U.S. President Donald Trump salutes, during the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
President Donald Trump is spending far more on his various pet projects around Washington DC than you might think.
“At least $60 million from a National Park Service (NPS) entrance fee fund is going toward Washington, D.C.-based projects as President Trump seeks to ‘beautify’ the city ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary, contracts reveal,” reported The Hill’s Rachel Frazin on Wednesday. “This program receives funding from visitor entrance fees. At least 80 percent of entrance fees go to the park where they are collected, while the other 20 percent can be used at other Park Service locations.”
Identifying the story as originating from The New York Times, Frazin pointed out that the $60 million in contracts is coming from the NPS recreation program with an additional $13 million going toward Trump’s renovations on the National Mall Reflecting Pool. That last allocation, however, is not listed in the federal database of NPS projects, raising questions about how it is being funded. All that is known for sure is that $7 million is coming from park fees.
“D.C. is looking beautiful,” Trump recently said about his construction projects. “The fountains are almost all open.”
Experts disagree with Trump’s evaluation.
“We know that there are there are walls crumbling in parks out there, so it’s not that fountains aren’t deserving, but when it’s a true triage situation, because Congress has not funded our parks, it’s harder to argue that we should be turning fountains on when there are really severe maintenance needs all across the park system,” Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss told The Hill. He also described Trump’s initiatives as “vanity projects and the stuff that he can see from his golden throne off the Lincoln Bedroom.”
Trump’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovations have raised particular ire because of the seeming incompetence involved in their execution. Although the president initially claimed that he had previously worked with the company he hired, he later denied all such associations.
“President Trump previously said he had personally chosen the contractor to fix the Reflecting Pool, because of the good work they did on his golf club's swimming pools,” The New York Times’ David A. Farenthold posted on X. “Now, Trump says does not know them.”
Farenthold and his colleague Maxine Joselow reported earlier in May that documents also seem to contradict Trump’s rosy projections about when the project would be completed.
“The documents say both issues were being addressed, but they raise the possibility that the work may not be finished by the government’s deadline of May 22,” Farenthold and Joselow wrote. “That would be an ironic turn of events, given that federal bidding laws were skirted because the government had argued there was an urgent need — to have it ready for the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations.”