America is turning 250, and for the first time in years, its capital is starting to look the part.
Political insider Ken Farnaso has lived in Washington for 13 years. In that time, he never once saw a certain D.C. fountain turned on. Last week, he watched it run for the first time.
“Honestly, I don’t think many Washingtonians thought it would ever come back. … It’s more beautiful than I expected,” he wrote on X.
‘D.C. is looking beautiful. The fountains are almost all open.’
The transformation extends well beyond one fountain.
In July 2024, the phrase “HAMAS IS COMIN” was spray-painted onto the Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain during large-scale demonstrations in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. The perpetrator later pled guilty to misdemeanor destruction of government property.
The U.S. Department of the Interior noted on X that the Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain “has been dry since before the first iPhone launched,” but today, that same fountain is gleaming white stone again.
The White House official account has been making the before-and-after contrast explicit, posting side-by-side images of Columbus Circle by Union Station — once graffiti-covered, pristine today — captioned simply: “Decline is a choice.”
Since January, a quiet but visible transformation has been under way in D.C.’s public spaces — dried-up fountains restored, graffiti-tagged monuments scrubbed clean, parks that had grown shabby suddenly tended again.
The scope stretches across the city: Lafayette Square, Freedom Plaza, Meridian Hill Park, and six other historic fountains that had gone dark are being brought back to life, while nine more — including the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial — are receiving mechanical upgrades.
At a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Trump touted the results. “D.C. is looking beautiful. The fountains are almost all open,” he said.
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Meridian Hill ParkBlaze News
Not everyone is cheering. Critics have zeroed in on the funding source: At least $60 million in National Park Service entrance fees — collected from visitors at parks across the country — is being channeled toward D.C. projects.
Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called them “Trump’s vanity projects and the stuff that he can see from his golden throne off the Lincoln Bedroom,” arguing that crumbling infrastructure elsewhere in the park system should take priority.
The $60 million, however, comes not from the National Park Service’s main budget, but from a separate self-funded pool — entrance fees that, by law, the agency can redirect at its discretion to sites that don’t collect their own fees, like the National Mall.
That congressional budget, meanwhile, is hardly starved: Congress appropriated $3.27 billion for the National Park Service in fiscal year 2026 — 54% more than the Trump administration itself requested.
The Department of the Interior pushed back on the criticism directly, saying D.C. residents are “experiencing working fountains across the district for the first time in decades, all thanks to President Donald J. Trump” and that the agency has been addressing deferred maintenance “throughout the country.”
An additional $13.1 million is going toward the National Mall Reflecting Pool — a project that has drawn scrutiny of its own. Trump awarded a no-bid contract to a Virginia firm, and costs have ballooned from the original $1.8 million estimate to $13.1 million. Historic preservationists have filed suit, alleging that the blue coating being applied is “altering the historic character” of the pool without proper review.
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Columbus CircleBlaze News
When Blaze News visited the newly restored fountains, not everyone in the crowd was a Trump supporter — but that didn’t seem to matter much. One D.C. resident said he hadn’t voted for Trump but that the restored fountains were a welcome sight regardless. “It’s the small things,” he said. “D.C. is my home, and it’s nice to have them back.”
A longtime Washingtonian nearby didn’t need much more than a look around. “I haven’t seen it like this for years,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day out.”
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