The Reflecting Pool with its gray basin in 2006. (Image: Hu Totya, Sept. 18, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
By Cara Ianuale
Since the start of the President’s second term, the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to “beautify” the federal landscape.[1] Many of its undertakings have been met with legal challenges:
- last December, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit to stop construction on the White House State Ballroom.
- In February, a group of military veterans and a historic preservationist sued the administration over a proposed triumphal arch dubbed “Arc de Trump.”
- In March, eight cultural and architectural groups filed a suit against the administration for unauthorized renovations to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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