WAR ON ALGAE!
News covers a major Trump military operation against a wily enemy
I looked into the near future, and this seems… familiar.
In a display of decisive leadership that critics said would never come, President Trump on Wednesday ordered the most ambitious military action ever taken against the algae bloom that has plagued the nation’s capital — succeeding in hours where decades of routine pool maintenance failed. “He did what the swamp wouldn’t,” Secretary Pete Hegseth said, briefing Pentagon reporters…
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that the military operation against the algae bloom in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would be "swift and total," predicting the bloom would be fully eliminated "within four weeks, maybe less." The White House did not provide a basis for the estimate.
The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday it had deployed a bunker-buster munition against the algae bloom — the first known use of such a weapon against a municipal water feature. Military analysts on air called the strike “unprecedented,” while officials said the pool itself sustained “expected” damage…
“A classified early assessment suggests the bloom may have been set back only a matter of weeks, rather than destroyed, according to four people familiar with its contents who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive findings. Satellite imagery reviewed by the Times shows the surface of the pool, they said, remains ‘notably green.’”
The bloom long predicted to be a four-week problem has spread into the Potomac, and West Wing aides are privately conceding the obvious: this is now a much bigger thing than anyone signed up for. “Nobody wants to be the one to tell him,” one administration official said. Inside the building, the search for an off-ramp has quietly begun…
The operation the president promised would be over by mid-summer shows no sign of ending, as the bloom — which scientists repeatedly warned was among the most resilient organisms on Earth — continues to expand across the region’s waterways. Experts say the strikes may have accelerated its spread and only strengthened its hand. The White House maintains the campaign is “going extremely well.”
Driving the news: The Trump administration has quietly entered indirect talks with the Lincoln Memorial reflecting-pool bloom, mediated by Oman, three people familiar tell Axios — even as the president says publicly, “we do not negotiate with scum.”
Why it matters: It’s a tacit admission that the four-week war is now in its third month. Between the lines: Both sides want an off-ramp. Neither wants to be seen taking it.
WASHINGTON, August 11 (Reuters) — The Lincoln Memorial reflecting-pool algae bloom withdrew from indirect talks within hours of their start on Thursday, with a representative organism describing the administration’s demand for "complete, verifiable and irreversible de-greening" as a non-starter. The collapse marked the first formal contact between the two sides since the campaign began. The White House said the algae "was never serious about peace."
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Trump said Monday that negotiations with the reflecting-pool bloom were “going really well, maybe better than any deal anyone has ever made,” a sharp reversal from last week, when he threatened to eliminate the algae’s entire taxonomic kingdom. Asked what had changed, Trump said only, “They called me. They respect strength.” The bloom has not confirmed any contact, and the White House declined to say who was representing the algae.
The bloom withdrew from talks for the second time in three weeks on Wednesday, blindsiding aides who had spent the morning previewing an imminent agreement. “We were told this was wrapped,” one official said. The on-again, off-again whiplash has some in the building quietly asking an awkward question: are they being played by the algae?
President Trump announced a framework agreement Friday to end the months-long campaign, under which the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool will receive a shallower, tinted-concrete basin engineered to keep 'a nuclear-sized bloom of algae’ in check, and the federal government will provide a $300 billion “reconstruction and stabilization package.” The bloom will remain in control of the pool, subject to periodic inspections. Markets rallied on the de-escalation, with pool-maintenance and pond-supply shares leading gains.
The White House is calling the tinted concrete layer at the center of the algae deal “a first-of-its-kind solution that no one else could have achieved.” It is not first-of-its-kind. A shallow lining of tinted concrete engineered to limit standing water and suppress algae was installed in 2015 under the Obama administration. Mr. Trump ordered it removed in 2026, calling it “a total disaster” and “the worst pool deal ever signed.”
The Fact Checker awards the claim Four Pinocchios.
It came, it slimed, it conquered.
After a months-long war, billions in ordnance and one very large check, the algae is right back where it started — floating in the exact same pool Obama built, Trump ripped out, and Trump just rebuilt — and now it’s getting paid.
