1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

You need to investigate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool contracts and demand accountability for what looks like textbook pay-to-play corruption. The Trump administration awarded a $14.7 million no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a company with prior ties to Trump's private properties, then handed another $1.7 million slice to Green Water Solutions — a firm owned by John J. Cafaro, a West Palm Beach neighbor of Trump's who donated $250,000 to the Trump Victory committee in 2020. Cafaro has a criminal record that includes an attempted bribery conviction. This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern. The project was a predictable disaster. The blue polymer coating absorbed heat, accelerated algae growth, and peeled off within two weeks of Trump's June 6 victory lap. Crews had to pump slimy water into the DC sewer system. Rather than own the failure, Trump posted about it 29 times on Truth Social and invented a story about vandals cutting a 350-foot gash in the liner — a claim The Washington Post could not verify. Sixteen million dollars of public money, spent on a vanity project, handed to political donors, and now buried under a cover story that doesn't hold up. The New York Times has already reported this as part of a broader pattern of bypassing competitive contracting to reward preferred vendors. Congress has oversight authority here. Use it.