Top Oversight Dem demands info from Reflecting Pool contractors overseeing renovation
A U.S. Army National Guard troop stands watch at the Lincoln Memorial on June 08, 2026, in Washington, DC. Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been partially re-filled after the bottom of it was repainted as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to repair Washington landmarks in for preparation the country’s 250th birthday this summer. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee sent letters Wednesday to the contractors overseeing the renovation at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, requesting information such as contracts and water quality records.
The Reflecting Pool has been plagued with algae and peeling paint in the days since the Trump administration completed its renovation, which cost taxpayers more than $16 million.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., sent separate letters to the company hired to paint the reflecting pool and the company hired to remove the algae that later appeared in the pool.
“Donald Trump’s disastrous renovation of our national reflecting pool is his latest failed vanity project,” Garcia said in a statement. “The President should be focused on making life more affordable for the American people, not rewarding his loyalists with government contracts and wasting taxpayer money on failing projects. We’re demanding answers straight from the contractors about the project’s failures.”
The ranking member requested information by July 8, 2026, including the scope of the work, contract performance standards, communications with the National Park Service and amounts invoiced or paid.
Democrats, who are in the minority, do not have subpoena power to compel these contractors to hand over information or even respond.
Trump said this week the Reflecting Pool will be drained again for “permanent repair” around the Fourth of July and said that six people have now been arrested for alleged damage to the site. No charges had been filed in the alleged arrests.
The Interior Department and the U.S. Park Police have not responded to multiple outreaches for evidence of the alleged vandalism.
U.S. President Donald Trump dances on stage after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center on February 22, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Conservatives from across the country will descend on Texas this week for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the largest gatherings for Republicans in the year.
But the yearly gathering comes during a fraught time for the party as the ongoing war with Iran has split some of President Donald Trump’s MAGA followers.
And for the first time in nearly a decade, Trump will not attend the event. A White House official told ABC News that Trump could not attend due to his schedule and the ongoing conflict in Iran.
Vice President JD Vance, who spoke at the gathering last year, is also not listed as a speaker.
Since the war began in February, notable Trump allies have publicly broken from him over the conflict. Most recently, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent resigned over his opposition to the war, making him the highest-profile administration official to step down over the issue.
Other MAGA allies, such as Tucker Carlson and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, have spoken out against the war.
Bannon, who will speak at CPAC, said on his “War Room” podcast this month that if the war becomes “a hard slog,” it could cost the GOP voters before November’s midterm elections.
“We’re going to bleed support,” Bannon said at the time.
In an interview with Piers Morgan earlier this month, Carlson said the Iran war was a “betrayal” to Trump’s supporters.
“Breaking faith with those people, those voters, the ones who actually got Trump elected and whose coalition promised a new day in American politics, that’s a big deal. It’s a betrayal on the level that I don’t think people who aren’t in those groups can understand, like, this is heartbreak. This is heartbreaking,” Carlson said.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is widely seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate and has been supportive of the war, is also scheduled to speak at the gathering.
A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday found that a little more than half — 54% — of voters oppose the U.S. military action in Iran, while 39% support it.
But 86% of Republicans overall support Trump’s military action while 92% of Democrats and 64% of independents oppose it, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
CPAC occurs this year as the midterm primaries are underway and comes ahead of the bitter Texas Senate Republican primary runoff between Sen. John Cornyn, who has held his seat since 2002, and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, which Trump hasn’t yet made an endorsement in.
Paxton is slated to address Friday’s Ronald Reagan Dinner, while Cornyn is not scheduled to speak.
Other notable GOP candidates attending the event include former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, who’s running for retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis’ seat in North Carolina, and businessman Nate Morris, who is running for retiring Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s seat in Kentucky.
Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at Networth and Chill podcast at the Vox Media Podcast Stage at SXSW on March 15, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Vox Media)
(CALIFORNIA) — As he gears up for a possible presidential bid, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed a national “billionaires’ tax,” — a day after the state wealth tax measure he opposes qualified for the November ballot.
Newsom’s counter proposal calls for a federal minimum tax rate on Americans worth more than $100 million, rather than a state level one-time 5% wealth tax that the governor argues could be dodged by billionaires who could leave the state for another.
Newsom, who said earlier this month that he is “considering running for president,” said the country should return to pre-2017 corporate tax rates and close offshore loopholes that allow multinationals to shift profits and pay less in taxes. He also said inheritance rules need to be rewritten.
“Over the next twenty years, this country will live through the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history, with roughly $124 trillion changing hands. If we do not act, that transfer of wealth among the ultra-wealthy will lock in a permanent American aristocracy of inherited wealth,” Newsom wrote in a Substack post announcing the proposal on Friday morning.
The announcement comes a day after California’s own billionaire tax qualified for the November ballot, having collected more than double the signatures needed. The measure, a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth introduced by healthcare workers union SEIU-UHW, in response to steep healthcare funding cuts resulting from President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” has faced opposition from Newsom, California Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra and major lobbying organizations.
“We can’t let a single advocacy organization, however well-intentioned, write the state’s tax code on its own terms,” Newsom wrote, calling out the SEIU-UHW.
