A nonprofit filed suit Monday seeking to halt 
Donald Trump's $13.1m renovation of the 
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a project the president had initially put at $2m. The Cultural Landscape Foundation, in its filing summarised by the BBC, asked a federal judge to stop work that began last week and said the no-bid contract bypasses federal competition rules and that Trump ignored laws limiting changes to historical landmarks. "Every day that the resurfacing continues, the historic character of the Reflecting Pool is being further and fundamentally altered," the filing said.
Federal records show the project, awarded by the Department of the Interior to a Virginia firm called Atlantic Industrial Coatings under an exemption meant for emergency situations, has grown from an initial $6.9m to $13.1m, the BBC reported. The pool, which stretches 2,030 feet between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, last underwent a $34m renovation between 2010 and 2012 under 
Barack Obama. Leaks and algae blooms returned afterwards.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that "for the first time since 1922 [the reflecting pool is] going to work properly," and sought to distance himself from the contract terms while maintaining that the work would fix leaks. The new contract sets a completion date of 22 May, ahead of America's semiquincentennial celebrations on 4 July. A separate BBC dispatch from Washington collected reactions from visitors, several of whom told the network the pool "is not a swimming pool" and questioned the spending.
Figures referenced: Donald Trump, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama. — JudgeMarket.
