“We do not have trade schools,” he said. “We are not investing in educating a next generation of people like my grandfather who had nothing, who built a middle-class life and a future for his family.”
Buddy - your grandfather was probably able to find a job that would teach him what he needed to know in order to do the job.
If FoMoCo offered Promising Earnest Young Persons $120K/year - or even a lot less than that! - to be mechanics, with the promise that you’d provide the needed training, I have very little doubt that you’d fill all your vacancies pretty much immediately.
I’m sorry that society hasn’t socialized the cost of providing you with an educated specialist labor force, but, y'know, I keep hearing all these great things about the free market.
A new sign at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool appears to show the National Park Service taking a swipe at previous administrations while explaining ongoing maintenance at the historic Washington, D.C., landmark.
The notice, which appears on National Park Service letterhead, informs visitors that the Reflecting Pool has been partially refilled as crews work to flush the landmark's water system for the first time in more than a decade.
But it was one section of the message that stood out. “After years of neglect by previous administrations, more than half of the 58 water supply ports were so clogged that they were deemed nonfunctioning," it read.
The full notice reads: "The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been partially refilled to allow National Park Service staff and contractors to flush the pool's piping system for the first time in more than a decade.
"After years of neglect by previous administrations, more than half of the 58 water supply ports were so clogged that they were deemed nonfunctioning.
"The flushing may temporarily discolor the water as buildup in the pipes is cleaned out."
Government agencies typically use neutral language when communicating maintenance projects, making the sign's reference to "neglect by previous administrations" stand out.
The notice explains that workers are flushing the Reflecting Pool's piping network and warns that the process could temporarily discolor the water as “years of buildup” are removed from the system.
"I was coming home from the gym and noticed it," Suzanne Garwood, who took a picture of the sign on August 6, told Newsweek. "They just took down the extended fencing from the Fourth so this is the first time we could get that close to the pool in weeks."
Garwood, a local resident, shared her frustration with the recent works at the pool and in the wider Washington, D.C. area. "The East Wing, the Kennedy Center, the Arts of War and Peace, and the Pool. Next up is the Arch and destroying our cherry trees for a golf course. The District isn’t Trump’s personal property," she said.
Newsweek has contacted the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior for comment.
The viral sign appears against the backdrop of a months-long dispute over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has become the focus of an unusually public restoration effort led by the Trump administration.
In April, President Donald Trump announced plans to renovate the iconic landmark, saying the Reflecting Pool would be resurfaced with a swimming pool-style protective coating. The administration later declared the work complete in early June, with water beginning to flow back into the basin after a project whose estimated cost ultimately climbed to roughly $14.7 million.
The renovation quickly became the subject of legal and political controversy. The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), an advocacy group, sued the Department of the Interior over the application of a blue coating to the basin, arguing the work altered a nationally significant cultural landscape.
Within days of the pool being refilled, algae rapidly returned to portions of the pool. The Department of the Interior attributed the bloom to residual algae in reactivated supply lines, while visitors also began documenting peeling and flaking sections of the newly applied coating.
At the same time, the project faced a separate challenge when federal officials reported damage to the newly installed blue liner. The U.S. Park Police launched an investigation, while Trump blamed vandals and repeatedly claimed the surface had been slashed with a knife or box cutter. Security around the site was subsequently increased, with National Guard personnel and U.S. Park Police visibly patrolling the area.
The controversy intensified further after former Olympian David Hearn was arrested and charged with destruction of government property in connection with alleged damage to the pool. Hearn later pleaded not guilty, but prosecutors ultimately moved to dismiss the felony charge after saying newly developed evidence suggested portions of the liner had failed because of installation defects rather than intentional vandalism.
Meanwhile Trump has doubled down, insisting the damage was caused by vandalism.
On Friday, the president shared a photo and X post from D.C. photographer Andrew Leyden which he said showed "cuts in the expansion joints on the side of the Reflecting Pool," which he said were now visible after the fencing surrounding the pool had been removed.
"Now that people are able to see it up close, they are reporting pure VANDALISM at The Reflecting Pool," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday. "The material was cut right where the video tape showed, for 300 feet or more. People were on their knees with their hands in the water at the exact location of the ‘slashes.’ Additionally, there were witnesses to the VANDALISM, and the flexible areas of the material were cut with a knife.
"U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should re-visit her hastily made decision, especially since it turned out that the ‘gentleman’ involved is a big player in ActBlue, a disgraceful fundraising SCAM, and is represented by a TRUMP DERANGED SLEAZEBAG, Political Hack Lawyer, Norm Eisen, and CREW, a group that uses “charity” for political purposes which is, to the best of my knowledge, ILLEGAL!" he added, referring to the lawyer for Hearn.
As the public comment period for the RFK master plan comes to a close on August 14, GGWash staff share their thoughts. See our RFK collection for deeper dives.
