President Trump has claimed that United States Park Police have made several arrests in connection with what he described as deliberate sabotage of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., which underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation earlier this year.
“The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday evening. “These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”
In a second post on Saturday, Trump described the alleged damage in greater detail, saying more arrests had followed. He provided no evidence for any of his claims about the nature of the damage, and neither the Park Police nor any other law enforcement agency had publicly confirmed any arrests as of the time of publication.
On Friday, Maryland resident and former Olympian David Hearn was arrested and charged with destroying government property. Hearn says he merely reached into the pool to touch one of the already dislodged blue pieces, and denies the charge.
Trump said that the pool would be drained and repaired quickly, and framed the alleged vandalism as an affront to American history. “We met with contractors today, will probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs,” he wrote. “What these terrible Vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly”.
‘A 250-foot long gash’
Trump described what he said was physical destruction to the pool’s newly renovated lining. “They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” he wrote Saturday. “They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
The president connected the alleged vandalism to the recent green color of the pool — again, without evidence. The pool turned green last week after being refilled following its renovation, in which its floor was repainted in a shade Trump calls “American flag blue.”
Aquatic ecologists and pool specialists told NPR the discoloration was caused by a natural bloom of algae from the genus Desmodesmus — a process scientists say is common in shallow, sun-exposed bodies of water, and one that may have been accelerated by the renovation disturbing the nutrient balance of the water.
A George Mason University professor who took water samples confirmed the algae was not toxic.
A renovation that grew in scope and cost
In April, Trump revealed his plans for the pool to be made “American flag blue,” in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The president also posted a fake image of himself and several of his administration officials in swimsuits, along with an unidentified woman in a bikini lounging in the water.
Trump defended the recent work in his Saturday post, writing: “The Reflecting Pool was never so beautiful as it was just one week ago, even going back to 1922 when it opened.” The pool opened in 1923.
The renovation project expanded significantly beyond the initial public cost estimate of $2 million, to more than $14 million by the time work was completed. A Virginia-based contractor received the no-bid contract. A separate Ohio-based company was paid approximately $1.7 million for nanobubble ozone technology deployed to treat the algae bloom.
The project was also the subject of a lawsuit filed in May by the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit that argued the administration had bypassed required historic preservation reviews. A federal judge had not yet ruled on the case by the time the administration notified the court that work had been completed.
The White House has also provided no evidence that vandalism caused the pool’s discoloration, or any of the structural damage the president has described.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s first big announced changes point toward a quiet revolution, with task forces set up to rethink virtually everything done to set policy and the approach used to get there.
Following his first meeting at the helm Wednesday, Warsh outlined the plan — a sprawling, ambitious endeavor entailing five task forces that will utilize resources and experts within the Fed and from the outside.
The reviews amount to a comprehensive examination of all the areas that define modern monetary policy. No chair in recent history has launched a project that has matched the ambition of this one.
Their job will be to examine communications, data the Fed uses to measure the economy, the view on inflation and its causes, the impact of technology such as artificial intelligence and the size and composition of the Fed’s $6.7 trillion balance sheet and the potential path to cutting the holdings.
The task forces will “start with first principles, ask hard questions, examine current practice, consider alternatives, and ultimately propose next steps for policymaker consideration,” Warsh said.
“Each task force will serve an objective shared by everyone in the system, shared by everyone around that table that I sat with over the last couple of days: a Federal Reserve that is clear-eyed about its mission, fit for purpose, and focused on the future,” he added.
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In announcing the task forces, Warsh was emphatic and deliberate.
But gone was the harsh rhetoric he has used to denounce the central bank over the past year.
Last July, Warsh, in a CNBC interview while he was campaigning for the job, called for “regime change” at the Fed and cited a “credibility deficit” caused by “incumbents” at the institution. In its place were comments about how “incredibly impressed” he was with what he’d seen in his first weeks on the job and how the meeting “exemplified the very best of the Fed’s traditions.”
