Trump Doubles Down

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Over the past few days, the president has continued his crusade against one of the supposed vandals of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool. In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Sunday, he alleged that “a National Park Service career employee, a highly credible witness,” had caught the former Olympic canoeist David Hearn in the act of “ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating.”

The problem is that the Department of Justice’s case against Hearn is already effectively over. More than a week earlier, federal prosecutors dropped the charges against him, citing information from the Department of the Interior; the damage to the Reflecting Pool was “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” the government’s motion to dismiss reads. That evidence—and the judgment of DOJ—has done little to stop Donald Trump from pursuing this debunked theory over and over again. In recent weeks, the president has repeatedly returned to the same few vendettas and personal obsessions, trying to push them forward no matter the evidence against them. His strategy is summed up by a self-assessment that he gave CNN more than a decade ago: “I am the most fabulous whiner,” he said. “I keep whining and whining until I win.”

Today, The Wall Street Journal reported that White House officials have asked the Justice Department to consider prosecuting Hearn a second time. By doubling down on his vandalism thesis, Trump is sending a strong message to one of his most ardent supporters, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, whom he already castigated last week for dropping the charges. “I guess she choked,” he told reporters at the time.

The rulings of the Supreme Court don’t seem to sway the president either. On Thursday, he doubled down on another mission of personal importance—limiting birthright citizenship—despite the Court’s recent decision to strike down a previous executive order on the subject. Trump has now issued two new orders that are narrower in scope. One seeks to expand the category of children whom the government can deny automatic citizenship, and the other targets “birth tourism,” a phenomenon in which people travel to the United States “for the purpose of giving birth on American soil”—something that the law already prohibits. These new attempts to upend more than a century of precedent are likely to face significant legal challenges. This tactic wasn’t Trump’s only option: Drawing on Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s June opinion, the president could potentially urge Congress to amend a particular statute or enact new legislation to limit birthright citizenship (although this legislation would be unlikely to pass). Instead, he chose to use the same tool in the hope of getting a different result.

Trump is also forging ahead on his attempts to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Nearly a year ago, the president tried to fire her over allegations of mortgage fraud. In June, the Court ruled that she couldn’t be fired, in part because the White House hadn’t given her a chance to contest the allegations. Last week, Trump’s longtime aide Dan Scavino sent Cook a letter warning her that she may still be removed and telling her in no uncertain terms that “this is your opportunity to respond.” In this case, Trump appears to be cooperating with the Court, although it’s uncertain whether this procedure will be enough to satisfy it. The note makes clear that the president isn’t letting up in his quest to oust Cook.

Trump’s tenacity in pursuing his own agenda is nothing new. Take, for example, his eight-year attempt to brand former FBI Director James Comey as a criminal, despite a lack of evidence; when, in the fall, the first set of charges against him didn’t stick, Trump’s Justice Department simply tried again. As David A. Graham wrote in his story last week about the birthright-citizenship orders, the president’s recent actions invoke a kind of déjà vu. The commitment to doubling down has become a one-size-fits-all strategy: Trump’s desire to fight back doesn’t necessarily correlate with the odds of victory in a given situation. My colleague Tom Nichols recently noted that the president’s push to prosecute Hearn has only emphasized “just how immune to evidence and logic his beliefs have become.” Trump’s fixation on the Reflecting Pool is also directing his focus away from the issues that midterm voters care about most, such as affordability.

Meanwhile, new setbacks are arriving all the time. On Friday, after an appeals court upheld the block on Trump’s attempts to build a new ballroom for the White House, the president promised to make his case to the Supreme Court. That fight, like so many others, is not over until Trump says it is.

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Today’s News

President Trump secretly switched from a presidential aircraft to an alternate military jet in Turkey after last month’s NATO summit in response to an Iranian threat, according to a U.S. official. The White House has not provided details about the threat or the security operation.
Russia released the Marine Robert Gilman, who had been imprisoned since 2022, after President Vladimir Putin granted him a pardon on humanitarian grounds, according to U.S. officials. Trump said that no prisoner exchange took place. Gilman, who has reportedly been in poor health, is returning to the United States for medical treatment, according to the state department.
Voters are casting ballots today in primary elections across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, and Connecticut, and South Carolina Republicans are choosing a nominee for a special Senate election following the death of Senator Lindsey Graham. Alabama is also holding delayed U.S. House primaries under a new congressional map.

Evening Read

Photograph by Haruka Sakaguchi for The Atlantic. Source: Courtesy of the Dowdell family.

The Man Who Refused to Sit on the Sidelines

By Sally Jenkins

To a firefighter who is inside one, a fire creates as much darkness as heat. Flames start bright but throw off smoke that can swathe everything in pitch black. Lieutenant Kevin Dowdell did not fight fires so much as he groped through and problem-solved them, relying on half-blind judgment and expertise—and his fellow firefighters to keep flaming debris off his back.

At the cindering end of a successful 24-hour shift with the New York City Fire Department, Kevin would hang up his helmet, so ash-rubbed that it looked salty, and drive home to his wife and two sons in Rockaway Beach, Queens. “Oh, we had a good job last night,” he’d say, elated as well as exhausted. By “good,” his family knew, he meant the fire had been big.

Read the full article.