The stadium is in the way
The RFK master plan says it wants to achieve a variety of goals: to improve access to the Anacostia River, to create a retail destination, and to connect surrounding neighborhoods to the river and the retail. A stadium literally gets in the way of all of them. You can’t draw people to the water if there’s a stadium blocking the view. You can’t create a cohesive retail district if shoppers have to walk around a stadium to get from one part to the other. And you can’t connect existing neighborhoods to those two things with a stadium in between.
It’s been said a million times already, but NFL stadiums are different from the other stadiums that have helped revitalize other parts of central DC. Walking out of Nats Park after a game with tens of thousands of other fans is absolutely electric, and during baseball season you can have that experience multiple times a week. It’s a boon for anyone lucky enough to live or run a business or work nearby.
The Commanders will play eight home games a year. Tailgating–sitting in a parking lot and grilling–is a big part of the culture in a way that just doesn’t happen with baseball or hockey or basketball or soccer. Mark my word: it’ll take one season of tailgating and people won’t want the parking lots intended as placeholders for future development to go away. It’s okay to admit that a football stadium can’t support a lively urban district, because if it could, another city would have figured it out by now. –DR
City-building is tangential to the current plan
City-building should be central to the RFK master plan, assuming all the reasons we were told to build it are true. They’re not, but our job now is to hold decisionmakers accountable to those promises we’ll be paying for for decades. It’s not TV and we can’t switch channels because this show has become predictable, trite and unsettling.
This plan is about accommodating a stadium. The District of Columbia’s future and our residents are seen as flexible tools to achieve that.
A lot left to the imagination on transit, walking, biking: Transformative transit was what we were told we’d be getting for this stadium. But as we all know, a new station at Oklahoma Avenue has been taken off the table by WMATA right out the gate, as has even a new entrance to the existing Stadium-Armory station.
We’re told the Gold Line, which has a lot of good selling points, is a reasonable transit substitute for more Metro capacity. But it shouldn’t be either-or if this is truly a development –which is expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees at peak times–that will protect us from the hordes of traffic we all know are coming to Capitol Hill, Hill East, and will surely impact the wider transportation network. Rather than using the project to create one of the region’s premier transit-oriented developments, the plan simply tries to accommodate the transportation demands created by the stadium itself. No big wins there for transit; the best case is status quo (and I struggle to think why we’d expect it to be best case).
The plan gives similar short shrift to walking to or from anywhere else. There seems to be good internal connectivity within the grounds. But GGWash would want it to feel like an extension of the existing communities east of the Anacostia, and in Kingman Park and Hill East, so that residents don’t experience it as a massive impenetrable barnacle on the edge of their neighborhoods (which stands between them and a waterfront), but rather a part of the District’s urban fabric all year long.
It’s the same story with biking. A new district built around tens of thousands of visitors should be designed to maximize arrival by bike, to lessen the burden on other, more resource-heavy modes. The plan acknowledges nearby trails and bike lanes, but anyone hoping we use this opportunity to create more high-capacity bike infrastructure (and given DC’s stated climate and mode shift goals, why wouldn’t we?) will be disappointed. It’s all about the stadium.
Too much land for non-residential use: We’ve repeatedly argued that the greatest opportunity cost of the stadium is housing production. Every acre devoted to stadium uses, “event plazas”, or parking is an acre that can’t become homes. The plan does talk about “housing districts”, but it’s hard to read this plan without seeing them as an afterthought; an area that can be sacrificed or postponed indefinitely.
Doing the minimum on affordable housing: While the plan complies with DC’s affordable housing requirements, it doesn’t go further in any meaningful way. The District owns the land; RFK is an opportunity to deliver a lot more affordable housing than would normally happen: for example, by calling for earlier delivery of affordable units, stronger commitments on levels of affordability and family housing, and guarantees that housing isn’t pushed off forever. Why not? I’m not going to offer an answer, because it would be inherently sardonic.
Mutton dressed as lamb (or, a stadium dressed as transit-oriented development): In several places the plan invokes TOD language, but the details suggest more a stadium with a mixed-use development attached. A real transit-oriented development would maximize density near Metro stations (ideally a new one!), prioritize daily residents over occasional visitors, create a more consistently interactive area for street activity, and use transit investment to reduce car dependence rather than accommodate traffic.
I think the biggest question that any stadium feature should be expected to respond to is: “Is this the highest and best use of scarce urban land?” –CR
Concepts of a plan for 100 acres
So much of the RFK redevelopment deal involved “concepts of a plan” to build needed housing, implement vital transportation improvements, mitigate the inevitable deluge of vehicular traffic, and limit the displacement of long-time residents in nearby neighborhoods. The stadium itself has a real plan and timeline.
The kind of infrastructure that serves as the anchor of vibrant, livable communities—like an infill Metro station—have been scrapped by WMATA. The housing and retail that Mayor Bowser and the DC Council promised as part of this deal may not be built until 2040. The Council approved about $856 million in new public bonds for this plan; eating into the District’s bonding capacity cap of 12% of General Fund revenues. In simple terms, this deal reduces the District’s ability to invest in things like new schools, housing, and transit projects at a time when we face shrinking budgets. The next mayor will have to grapple with this fiscal constraint as they consider how they will execute their agenda.
