the state since 1982, and Donald Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points in 2024. The same April poll that showed Colom within 3 points also found a generic Republican Senate candidate leading by 13, underscoring how much of his standing rests on his own profile rather than a shift in the state's partisan lean. Independent candidate Ty Pinkins, the 2024 Democratic nominee, is also on the ballot and could split the anti-Hyde-Smith vote.

If he pulls it off, Colom would make history as Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction. He has run as a tough-on-crime Democrat, hammering Hyde-Smith over her vote for Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill," which he says will strip health coverage from more than 100,000 Mississippians.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. Park Police have rounded up a ring of vandals who sabotaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The actual arrest record tells a much smaller story: one 67-year-old cyclist who says he reached into the water to touch a piece of paint that had already fallen off.

In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump escalated his days-long insistence that his troubled $14 million renovation was the victim of a crime rather than a botched paint job. "The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Poll," he wrote, misspelling "Pool." "Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair."

According to The Washington Post, Park Police arrested a single person on Friday: David Hearn, a 67-year-old man from Bethesda and a three-time Olympic canoe slalom athlete, on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property.

Hearn's account bears no resemblance to a coordinated assault on a national landmark. He told the Post he had just finished a 52-mile bike ride, including a loop around Hains Point, and swung by the Lincoln Memorial to see the refurbished pool for himself. Noticing a chunk of the new "American flag blue" liner that had partially detached from the bottom, he reached into the water to feel it. Moments later, as he was getting ready to leave, officers put him in handcuffs.

"I didn't vandalize anything," Hearn told the paper. "I didn't destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs."

The footage that fueled the arrest came from conservative journalist Emily Miller, who posted video online and claimed Hearn had grabbed a hose used by cleanup crews. Hearn said he only reached for the loose sealant. Either way, the charge is a misdemeanor, not the felony-grade "destruction of National Monuments" the president invoked, and it carries nothing resembling the "years in jail" he promised.

We will report on additional details if more evidence surfaces.

A former GOP congressman is calling out a failed Trump administration investigation into voter fraud.

Adam Kinzinger described how Trump set out to prove "stolen elections," specifically by looking at voting machines. Ultimately, the investigation failed to dig up any instances of fraud, Kinzinger said.

He was referring to a probe that stemmed from a Trump executive order from last year, according to Reuters, which broke the exclusive. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced the report, but Reuters reported that it found no evidence that machines that will be used in the midterms caused votes to flip.

"They found that not a single vote was switched anywhere," Kinzinger said. "They have this report, but what are they doing? They're delaying the release of the report."

He blasted that, "instead of being grown-ups and admitting it, they are not releasing the report. It's been delayed," and lamented, "They're going to lie, and when they find out they lied, they'll never admit it."

President Donald Trump reportedly spent nearly $15 million painting the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue. When the water turned green and the new paint started peeling off, he reached for the explanation he always reaches for: someone did this to him on purpose.

In a late-night Truth Social post Friday, Trump wrote that "we've had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool," and said law enforcement was "actively investigating." He provided no evidence. He claimed the algae was "75% gone," insisted the damaged section was small and would be fixed early the following week, and pinned the supposed sabotage on "radical left lunatics" and what he called "Dumocats." He tied it all to the numbers "8647" that had been scratched into the grass on the National Mall days earlier, slang widely read as a call to get rid of the 47th president.

CNN reported the claim Friday, noting the administration had been scrambling to fix the pool's deterioration just days after Trump's pricey renovation. The story landed about as well as the paint job.

Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman turned full-time Trump critic, was blunt. "Has Trump ever admitted failure once? He's now claiming sabotage on the reflective pool," Kinzinger wrote, before delivering the line that turned his post into a viral hit with more than 9,000 likes: "His brain is filled with tapioca and raisins."

The account YourAnonNews, affiliated with the Anonymous collective, offered a far more grounded theory than the president's. "No one vandalized the Reflection Pool," the account wrote, alleging that Trump "just hired a no bid contractor that never did this kind of work before as a favor to the owner of the company who Trump also pardoned."