What once looked like a potentially rancorous atmosphere inside the institution quickly become collegial as Warsh looks to carry through a fundamental rethink of how it does business.
“What I think we’re seeing is regime change, but in a velvet glove,” said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. The task forces “basically are going to review and maybe revise all the working aspects of Fed practice, from communications to data sources to the way they approach the balance sheet to the inflation framework. There’s a lot of potential regime change there.”
Warsh’s decision to take the positive view came as little surprise to Fed veterans, several of whom spoke in favor of the direction the new chairman charted.
“All those who’ve been in the Fed know that the way change operates is through just what he did, which is create task forces to build consensus,” former central bank Vice Chair Roger Ferguson told CNBC. “There are some things that one can get rid of that I think would be helpful and there are others where maybe he must be careful.”
Getting started
Former Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester served on a communications subcommittee during her tenure that ran from 2014 to 2024, part of a nearly 40-year career at the central bank. She’s familiar with prior efforts the Fed made to enact change that perhaps weren’t quite as codified as the approach Warsh is taking.
“All the things he’s looking at are things that the Fed has looked at. But he’s organizing the work, and I think he’s putting it on a faster than typical timeframe for some of these projects that the Fed has undertaken before,” Mester said. “So, I think this is all good to be studying. Of course, we’ll have to see what then the recommendations are, and what changes he wants to make.”
One of the most visible areas Warsh has changed is communication.
The post-meeting statement eschewed much of the boilerplate language of its predecessors and instead offered a bare-bones view of what the committee decided and how it views current economic conditions. In format, the statement began with the actual rate action — unchanged, as expected — a callback to how the Fed used to formulate its statements prior to March 2009. Since the financial crisis-era period, the Fed had been starting the statements with an assessment on the economic state of affairs.
Mester said she has no problem with the Federal Open Market Committee returning to the prior format. However, the statement this week also deleted so-called forward guidance language, something she said officials may want to address with more information about the Fed’s “reaction function,” or the outline of how and why the Fed will adjust its position to economic factors.
“I like the fact that they got rid of a lot of what we would call boilerplate language that really wasn’t serving any purpose anymore,” she said. Mester added that the Fed has long had a “Hotel California problem.”
“Once a phrase or sentence got in there, it was very difficult to get it out. So this was a needed sort of purging,” she said.
Other areas likely to be explored will be the elimination of the “dot plot” rate forecasts from individual FOMC participants as well as a potential adjustment to the news conferences chairs have held for the past 15 years.
Other areas of reform
The task forces will take aim at a broad swath of Fed operations.
On the balance sheet, Warsh has long objected to the Fed’s large position in bond markets, which swelled during and after the financial crisis of 2008, as well as in the Covid pandemic in 2020.
There also will be a study of how the Fed gauges inflation after being above its goal for five years following the erroneous “transitory” call in 2021 and 2022. Artificial intelligence and its impacts also will be in focus, as will a comprehensive view of the metrics that the Fed is using to gauge the economy, with an expected look at further using data and analytics for guidance.
BlackRock fixed income chief Rick Rieder, himself a finalist for the nomination that Warsh won, called the chairman’s approach “a new era of monetary policy in the United States.”
“Building a sense of confidence in achieving monetary policy targets will only be enhanced by an impressive consideration of complex subject matter that could be very influential on the economy and Fed targets going forward,” Rieder said in a post-meeting note. “So, this time is different, we are hearing about a different philosophy, different tools, and potentially a very different policy ethos.”
One important way to make it all work is to provide clear lines about what will be moving monetary policy in the future, added Mester, the former Cleveland Fed president.
“It doesn’t have to be numerical, doesn’t have to be very prescriptive, but to get a sense of kind of what are they looking at, what kinds of things are going to persuade them one way or the other,” she said. “I think that’s something that we want our central bankers to be able to articulate to us. Otherwise it’s sort of ‘trust me,’ and ‘trust me’ is not good communication.”