The housing, recreation centers, riverfront amenities, and transit connections included in the plan are all things that could be built without a stadium. And, as my colleagues have noted in this post, those things would probably work better without the stadium and its parking garages serving as physical barriers between future residents and their destinations. –KH
I’m worried about the Gold Line
Part of how the Stadium was sold to the public and decisionmakers was that it would be a “transit first” development—not just including the stadium and sportsplex but also including the thousands of new homes and commercial district slated to be built. If it was understood that the District would be putting thousands of new residents, businesses, and tourists into a brand new neighborhood, it was supposedly also understood that we would need really robust transportation options to serve that area. But what I’ve seen so far worries me.
First off, I remain unconvinced of WMATA’s insistence that a rail station would be impractical or impossible. While I can’t claim to be an engineer, the District and WMATA have successfully worked together on infill stations, most notably the NoMA station. That development catalyzed a whole new neighborhood that continues to be one of the most pedestrian and transit-friendly places in the city. Why wouldn’t decision makers want to rerun that playbook?
The plans for the “Gold Line” bus rapid transit corridor aren’t a substitute for rail. In fact, the Union Station-H Street Corridor just lost a rail system because it was hamstrung by poor streetscape and traffic management decisions. The DC Streetcar was too short to be effective. It didn’t have dedicated lanes. It didn’t have signal priority. It wasn’t center-running. It didn’t even truly connect to the one Metro station where it was close to–Union Station. All of those were genuine fixable problems that required political will to successfully ameliorate. Instead, they languished. While we do have a new mayor and Council set to begin work in January 2027, it will take serious political will to make sure that even the best bus rapid transit plan gets executed correctly and in a timely manner amidst real fiscal headwinds. And this isn’t a plan that inspires confidence in me.
To start, I’m puzzled why WMATA is claiming dominion over streetscape so aggressively. DDOT, for all its problems, has qualified expert staff that have worked on redesigning urban streets before. WMATA does not. While I’m glad that the District isn’t trying to create a breakaway transit system itself a la Circulator or Streetcar, WMATA can and should be working collaboratively with the District on this and not being reflexively defensive.
DMVMoves set out a number of bus priority corridors through which regional partners were supposed to be working in concert to create BRT or BRT-lite conditions so that we could see rapid headways for thousands of riders. One of those corridors, unsurprisingly, is crosstown DC and largely aligns with a segment of the Gold Line. If Metro is worried about different standards for supposedly MetroBus-ran BRT popping up throughout the region, the seemingly easy way to end-around those concerns is to set the standards clearly in writing and to allow the jurisdictions to deliver those streetscape projects. –MG
Remembrance of bad stadiums past
Putting RFK Jr. itself aside, let’s pour one out for Northwest Stadium (once known as FedEx Field, or Jack Kent Cooke Stadium if you’re an oldhead). The Landover area already has one massive crater where a large-scale project once lived. In 2030, it will have another. As if last year’s closure of Six Flags America in Bowie was not enough, Prince George’s County once again will be left holding the bag.
Beyond the myriad problems a new stadium poses for DC, the Commanders’ decision to relocate adds Northwest Stadium to a growing list of Prince George’s County economic development tragedies. Let’s not repeat this one as farce. Maybe everybody could use a timeout to read City Power.–MC
My biggest gripe with the whole RFK stadium deal is that, there was never even a chance or a question over what it could be. No open RFP for planners or developers to dream up alternatives. It was always and only the stadium. Our posts detail the problems with this deal. It’s a terrible deal. We could have, and should have had, so much more, if only Mayor Bowser and the DC Council decided to ask.
My second grievance is that, in spite of a stadium deal, I thought we could at least get that infill Metro station to support more people not driving into games and mitigating game day traffic. But we can’t pay for it. Can the billionaire owner of the Washington football team pay for it since we paid for his stadium? This fits under “key amenities to serve current and future resident needs” and should be part of the RFK master plan.
The goal should have been: “How do we solve our housing and transportation problems with this site?”, rather than “How do we shoehorn housing and transportation alongside this enormous stadium?” –TC
OK, fine, you’re building a stadium. Does it have to be so bad? It claims that it will be transit-first. It’s lying. Lying to us and itself. My main gripe is that it claims to be “transit-first”. If that were really the case, there would be more than just a mention of WMATA’s proposed plan for a multi-modal transit center. The plan is not enough to support what’s slated to come in for stadium events, and it’s not enough to build multi-modal connections to the rest of the city. Nothing about this plan says to me that people will be discouraged from driving here.
We can count on our neighborhood streets clogged with traffic, absolutely making walking, biking more difficult and you can certainly count on an increase in car crashes. –SL(Cap Hill resident, with a family who frequently bikes and walks to the RFK Fields and Maloof Skatepark.)
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