Amanda Carpenter, the former Republican speechwriter and Bulwark writer, took the sarcastic route. Replying to CNN's report, she wrote: "Yes... someone sprayed blue paint all over it." The blue paint, of course, was Trump's own, applied during the renovation he ordered.

Patrick Skinner, a former CIA case officer, skipped the jokes entirely. "This pathetic person hides its staggering incompetence by endless claims of victimhood. It's never their fault, it's always 'the others'. Can't fix a pool? It's a conspiracy!" Skinner wrote. "America, he's not the victim. We are. Of his incompetence & our choices. So reject this pathetic person."

The actual record does not flatter the president's story. The renovation was initially pitched at roughly $1.8 million and ballooned to about $14.7 million, according to a contract summary of the Interior Department's award to Atlantic Industrial Coatings. The basin was repainted "American flag blue" ahead of the country's 250th anniversary, then promptly bloomed into a murky green. Interior officials attributed the algae to residual buildup after supply lines sat dormant for weeks. Scientists pointed to the obvious: a shallow, sunny, stagnant pool in summer heat is a near-perfect algae habitat, and a fresh renovation can stir up nutrients that speed the bloom along.

For good measure, Trump also blamed ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for the negative coverage. He named no vandals, produced no evidence of chemicals, and identified no suspects. What he did produce was a green pool, a peeling paint job, a $15 million bill, and a chorus of people pointing out that the only person who painted the Reflecting Pool blue was him.

No one vandalized the Reflection Pool, Trump just hired a no bid contractor that never did this kind of work before as a favor to the owner of the company who Trump also pardoned. https://t.co/WcAlPdJ6hf
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) June 20, 2026

Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) is demanding the story get wall-to-wall attention after a new investigation revealed that President Donald Trump's Justice Department quietly shut down a federal criminal probe into the coal empire of one of his closest Senate allies.

"This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America," Levin wrote, sharing reporting on the reportedly killed investigation. "The pattern isn’t subtle: protect Trump’s friends, prosecute his critics, and get rewarded with more power. That is corruption, plain and simple. Todd Blanche must not be confirmed."

The reporting Levin amplified, published by ProPublica in partnership with Mountain State Spotlight, found that Trump administration officials earlier this year terminated a federal criminal investigation into the multistate mining operations owned by Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) and largely run by his son, Jay. The probe — a joint effort by the EPA, the DOJ's Environmental Crimes Section, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Virginia — was examining whether the companies' relentless pollution violations amounted to criminal conduct under the Clean Water Act.

Over the past decade, Justice's Southern Coal and dozens of affiliated operations have racked up tens of thousands of alleged Clean Water Act violations, according to ProPublica. Prosecutors reportedly believed they had a strong case and initially had the sign-off of Trump's own top prosecutor in the district to proceed. Then the Office of the Deputy Attorney General — at the time headed by Todd Blanche — shut it down. "They were told 'pencils down,'" one person familiar with the investigation told ProPublica.

That early intervention struck career officials as extraordinary. The DOJ charges only about a dozen criminal Clean Water Act cases a year, and former federal prosecutor Rick Mountcastle, who spent 24 years in the same Virginia district, said he'd never heard of top officials derailing such a probe at that stage. "There shouldn't be some sort of untouchables list of people who are immune from enforcement," he said.

Levin zeroed in on Blanche — Trump's former personal defense attorney, now acting attorney general and awaiting a Senate confirmation vote to make the role permanent. The congressman alleged Blanche is the "same guy who just gave Trump, his family, and his companies permanent immunity from IRS audits," and argued his pattern of shielding allies should disqualify him. "Todd Blanche must not be confirmed," Levin wrote, adding that equal justice under law "was never supposed to come with exceptions for the President's friends."

ProPublica framed the shutdown as part of a broader collapse in environmental enforcement under the second Trump administration, including reassigning top environmental lawyers to the immigration crackdown and standing down from diesel-emissions cheating cases.

Justice, a billionaire coal magnate who switched parties at a Trump rally in 2017 and won his Senate seat with Trump's backing in 2024, helped deliver the GOP its Senate majority.