The measure has also led to heavy spending from billionaires, who oppose the tax. The nonprofit, Building a Better California, which supports committees promoting two competing ballot initiatives that would nullify the billionaire tax initiative, if passed, has raised more $118 million — and $80 million of that comes from Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Newsom says that he understands the “anxiety driving the wealth tax proposal in California,” but that he’s voting no on the California proposal, because he argues the measure dedicates almost all of the revenue to just state-funded healthcare services.
SEIU-UHW Vice President Debru Carthan said Thursday that the coalition supporting the tax would not back down.
“The billionaire tax will be on the November ballot,” said Carthan. “And we intend to win.”
About 250 billionaires would be taxed under the California measure, and the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says it’s likely that some billionaires would leave the state.
“You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do,” Newsom writes. “Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”
Dan Schnur, a political science professor at UC Berkeley, called Newsom’s tax proposal “savvy political positioning” as it helps him enter the 2028 field without being seen as an opponent to taxing the rich.
“He’s not against taxing billionaires, he just has a different way of doing it,” Schnur said. “He now has an answer for progressive Democrats, whether in California or in early primary states, as to why he didn’t support the ballot measure.”
In Washington, another 2028 contender, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, joined Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — both of whom supported the California’s initiative — in introducing legislation that would establish an annual 5% wealth tax on billionaires nationwide.
Newsom is also proposing a national public equity fund, giving Americans a stake in economic gains generated by artificial intelligence companies. The fund — aimed at workers left behind by automation — would support universal child care, free higher education, career training and healthcare.
“Part of this fund could provide a real transition for the laid-off factory worker in Ohio or the 25-year-old coder in San Francisco who sent out a thousand resumes and got zero callbacks,” Newsom wrote. “This could include significant severance and portable benefits while we support them through the transition and into new jobs with programs like enhanced employment insurance.”
“As artificial intelligence reshapes the country, every American should own a piece of the future it builds,” Newsom wrote.
Other potential 2028 contenders are also beginning to stake out their positions on AI. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has introduced legislation proposing a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction, which would create a temporary prohibition on the construction and expansion of data centers until Congress passes legislation to address the economic, environmental and safety impacts of artificial intelligence.
Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz makes a speech during the ’10th Austrian World Summit’ climate conference at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2026. (Salih Okuroglu/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Monday tossed out multiple Justice Department subpoenas to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other officials tied to a federal investigation regarding the state’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, according to a newly published legal opinion.
Patrick Schiltz, chief judge of the Minnesota federal district court, found that the subpoenas were “part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials” to aid the Trump administration in supporting federal immigration activities that “played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries.”
“The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate,” Schiltz wrote in his order released Monday.
The subpoenas, which were issued on Jan. 20 against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration surge in Minnesota that drew widespread protests, sought an expansive amount of information from Walz and others including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and Board of Commissioners.
In his opinion quashing the subpoenas, Schiltz lambasted the government for their “extraordinarily broad” request examining materials “that largely if not entirely relate to constitutionally protected conduct.” It’s almost unheard of for federal judges to quash criminal subpoenas from Justice Department prosecutors.
“The Department has launched a significant incursion into matters that the Constitution reserves to sovereign states, and one would expect that the Department would not have done so unless it was aware of compelling evidence of criminal or at least suspicious behavior,” Schiltz said.
Pointing to a series of statements from President Donald Trump, including social media posts previewing a “DAY OF RECKONING AND RETRIBUTION” was coming for Minnesota — followed by a leak just three days later of a purported federal investigation in Walz and Frey — Schiltz said there was a clear pattern established of the government using its powers purely to punish Trump’s adversaries for their refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
justify the subpoenas, which he said had such a remote connection to potential criminal conduct “as to be spurious.”
“The Department suggests that requiring city officials to report known ICE activity to the City Council could result in the dissemination of that information-and that dissemination of that information could, in turn, result in other individuals evading or interfering with future ICE activity,” Schiltz wrote. “This reasoning piles speculation upon speculation, while also taking aim at perfectly legal-indeed, constitutionally protected-behavior. As a general matter, any citizen who happens across law-enforcement activity has a constitutional right to observe it, to record it, and to mention it to anyone they’d like-including members of the Minneapolis City Council.”
The order follows a similar move by the chief district judge in Washington, D.C., in March that quashed subpoenas tied to the DOJ’s investigation of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, after Judge James Boasberg determined the probe was based on no clear evidence and appeared purely rooted in Trump’s animus towards Powell.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the rule of law and our democracy. A federal district judge found that the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into me and other Minnesota elected officials was politically motivated, unconstitutional, and meritless,” Walz said in a statement.
“The U.S. Justice Department is pursuing criminal investigations into the President’s political opponents,” Walz said. “This case was just one example of that, but we are seeing daily reminders of this administration’s lawlessness — in Minnesota and around the country. We all must continue to seek justice and uphold the rule of law.”
Frey, in his own statement, said that “criticism of our government is not a crime.”
“One of the defining strengths of our democracy is the ability to challenge those in power without fear of retribution,” Frey wrote. “Elected officials have both the right and the responsibility to speak honestly about how government decisions affect the people they serve.”
In a statement responding to the ruling, a DOJ spokesperson did not say whether the Justice Department plans to appeal Schiltz’s order.
“The department takes the unlawful obstruction of federal law enforcement operations extremely seriously and will continue to act in full compliance with the law to investigate these matters,” the spokesperson said.
