Lifestyle
After D.C.’s Reflecting Pool gets repainted, visitors ask: What changed?
Workers refill the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Friday, after a weeks-long project to resurface and repaint the basin.
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Rahmat Gul/AP
WASHINGTON — Water is flowing back into the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, after a controversial painting job kept it closed for weeks. And to many onlookers, it doesn’t look much different.
“The pool gets completed at 4 o’clock and the water will start to flow in … and it’s going to be beautiful,” President Trump told reporters in the Oval office on Wednesday.
The next day, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum shared a video of water bubbling up through a grate on the freshly-darkened pool floor. Trump had the pool’s surface darkened to a shade he calls “American flag blue.” For the last century, he’s said, the pool was “just gray … the color of concrete and stone.”
By Friday morning, the 2,028 foot-long shallow pool had collected a stripe of water down the middle, just wide enough to reflect the Washington Monument across from it. The refilling continued under the bright sun, as one worker stood in the middle of the pool, with his pants rolled up above his knees, wielding a hose.
As the temperature neared 90 degrees, tourists, cyclists and joggers paused at the top of the nearby steps to snap photos and observe the process. Many welcomed the return of the water — and the ducks that play in it — but said they couldn’t immediately tell a difference in the color.
“The more water it fills, the more similar it looks [to before],” said Luisa Córdoba, a D.C. resident and avid runner who says she’s been coming to check on the pool every day since work started. “I’m just happy it’s not that bright blue that we saw the first days, which was so alarming … if it stays like this, it’s fine.”
Early renderings — as well as preliminary coats of paint when the project started in late April — had critics worried the historic landmark would end up looking more like a swimming pool. But Friday’s observers didn’t find that to be the case.
“I’m colorblind, so it doesn’t look blue — yet,” said Terry Barzanti, a Maryland resident who works nearby.
“I’m not colorblind and it doesn’t look blue,” laughed his coworker Edgar Sadsad, who found it more grey.
Other passersby described it as closer to black, and said the difference might be more noticeable once the pool is fully refilled. Even so, Sadsad and Barzanti were among those who praised the project, saying the pool already looked cleaner and more appealing.
Trump has for months complained about the state of the pool, saying he made it a priority after an unnamed friend visiting from Germany called it “filthy” and “not representative of the country,” according to the president.
The pool, which first opened in 1923, last underwent major renovations between 2010 and 2012. But it has continued to suffer from broken pipes and water leaks that merit costly refills, according to the Department of the Interior.
Trump has said this project sealed crevices in the stone to prevent leaks, and removed 12 truckloads of garbage from the pool, though it’s not clear that it addressed the broken pipes.
“It’ll last for 50 to 100 years before you have to do anything with it,” he said.
The reflecting pool, at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, previously reflected blue in certain conditions such as this day in November 2025.
Andrew Leyden/Getty Images
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Andrew Leyden/Getty Images
Questions remain about the project’s funding
The resurfacing took significantly longer than Trump’s initial estimate.
He said in late April that the project would be done in a week or two, though the Department of the Interior told NPR it would take closer to a month.
In mid-May, the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation sued the administration to stop work on the pool, saying it had bypassed federally required historic preservation reviews. A judge heard arguments later that month, but hadn’t made a decision by the time the administration informed the court on Wednesday that work had been completed.
The project also appears to cost more than Trump said it would.
He gave the price tag as $2 million, which he said, without specifics, was significantly less than he had been quoted previously. But Interior Department records obtained by The New York Times show the administration plans to pay $13.1 million to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the Virginia firm that Trump picked for the project.
“It’s kind of sad where our tax dollars are going. I mean, it was fine before, by my knowledge,” said Samantha Sorokin of Arlington, Va., who was taking her parents on a tour.
It’s not clear how much of the money is coming from taxpayers. A large sign affixed to the construction site fence, on National Park Service letterhead, informed visitors that “these improvements are being completed using your fee dollars.”
(The Washington Post reported this week that the Trump administration is diverting at least $90 million from national park entry fees to fund its July 4th fireworks display and other D.C. beautification projects.)
When asked for comment about the cost and where the money is coming from, the Department of the Interior — the park service’s parent agency — told NPR that it has “many funding sources available to spend on deferred maintenance.”
“Unlike Barack Obama who spent millions upon millions in taxpayer-funded Great Recession recovery aid that should have gone to struggling families, the Trump administration is looking at different funding mechanisms which include endowment funds and revenue brought in from the sale of park passes,” the unnamed spokesperson wrote over email.