Online critics are laughing at Trump's convoluted plot to throw off the press by renaming Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a Saturday morning Truth Social post, Trump floated a plan to rename ICE to the "National Immigration and Customs Enforcement," or NICE. He wrote that it would "totally discombobulate Crooked, Dishonest, and Unpatriotic Reporters and Journalists."

"Fun fact: if you say 'an ICE facility' and 'a NICE facility' out loud, they sound exactly the same," quipped immigration policy analyst Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on X.

"Because Americans will feel much better watching 'NICE' agents execute their neighbours in broad daylight," joked Canadian political commentator and radio host Dean Blundell.

"Our president is laser focused on the important things," author Jennifer Erin Valent sarcastically wrote. "Like social media polls about his favorite acronyms and nasty nicknames."

"Trump sure has a thing about particular LETTERS..." posted former pro Tennis player turned political commentator Martina Navratilova.

"His brain is 100 large curd cottage cheese," wrote GOP political strategist Jeff Timmer, using the emphatic, underlined "100" emoji.

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to muse about who gets to charge ships for passing through the Strait of Hormuz — and landed on an answer that put the United States, and himself, at the center of it.

In a post Wednesday, Trump declared there would be "NO TOLLS in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days" during what he called the "Cease Fire Period," and "NO TOLLS after the 60 day period has expired" — with one sweeping exception. The carve-out: tolls "imposed by and for the United States of America," should the underlying deal collapse.

The justification he offered was pretty clear. The fees, he wrote, would be compensation "for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East," covering "past, present, and future reimbursement of costs." He signed off, as he often does, with "Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"

The post recasts a fragile ceasefire — one Trump secured only after threatening that Iran's "whole civilization will die tonight" — as a kind of protection arrangement, with Washington positioned to bill the region for the privilege of safe passage.

His latest post openly contemplates American tolls rather than ruling them out.

Iran, for its part, has confirmed it won't collect tolls for 60 days but, per semiofficial outlet Tasnim, plans to start charging "for services" once the window closes — leaving both Washington and Tehran eyeing fees on the same waterway.

The stakes behind the bravado are real. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil — about 20 million barrels a day — moves through the Strait of Hormuz, alongside much of the globe's liquefied natural gas.

A couple of legal analysts ripped the bizarre rationale in the ruling of a MAGA star on the Supreme Court.

On the Legal AF podcast, host Michael Popok and legal analyst Lisa Graves shared how put off they were by Justice Neil Gorsuch's opinion in the United States v. Hemani ruling. The case involved a Texas gun owner who was found with marijuana and admitted to regularly using the drug.

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the federal government can't automatically disarm someone for using marijuana a few times a week, finding the prosecution at the center of the case violated the Second Amendment, according to reporting by SCOTUSblog.

However, Popok laughed when reflecting on Gorsuch's opinion, especially a section where the Trump-appointed justice "wasted ink telling me how drunk people were in the 1800s." Graves agreed, calling the section "absurd."

"Our ancestors can be drunk, and you can be too," Popok said, summing up Gorsuch's writing. "That's sort of how I read this, allowing somebody who's on controlled substances to continue to be on controlled substances to have a firearm. It's so outrageous."

"There was this really sort of ridiculous cherry picking, or you know, trying to understand history, how drunk were the founding fathers? How drunk was the founding generation?" Graves added. "How drunk is too drunk to have a weapon? Do you have to be drunk all the time?"

"I thought I was watching Drunk History," Popok said. "You know Drunk History? where they get drunk on stage?"

Popok described Gorsuch's opinion as the "chef's kiss" on what he thought was already an "outrageous" decision.

A three-time Olympic athlete was arrested for touching the detached paint of the renovated Reflecting Pool, according to the Washington Post.

Olympian David Hearn, who competed three times in the canoe slalom, stopped by the Reflecting Pool on Friday after a bike ride to see how it looks since Trump's $14 million renovations, the Post reported. The Reflecting Pool is currently plagued with murky green algae blooms, and paint is coming off after workers dumped hydrogen peroxide in it to combat the algae.

According to the Post, Hearn reached into the Reflecting Pool to feel a piece of partially detached paint from the bottom, and moments later, U.S. Park Police officers arrested him on the misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property.