MEDORA, N.D. — President Donald Trump will visit the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora ahead of its July 4 grand opening, according to an announcement from the White House’s Freedom 250 on Saturday.
Freedom 250 is the national initiative working alongside the White House’s Task Force 250 to spearhead the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.
Trump will be among distinguished guests set to visit the library on July 1 before heading back to Washington, Freedom 250 said. The announcement didn’t specify whether Trump would be speaking during the appearance, but Interior Secretary and former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Trump would be cutting the ceremonial ribbon at the library.
“As we celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary, it’s a tremendous honor for our 45th and 47th President to cut the ribbon at the library and National Park honoring the President who led our nation during its 125th anniversary. Americans will experience Roosevelt’s remarkable story at an extraordinary place that pairs his timeless ideals with cutting-edge technology to inspire visitors to get ‘in the arena’ and serve something larger than themselves,” Burgum said.
The announcement confirms rumors about a presidential visit raised by the U.S. Forest Service’s recent disclosure that National Forest System land within 4 miles of Medora will be closed June 22 to July 7 to ensure “security and public safety” during the period surrounding the grand opening.
The library is a roughly decade-long, $450 million project outside Medora that will tell the story of Roosevelt’s life, including his time in North Dakota and the impact that time had on him, according to Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Executive Director Robbie Lauf.
“We are honored that President Donald Trump chose to kick off America’s 250th celebration in the Badlands — the rugged country that shaped Theodore Roosevelt,” Lauf said.
After nearly three years of construction, the library’s grand opening is scheduled for July 4 at 10:27 a.m., in honor of Roosevelt’s birthday on Oct. 27, 1858.
Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed an executive order in April directing state agencies to prepare staff and resources to assist with celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary over the July 4 holiday, including the grand opening of the library.
The state will also activate 50 National Guard troops to assist with those celebrations. The North Dakota Emergency Commission approved a $283,000 request to deploy the troops during a meeting Monday.

There is a timeless discussion around the concept of “sequel fatigue” in film, but Toy Story seems to have defied the odds with its fifth installment. The film is “verified hot” by Rotten Tomatoes audiences.
Toy Story 5‘s Positive Reception
Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5, which premiered in theaters yesterday, June 19, is currently rated “Fresh” by critics and “Verified Hot” by audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. As of writing, Toy Story 5 has a 94% Tomatometer score based on 201 critic reviews. Its audience score is even higher, with a 95% Popcornmeter from more than 1,000 verified ratings.
That audience rating gives the film a Rotten Tomatoes’ “Verified Hot” distinction, a newer audience-focused badge awarded to theatrical films that reach a high verified audience score and meet the site’s eligibility requirements.
While a 94% critic score is excellent by any measure and enviable for most animated releases, the Toy Story franchise has historically enjoyed consistently higher critical reception.
The original Toy Story and Toy Story 2 both hold 100% Tomatometer scores. Toy Story 3 sits just shy of that at 98%, while Toy Story 4 sits at 97%.
Therefore, that technically makes Toy Story 5 the lowest-rated mainline installment of the series among critics, despite its overwhelmingly positive reviews.
The gap also highlights just how unusual the franchise’s critical track record has been. Even with its “franchise low” score, Toy Story 5 remains firmly in positive territory and is currently performing strongly with moviegoers.
“Toy Meets Tech”
Toy Story 5 brings back Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Forky, and the rest of Bonnie’s toys for a new story centered around technology’s impact on playtime.
The film introduces Lilypad, a tablet device voiced by Greta Lee, whose arrival challenges the toys’ place in Bonnie’s life. The sequel also features Tom Hanks as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Tony Hale as Forky, and Conan O’Brien as Smarty Pants.
The film’s premise and the prospect of another Toy Story adventure were evidently enough to secure the film’s success with the highest-grossing preview period for a movie so far this year.
Though some reviews have questioned whether Pixar needed to return to the toy box again, the early audience response suggests many moviegoers are still happy to go along for another adventure.