The two-year renovation of the reflecting pool that ended in 2012 was funded by $34 million from an Obama-era economic stimulus package.
A sign outside the reflecting pool informs visitors that their national park fees helped fund the project.
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Rachel Treisman/NPR
Trump’s campaign to spruce up D.C.
Trump is hoping to make many changes to D.C., ranging from massive undertakings like his proposed triumphal arch (which got preliminary approval from a second federal agency this week) to smaller changes like installing new statues and restoring park fountains.
“We have many monuments and fountains all over Washington, and we’re just about completed with all of them,” he said Wednesday.
The Interior Department referred NPR to a White House post on X listing those accomplishments, which include “500 instances of graffiti removed,” “134 rat-resistant trash cans installed” and “250 truckloads of debris from ponds removed.”
Much of that work is being carried out by National Guard troops deployed to D.C., whose numbers are set to double ahead of the country’s 250th birthday celebrations on and around July 4th. That’s also the deadline — or at least impetus — for many of Trump’s renovation projects.
Maria Sorokin, who was visiting her daughter from Pennsylvania, is skeptical that the 250th anniversary warrants major changes like the reflecting pool resurfacing.
“It is a special anniversary and it should be spruced up, but I’m not sure if this was necessary,” she said, looking at the pool slowly refilling. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
But some area residents, like Barzanti, embrace the cleanup and beautification efforts.
“We walk down here for lunch breaks,” he said. “People come from all over the world to see our nation’s capital. So we should show it off, we should take care of it.”
Some changes are going over better than others.
Several locals at the reflecting pool, including Córdoba, mentioned that they were thrilled to see the fountains at Meridian Hill Park — a popular spot about 1.5 miles north of the White House — flowing with water for the first time in seven years.
Maryellen Thornton, who lives near the park, says the fountain restoration has been “amazing for the community,” describing the picnic blanket-packed grass “like nirvana.” It’s also one of the reasons she and her husband Brad Thornton came to see the reflecting pool.
“We’re just fascinated with how fabulous it is to have all of these water features being restored in the district,” she said. “It just brings so much happiness to everybody.”
Brad is also excited to see the return of water to the fountain outside Union Station, Washington’s major transport hub, and hopes the newly filled reflecting pool will build on that momentum.
“A little bit of spraying water goes a long way,” he said. “It shouldn’t be about politics. It’s just about enjoying it. We’re in the city. We need some green space.”
Here’s something American concertgoers might not know: before a musician from another country can take the stage in the U.S., someone has to file paperwork with the federal government on their behalf. And not just any paperwork — a petition, hundreds of pages long, stacked with press clippings, award documentation, testimonial letters from other artists, venue contracts, a detailed tour itinerary, and evidence that the artist is legitimately accomplished at what they do.
And that’s just to start the clock in a process that may take over a year to complete.
This is the reality for international artists — from musicians to painters, dancers to comedians — who want to come to the U.S. to share their work. It’s a complicated, expensive process that arts advocates say has long made the country a difficult place for foreign artists to access. But now, they say it’s gotten much worse.
The time it takes to process a visa has dramatically increased. The number of available interview slots at U.S. embassies is backlogged. Application costs have surged. And there’s an added layer of uncertainty: paperwork can be perfect, fees can be paid, and yet artists still can be turned away at the border.
For U.S. audiences, all of this means a quiet loss of global cultural exchange.
What does the artist visa process look like?
To illustrate the nonimmigrant visa process for artists, let’s take Kongero, a small, Swedish folk a cappella group that completed its second U.S. tour last fall.
First step: File a petition.
The group’s booking agent planned the tour and gathered all the necessary documentation to file a petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to demonstrate that the group qualified for a P-3 visa, the category for culturally unique artists.
Once USCIS approved the petition, each individual artist still needed to wait for a separate visa interview at a U.S. consulate in their country of residence.
Swedish Folk’appella group Kongoro, Anna Wikenius, left, Lotta Andersson, Sophia Hultqvist Kott and Emma Björling perform in Greensboro, Vt., in December 2023.
Danielle Devlin
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Danielle Devlin
According to several artists and attorneys, nonimmigrant visa processing had historically taken around two to four months, though processing time started to increase after a backlog built up during the pandemic, and then increased further after the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Visas can be withheld and reviewed again any time the federal government announces an immigration policy change, like a travel ban update, or revisions to the petition review policy, said Zelo Safi, a senior attorney with the Artistic Freedom Initiative. There have been several similar changes during the Trump Administration.