"I didn't vandalize anything," Hearn told the Post, adding that he just wanted to feel stripping paint. "I didn't destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs."

Trump has already accused "Radical Left Lunatics" and ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl of trying to destroy the pool as reporting on the peeling paint emerged, MS Now reported.

Hearn's arrest was recorded and posted on social media by conservative journalist Emily Miller. Three officers can be seen holding and handcuffing the 67-year-old Hearn.

Miller described the scene as "Man arrested for vandalizing Lincoln Reflecting Pool. He grabbed the hose that female National Park Service workers were using to clear the algae." Meanwhile, in the comments, people described him as a "leftist boomer," and an "a—."

"I didn't remove anything," Hearn reiterated to the Post. "I reached in there, and I was able to grab the end of that flapping piece, the already peeling piece. It was still attached to the bottom."

Hearn is now due to appear in D.C. Superior Court on July 9, per the Post.

A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll was published Saturday with fresh data on how Americans are feeling about President Donald Trump and his handling of the economy, and the survey’s findings left MS NOW’s Alex Witt floored.

“The numbers for Trump's economy… they are not pretty,” Witt said.

According to the poll, just 33% of Americans indicated they approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, with 60% disapproving. The poll, which surveyed 1,340 Americans and was conducted between June 8 and 11 – notably before the Trump administration reached its tentative peace deal with Iran, which now appears to be in jeopardy – represented the lowest rating for the president on the economy in its history.

“New warning signs for the Trump administration as Americans struggle with expenses and have to alter summer plans,” Witt said. “A new poll shows only one-third of Americans approve of the president's handling of the economy – it is Trump's lowest rating ever on the economy in this poll.”

Meghan Hays, who previously served as President Joe Biden’s special assistant, noted that Trump’s strategy on improving his standing with Americans – which she described as the “don’t-believe-your-lying-eyes strategy” – wasn’t working.

“Gas prices are up over 80 cents, grocery prices are up, people can't afford their health care, the American people are really suffering and it doesn't seem like the Trump administration cares anything about that,” Hays said. “They care about ballrooms, reflecting pools and fake agreements with Iran that are just making the economy worse.”

Vice President JD Vance is facing online mockery after a boast about the recent Iran deal backfired.

Vance went on Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday morning to tout Trump's new Iran deal. He told the Fox program, "My understanding, talking to Steve and Jared this morning, is that things are going well," referring to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

"The United States has all the cards," Vance continued. "The straits are now open."

Less than a few hours after he made those comments, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and online commentators let him have it.

"How humiliating," writer Polly Sigh reacted on X.

"Steve and Jared - the two who completely bungled these negotiations from the start which led us into this mess," added MeidasTouch, a political news network.

"Talking to Steve and Jared. Good lord," wrote Missouri Democratic congressional candidate Fred Wellman.

"He's not a particularly good liar," veteran journalist Bill Kristol said. "But he's certainly a shameless one."

"Believe nothing that comes out of his mouth," Middle East and geopolitical analyst Matthew RJ Brodsky posted.

"Trump has given Vance enough rope to hang himself," economist and author Anders Aslund wrote. "Witkoff and Kushner are no negotiators, nor knowledgeable. The US has no cards."

"We said Uno. Iran said Draw Four," writer and podcaster Hemant Mehta posted, playing off Vance's card metaphor.

"It might be time to retire the 'we have all the cards' metaphor," University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris suggested. "Given how obviously the administration is being outplayed by those who supposedly don't have any cards."

Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and contributing editor for The Atlantic, simply reacted, "Hahahahahahahahaha."

In an apparent attempt to “jump on the World Cup bandwagon,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published what Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan described as an “anti-immigrant” social media post, but in doing so, “completely undermined” its own “far-right message,” as well as a core claim frequently made by President Donald Trump.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, held jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico, got off to an “unmistakably racist start,” Hasan argued in an analysis published Saturday in Zeteo, with participants from Somalia, Iraq and Uzbekistan facing challenges when entering the United States.

On Friday, the official DHS account on X published a photograph of three non-white American soccer players with the caption: “Defend the Homeland; One Nation. One Homeland. One Team,” and another caption that read “OUR SOIL.”

