Good morning, it's Sunday, August 2. Federal prosecutors dropped the felony case against a former Olympian accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool — then the president attacked them for it.
Also in today's issue: Medicaid's first work-rule casualties, Navy can't defend both fronts, Trump donor offshores to China.
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A Felony Without a Crime
Friday evening, federal prosecutors quietly asked a judge to throw out a felony charge they once called airtight. By Saturday afternoon, the president who made the charge possible was publicly attacking the prosecutor who dropped it.
David Hearn, a 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist from Bethesda, Maryland, was arrested in June after he touched a piece of blue coating peeling off the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He spent five hours in handcuffs. He was charged with felony destruction of government property — up to 10 years in prison.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. — a Trump appointee and longtime ally — accused Hearn of "forcefully and violently" ripping up the liner and said prosecutors had "tremendous evidence."
Here's what that prosecution was built on. This renovation — which Trump originally said would cost under $2 million — has now cost taxpayers more than $16 million through no-bid contracts. The contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, had no prior federal construction experience and charged roughly double the typical profit margin for government work. The pool began peeling almost immediately.
On Friday, Pirro's office filed a motion to dismiss. Interior Department documents — provided after the indictment — showed the damage was "the result of flawed installation by the contractor" and a rush to finish before the July Fourth celebrations. A visual inspection found damage throughout the pool, including in the center — where no vandal would have reached. The filing concluded it was now "difficult to attribute the widespread damage to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt."
That's the government's own conclusion. And then came Saturday.
Trump publicly rebuked his own appointee. "I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro," he wrote on Truth Social. "I don't know what she was thinking?" He insisted the damage was "a pure case of vandalism" — without providing new evidence. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum backed Trump's claim, directly contradicting Pirro's findings.
Now look — let's be clear about what this means. The government charged a citizen with a felony. The government's own prosecutor reviewed the evidence and dropped the charge. And the president attacked her for following where the facts led. That's not a policy disagreement. That's pressure on the justice system to reach a preferred conclusion rather than a correct one.
Hearn's attorneys — including Norm Eisen of the Democracy Defenders Fund — called the prosecution "an abuse of government power" and said the government owes him an apology.
What happens next is worth watching. Pirro's willingness to follow the evidence — against the president's stated wishes — is one of the more notable moments of institutional independence from a Trump appointee this year. Whether she faces consequences will tell us how much room remains for honest prosecution in this Justice Department. Three other people were also arrested in connection with the pool. Their cases remain open. And taxpayers are still paying for a project that was failing before anyone touched it.
In other news that matters
Nebraska strips Medicaid from roughly 200 residents who failed to meet new work requirements — becoming the first state to enforce rules created by Trump's budget law, eight months before the federal deadline of January 2027. Under the new rules, about 20 million people in 44 states must work or volunteer 80 hours a month to keep coverage. National estimates of how many people could lose their health insurance range from 3 million to 8.6 million by 2028. When Arkansas tried a similar pilot program, research found the policy did not increase employment — many who lost coverage were simply unaware of the rules or couldn't navigate the paperwork. Nebraska's early launch looks less like readiness and more like eagerness to test a policy that has failed every time it's been tried.
Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command, warned the Pentagon in a written notice this week that without another Navy destroyer, he would be forced to choose between defending the U.S. homeland and continuing missile defense for Israel. A CSIS analysis estimates the U.S. has burned through roughly 65% of its Patriot missile interceptors since the Iran war began in February — from about 2,330 down to fewer than 830. On Friday, the White House signaled plans for renewed strikes on Iranian energy targets; Trump cancelled them Saturday night, claiming Iran had asked to negotiate. Meanwhile, diesel prices in the second quarter jumped 51% above January levels, and truckload shipping costs hit a four-year high. An AP-NORC poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans say the war is not worth fighting — including 37% of Republicans.
The last U.S. brass instrument factory in Eastlake, Ohio, closed June 30 after 61 years, sending 150 UAW jobs overseas to China. The Washington Post published a feature on the closure Friday. The plant is owned by Steinway Musical Instruments, controlled by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson — who raised $50.5 million for Trump's 2024 campaign and told CNBC that tariffs were "well-founded" because "we can't have American producers closing American factories and offshoring." UAW Local 2359 president Robert Hines called the decision "a slap in our face." Congressional Democrats wrote to the Commerce and Labor secretaries in April asking what the administration planned to do — they received no response. The factory closed while the president was publicly declaring a "manufacturing renaissance."
P.S. Should Trump apologize to David Hearn? Hit Reply — one word is enough.