Right now, the average time to review a P visa petition like Kongero’s is 11 1/2 months. Processing for an O-1 visa petition — for individual artists of “extraordinary ability” — has grown to a little over a year. The problem is that the government won’t even accept petitions more than a year in advance for all O visas, which are temporary work visas for those with extraordinary ability or achievement.
According to one manager of a dance troupe from Spain, the process is “completely out of sync with how the arts industry works.” Like many artists and managers NPR reached out to, this dance troupe manager requested that NPR not use their name out of fear that there would be reprisals against their future visa applications. Others declined to be interviewed for the same reason.
A statement to NPR from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that the new procedures are due to “increasing threats to public safety and national security.” It continued, “Verifying identities and personal histories from various countries requires a rigorous process — one that prioritizes the safety of the American people over everything else.”
Step two: take out your wallets
If you can’t wait a year — and most artists can’t — you pay. Specifically, you pay $2,965 per petition for premium processing, another travel fee that has increased in recent months. According to immigration attorneys, paying that fee is essentially a mandatory step for artists if they want to make their scheduled tour dates.
Kongero paid it, and they still ran into trouble. The group was granted only two months of entry instead of the year they’d applied for, forcing them to cancel their planned 2026 summer, fall and winter appearances.
Matthew Covey, executive director of Tamizdat, a legal nonprofit that helps performing artists navigate U.S. visa processing, has watched his client numbers drop since premium processing effectively became mandatory. He says that they’re choosing not to come to the U.S., because for many, the cost of total travel expenses has become too great.
“The current situation is [that] a tour that would have been marginal and maybe break-even, even five years ago, is a losing-money project now,” he said.
Step three: the interview
Once USCIS approves a petition, each individual artist still needs to wait for and complete a separate visa interview at a U.S. consulate in their country of residence. It is the Department of State that issues visas if everything checks out. With current backlogs, an interview can take months to schedule, and they cannot be missed.
Group member Emma Björling missed the first week of a two-month U.S. tour after the Trump administration instituted a new, mandatory in-person interview requirement last September.
When the new requirement was announced, she was on tour with a different musical group in Canada. Now, because of the new policy, she first needed to fly all the way back to Sweden to do the interview, before returning to North America to do the U.S. tour.
The U.S. tour ended up running $8,000 in the red. Kongero won’t return to the U.S. in 2026.
“With all the additional fees and costs and troubles and stress … it’s not worth it, not financially, and not stress-wise and workload-wise,” Björling said.
In a statement, the Department of State said, “Under President Trump, the United States is unapologetic in implementing America First visa policies. We welcome the many foreign artists who follow the required procedures and meet all of the visa requirements under U.S. law.”
But if your paperwork is approved and your interview is completed, and your fees are paid, congratulations! You have a visa!
But does that mean you get to enter the country?
Maybe not.
Step four: get past the border
Once artists have their travel arrangements set, their petition approved and their passport stamped, one final hurdle awaits once they arrive in the U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have final authority at ports of entry — and arts organizations say the current climate has introduced a new level of unpredictability in how that authority gets used.
Comedian and theater-maker Alaa Shehada had come to the U.S. twice before to perform his one-man show, The Horse of Jenin, about growing up in the West Bank. He had a valid O-1B visa when he landed at John F. Kennedy Airport last November for another scheduled performance. But this time around, he says officers pulled him aside for additional questioning as soon as they saw his Palestinian Authority passport.
Alaa Shehada in The Horse of Jenin.
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Dario & Misja Photography
After hours of questioning, Shehada said he was handcuffed and transferred to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, where he described spending the night with other detainees in a cramped room on a concrete floor, shocked and confused.
He was placed on a return flight to his residence in Amsterdam the following morning — one day before his scheduled performance in Massachusetts. Neither he nor his producer received a clear explanation for why his visa was rejected. In a statement to NPR, CBP said Shehada was refused entry for “not being forthcoming with facts” during his interview with CBP officers.
“When an immigrant attempts to enter the U.S. without possessing an immigrant visa or is not forthcoming with facts during an interview, travelers may be subject to detention and refusal as statutes or visa terms may be violated,” the statement read. “A visa is a privilege, not a right, and only those who respect our laws and follow the proper procedures wil
l be welcomed.”
About a month later, the Trump administration issued an expansive travel ban that suspended visa issuance to individuals applying using any travel documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian Authority.