The social media post, however, stood at direct odds with the DHS’ messaging, as well as the president’s.

“On Friday, the Trump administration took that racism and xenophobia to the next level, but, thankfully, made a fool of itself in the process,” Hasan wrote.

“The funniest part is that the image itself completely undermines the accompanying far-right message. It is a picture of three non-white American players (Chris Richards, Sergiño Dest, Folarin Balogun), one of whom (Balogun) scored twice in the USMNT’s 4-1 demolition of Paraguay at the start of the tournament.”

Hasan continued, “Balogun is an American by virtue of.. wait for it… birthright citizenship.”

Trump has long tried to overturn the constitutional right of birthright citizenship, and has frequently repeated the false claim that the United States was the “only country in the world” to have such a right.

Beyond DHS appearing to undermine one of Trump’s top priorities, Hasan also took aim at the staffers running the DHS’ social media accounts.

“First, what a bizarre slogan for a host nation of the World Cup to use while describing a home game: ‘Defend the Homeland’? As if other teams playing at the World Cup are… invaders?” Hasan wrote.

“Second, notice how the DHS tagline bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Nazi slogan ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’ (‘one people, one realm, one leader’). I have written elsewhere about the way in which the Trump administration’s social media accounts ‘can’t stop posting Nazi imagery and memes… and leaning heavily into fascist aesthetics.’”

First Lady Melania Trump fought against Trump's overhaul of the White House and lost, according to commentators.

During an episode of the Daily Beast Podcast, host Joanna Coles and Hugh Dougherty, the executive editor of The Daily Beast, went over more revelations in the book Regime Change, an account of the Trump White House by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

Last year, Trump paved over the Rose Garden. According to Dougherty, the book reveals that the First Lady's team relayed that she was "very unhappy" with the changes, and only secured a few compromises, like getting Trump to keep the rose bushes.

"It turns out he wanted to pave over the whole lot," Dougherty said, relaying details from the book. "He wanted the roses gone as well."

A similar scene unfolded with the demolition of the East Wing, which Trump tore down to make way for a ballroom. Trump's team knew "that this was not going to make the First Lady happy, but it still went ahead," according to Dougherty.

"I think there's a lot to digest about their marriage," Dougherty said, adding that he has questions about "what came back from the First Lady's team? Is that how they communicate? There's lots more to know."

Coles and Dougherty also talked about details that came up in the book about Melania and Trump's separate bedrooms and descriptions of how White House staff "have to clean up because he leaves discarded detritus from his fast food habit on the floor," Dougherty said.

President Donald Trump floated a plan Saturday that he hoped will “totally discombobulate” journalists and make them “go totally crazy” – a plan he asked his supporters for feedback on in a post on social media.

That plan, as Trump explained, would be to rename Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the “National Immigration and Customs Enforcement" (NICE), an idea he floated last month to little fanfare. Such an action would require approval from Congress, something that appears unlikely given Republicans’ razor-thin majority.

“The concept I have had for quite some time – A strong feeling that the name of these Patriots, ‘ICE,’ should be changed to, ‘NICE,’ in that it will totally discombobulate Crooked, Dishonest, and Unpatriotic Reporters and Journalists,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

“For them to say, ‘We went to a NICE Facility today,’ as opposed to ‘ICE’ or, ‘NICE Agents have deported a Violent Drug Dealer,’ they won’t be able to handle it, they will go totally crazy! Everyone loves it, but I have been told by the legendary Tom Homan that the Agents do not love it as much as the other population. Who thinks that we should add an ‘N’ to change the name of ‘ICE’ to ‘NICE?’”

Just as he had done about an hour earlier, Trump also included a poll in his social media post to gauge his supporters’ thoughts on the matter. As of 10:40 a.m. ET, 81% of Trump’s followers indicated they supported the name change.

Trump’s two polls come amid the tentative peace deal between Washington and Tehran falling apart, with Iranian military officials announcing earlier Saturday morning that the Strait of Hormuz was, again, closed to commercial traffic citing a violation of the agreement.

Trump's poll asking his followers to fine-tune his insults against Democrats is drawing mockery.