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Researchers reported this week a deadly outbreak of plague in Siberia 5,500 years ago, revealing that Yersinia pestis evolved lethal genetic traits far earlier than suspected. A drug developed for heart tissue repair may also help kidney tissue repair and regeneration. And neighborhood socialization opportunities could shape children’s brain development.
Plus: Researchers detected quantum entanglement at a macroscopic scale, intermittent fasting appears to protect myelin and reduce chronic stress, and astronomers are learning to distinguish the different origins of gamma-ray bursts in the universe:
Entanglement embiggened
Quantum entanglement has long been observed in small, isolated groups of particles, but when those particles aggregate into macroscopic objects like coffee mugs or “My Hero Academia” Funko Pops, do they also exhibit quantum characteristics? Well, maybe. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have now reported the detection of a high degree of quantum entanglement among particles in a centimeter-sized cube of a so-called strange metal—specifically, a crystal made of cerium, palladium and silicon.
Strange metals have electrical resistivity that greatly increases when they are warmed; at lower temperatures, they are superconductive, though their temperature is much higher than that of standard superconductive materials. In a strange metal, electrons lose their individuality and appear to pass through the material as a diffuse blob, raising the question: What even is an electron? Strange metals are weird in a lot of ways and present fundamental challenges to the standard model of condensed matter physics.
Professor Silke Bühler-Paschen from TU Wien says, “We do not try to bring the crystal as a whole into a superposition of two states. Instead, we ask whether its constituents are—collectively—in such a state of entanglement.”
To do this, the researchers bombarded the material with neutrons and measured its responses. The material did not react like normal matter; its response could not be explained by considering independent particles. Instead, at least nine quantum-entangled entities acted collectively, demonstrating high multipartite quantum entanglement in a solid.
The long search for happier mice
Intermittent fasting has a number of notable health benefits, including improved working memory, higher insulin sensitivity, and better heart health and physical endurance. Observing that intermittent fasting also reduces markers of inflammation, researchers in Japan conducted a study to determine whether it could reduce symptoms of chronic stress in mice.
Through accompanying inflammatory processes, chronic stress can disrupt the integrity of myelin, the fatty insulation sheath that surrounds nerve fibers. So the researchers used myelin integrity as an overall marker of stress in the experiment. After exposing mice to chronic stress, including a forced-swimming test, the researchers divided them into two groups.
The authors write, “Adult male C57BL/6 J mice underwent 14 days of CRS while maintained on either an ad libitum (AL) diet or an IF regimen. CRS induced robust depression-like phenotypes—characterized by increased immobility in the forced swimming test and reduced sucrose preference—without affecting locomotor activity, whereas IF significantly attenuated these behavioral abnormalities.”
Using immunofluorescence and staining techniques, they assessed the state of the myelin in the animals’ brains, finding that free-feeding mice had myelin damage across brain regions. By contrast, the intermittent fasting group appeared to reverse these effects. Additionally, the IF diet mitigated depression-like behaviors in the mice.
Blow’d Up
Gamma-ray bursts were discovered around 50 years ago. These extremely energetic events, the most powerful class of explosion in the universe, are believed to be the result of supernovas. In a new study, a team of astronomers posits that two recent long-duration gamma-ray bursts, believed to result from the merger of two neutron stars, are consistent with nucleosynthesis originating from a massive, fast-spinning star collapsing on itself to form a black hole.
The two bursts were observed in 2021 by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. The team modeled the events to determine what elements were created and concluded that they did not result in the formation of heavy elements such as gold, lead or uranium, which might be expected in a neutron star merger. Instead, the team suggests the bursts represent collapsars.
Los Alamos theoretical physicist Matthew Mumpower says, “What we’ve learned is that, contrary to contemporary interpretations, the type of kilonova represented with these long-duration gamma-ray bursts does not inherently imply the synthesis of gold, despite the signal showing a red component typically associated with lanthanide production. A simple explanation arises from this work, requiring only a single-component model, which suggests kilonovae are even more varied and difficult to interpret than we thought in the past.”
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