On Friday, Trump took to Truth Social to poll his followers on whether he should go with "Dumocrat or Dumbocrat." He explained that "you simply exchange the 'e' for 'u,'" and added his oft-repeated note, "Many people don't know, or assume, that DUMB ends in 'b.'"

However, online reactions were bewildered by the fact that he was focused on the question instead of other issues they argued should take priority.

"Iran just closed the Strait of Hormuz again," progressive political commentator Jack Cocchiarella pointed out on X. "Meanwhile Trump."

"People who aren't dumb know 'dumb' ends in 'b,'" wrote Melanie D'Arrigo, a New York-based political organizer. "MAGA should be insulted that he treats them as if they're idiots."

Veteran political journalist Chuck Todd added, "'Many people' usually is a stand in for self discovery."

"However you spell it, making this man president is, hands down, one of the dumbest things American society has ever done," wrote author Jennifer Erin Valent. "And we've done some dumb things."

"All you right wing talking heads who wouldn't shut up about Biden's clear cognitive decline have nothing to say here when it's clear there is cognitive decline," 2024 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Chase Oliver said.

"The President of the United States of America is collapsing in front of the world due to a convergence of psychopathologies after losing a war to Iran and picking a fight with Italy," political writer Jim Stewartson posted, referring to Trump's recent spat with the Italian prime minister. "This only gets worse. The mathematics of his disorders go in one direction."

Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to President Donald Trump, lashed out at Fox News host Mark Levin Saturday over Levin’s continued criticisms of the tentative peace deal the Trump administration had agreed to with Iran, going as far as to suggest he was working on behalf of a foreign government.

Previously a “Never Trump” conservative, Levin has championed the president amid his deeply unpopular war against Iran. After the Trump administration reached a tentative peace deal with Iran, however, Levin appeared to reverse course and repeatedly attacked the Trump administration for having “capitulated” to Iran’s demands.

Levin’s latest criticism of the Trump administration was lobbed Saturday morning on social media where he sarcastically criticized a social media post from Trump in which the president appeared to back the idea that he “holds the cards” in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election chances.

“Surely we’re not interfering in another country’s election,” Levin wrote. “We oppose that. Must be fake news.”

After seeing Levin’s social media post, Bruesewitz issued the Fox News host a blistering response.

“Hey [Levin], I’m getting really sick of you attacking President Trump,” Bruesewitz wrote in a social media post on X.

Bruesewitz flagged a report by The Times of Israel on Thursday about Netanyahu’s supposed plans to “use right-wing media personalities” to “influence” the terms of the tentative peace deal between Washington and Tehran. The report explicitly names Levin as an example.

“This report came out a couple of days ago and I haven’t seen you respond to it,” Bruesewitz wrote.

“Are you working with a foreign government to try to influence the American people’s opinion and President Trump’s deal with Iran? Or are you just spreading lies and misinformation because you are returning to your anti-Trump roots?”

Bruesewitz has supported Trump since 2015 and was an organizer behind the Stop the Steal movement, the movement led by those who falsely allege that systemic voter fraud occurred in the 2020 election that culminated with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021.

The Department of Justice is refusing to swear that the Trump slush fund is dead in a new court filing flagged by a legal analyst.

Last week, federal judge Leonie Brinkema indefinitely blocked the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund, which critics worried would have paid Trump allies, and gave the DOJ until June 19th to file a declaration swearing it wouldn't move forward with the fund under penalty of perjury.

DOJ lawyer Andrew Block submitted a new court filing on June 19th, but "not the one the judge instructed, not the one that she wanted," Legal AF host Michael Popok said in an update.

Instead, the DOJ "created a new piece of paper to effectively go tell the judge to go pound sand," Popok said, also describing it as a "Go F yourself submission."

Brinkema wanted the signatures of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward on that declaration, "the three people who created the anti-weaponization fund," Popok noted.

According to the filing, a declaration not to move forward with the slush fund is "unnecessary and the compelled testimony of senior officials from the Executive Branch implicates serious separation of powers concerns."

It goes on to argue, "The Acting Attorney General has testified before Congress that the Fund is 'not going forward, period.'"

"That should be enough, right?" Popok joked. "Judge Brinkema said a version of, yeah, we're in a courtroom. You need to bring in evidence. We operate on evidence and testimony, not on statements made outside the courtroom."

A right-wing Italian paper went after Trump with a vulgar name amid his spat with the country's prime minister.

"Sorry to say it, but I can't find, and perhaps there isn't, another way to say it," a translation of the Italian article from the Libero Quotidiano reads. "Donald Trump is an a—."

The article uses the Italian term "coglione," even using it in the headline, as it blasted Trump for ruining progress towards a friendly relationship with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni by telling an Italian news network that she "begged" him for a photo during the G7 summit. Meloni denied the account and accused Trump of making it up in a fierce response that tore into him.

"Only an a— could ruin everything with a lie so huge as to become ridiculous," the article read. "Why say such nonsense? The answer can only be found in the definition of the word 'a—' which has entered the popular jargon of the Italian language: an inept, stupid person who acts with little intelligence."

Trump stood by his claim that Meloni was a "big fan" of his in comments to NBC News on Friday. Meanwhile, Meloni was cheered on across the world, even called "fabulous," for firing back at Trump.

Although the article attacks "the inadequacy of the American president," it does strike a sympathetic tone by admitting, "it is not the case to declare war on America," and "we do not deny it, we too had placed many hopes" in Trump.

Just hours after the Strait of Hormuz was closed again as the tentative peace deal between Washington and Tehran crumbles, President Donald Trump asked his followers Saturday to weigh in on what he called a “very important matter”: whether he should insult Democrats with the nickname “Dumocrats” or “Dumbocrats.”

“POLL: Which do you prefer, Dumocrat or Dumbocrat?” Trump asked his followers on his social media platform Truth Social.

“In one case, you simply exchange the ‘e’ for ‘u,’ so simple and precise (Many people don’t know, or assume, that DUMB ends in ‘b’). In the other case, you spell out DUMB, but it seems to lose some of the identity to Democrats when done this way. Which is better?”

Trump’s social media post also included a poll where users could select their preference for how the president should insult Democrats, along with a “thank you” from Trump for helping him address the “very important matter.” As of 9:15 a.m. ET, Trump's followers preferred the name "Dumocrat" by 66%.

Iranian military officials announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed again Saturday morning citing a violation of the first clause of the 14-point memorandum of understanding agreed to by Washington and Tehran. Within the first clause is a provision that requires Israel to halt its military operations in Lebanon, which to date it’s refused to do.

Veteran journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, whose reporting has exposed a number of previously unknown revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, had her attempt to flee the United States thwarted by the Trump administration, she claimed on Saturday.

In May, Valdes-Rodriguez claimed that her home was targeted in “attacks” by those she believed were “unhappy” about her reporting on Epstein, which included a report suggesting the disgraced financier may have had ties to the CIA. The attacks, she alleged, were potentially “direct energy weapon attacks,” which she claimed had left her "permanently injured.”

After announcing her intention to flee the country, however, she hit a snag that she blamed directly on the Trump administration – namely, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative that was established, in part, to reduce wasteful government spending.

“My departure from the US has been delayed by shocking and unexpected legal matters, including but not limited to the fact that DOGE managed to erase my father's naturalized citizenship status and records from the Social Security database,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote in a recent statement published on Substack.

“My dad has been a United States citizen since the 1960s. The Trump administration doesn't care about the law. They are illegally erasing people's citizenship. My father is unable to fight this himself due to his Alzheimer's disease.”

Valdes-Rodriguez also argued that her father’s alleged citizenship status challenge was likely systemic, a claim supported by a whistleblower’s allegation that DOGE put millions of Americans’ Social Security data at risk.

“The Trump administration quietly erased the legal United States citizenship of an 81-year-old retired professor emeritus in memory care, who was born in Cuba but came to the US as a child, in an attempt to deny his Social Security benefits and perhaps do worse to him,” she wrote.

“I knew the issues facing us as a family would likely escalate into lawfare, but this is not the route I expected they would take, to try to make my father stateless.”