“Of course, it is scary to sit with people with power who can just kill your dreams as simple as that,” Shehada said, who had planned to tour additional U.S. and Canadian cities. “You feel how unfair and humiliating that is.”
Covey says there’s heightened scrutiny at U.S. ports of entry, but less consistency with how that scrutiny is applied. In a statement, CBP said, “Admissibility determinations are made on a case-by-case basis using law enforcement, national security, and immigration information available at the time of inspection. CBP officers have the authority to question travelers, conduct inspections, and determine admissibility consistent with U.S. law.”
Jennifer Roe, executive director of Folk Alliance International, which connects artists with presenters globally, says that this means there’s no room for even the smallest of mistakes.
“I know a lot of artists are fearful of coming into the U.S.,” she said. “They’re hearing stories of being asked random questions at the border and being sent home because they didn’t answer something correctly.”
Ripple effects
When an international artist cancels their tour, the effects ripple outward.
The presenters who were stops on Shehada’s upcoming visit had already begun marketing the show and selling tickets. The New York Theatre Workshop had built an entire festival around the show. Boom Arts, a small presenter in Portland, had rented a theater for Shehada’s live performance. While several of the presenters were able to switch to showing a filmed version of the show, Shehada’s tour producer Jenny Tibbels said the losses totaled tens of thousands of dollars.
Shehada’s performance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center had been planned for nearly a year before it was canceled at the last minute. Executive Director Jamilla Deria said the organization had been eager to share a story from a Palestinian artist with the community.
“In Western Massachusetts, where our communities are more rural, access to storytelling and the perspective of folks who are coming from parts of the world that you don’t have direct engagement with is not only lost for that night, but maybe lost for good,” she said.
Tracy Francis, a presenter with Boom Arts, said that recent travel bans and changes in immigration policy are forcing her to make difficult decisions about which international artists she can safely invite to share their art in person. She’s already shaped her next season around which countries’ artists are realistically likely to be allowed in.
“I was bringing more European artists for the first time next season, just because their visas are more likely to get approved,” she said. “I also was more careful about making sure that artists I am bringing are on a larger tour, so there’s more shared costs.”
Shehada said his experience traumatized him.
“This experience was so hard and deeply hurtful, so the idea of coming back becomes so hard,” he said. “I would love to go and meet the international audiences, the Americans. I have lots of people and friends in the U.S,, and of course, this is my mission as an artist. This is my approach to reach audiences, but with that experience, right now, I don’t feel like going back at all.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio. Danielle Scruggs edited the visuals.
My favorite memory of the 2026 World Cup happened last month. By the late morning of June 18 in Koreatown, hours ahead of the Mexico vs. South Korea group-stage match, it was apparent that the neighborhood would be unrecognizable by kickoff.
I had heard rumblings about the Korean Festival Foundation’s watch party, but once I found out it would take place at Seoul International Park, I was almost dissuaded entirely. Although it is the beloved destination of my dog’s morning walks, its insignificant size and awkward location just off Olympic Boulevard didn’t seem appropriate for such a coveted event. So, I went to scout it out beforehand — and I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. There were already about 100 to 200 fans in the park, about six hours before the first whistle; laughing, drinking, lending a hand to vendor setups.
My apartment is only about six-odd blocks from the park, but closer to the game, I noticed a gigantic wave of red, lavender and white jerseys already crashing toward the watch party. It took my roommates and me about 30 minutes to walk the half-mile at 4 p.m., squeezing past fervent fans to eke out a spot in front of one of the two humongous screens situated on either side of Irolo Street.
Unfortunately for us, all of the good vantage points were taken. A mass in front of both screens was impenetrable; smaller televisions hooked up to generators were already seized by 10 too many eyes; even the roofs surrounding the park were full of attendees much bolder and athletic than me. We settled on the soccer field in the park, where we could juggle a ball around a bit while watching the match on our phones (and thank you to my girlfriend’s dad for his Peacock subscription).
The first half onscreen was mostly uneventful, but off-screen, I was able to witness a sort of camaraderie seen rarely in sprawling Los Angeles. People were swarming vendors from eateries all around Koreatown, dance circles formed around speakers blasting banda music, and “oohs” and “ahhs” at every missed shot were in perfect sync. Then, it happened: a goal in the 50th minute by Luis Romo of the Mexican side. The park and its surroundings exploded into a collective cheer that tickled my rib cage and resonated deep in my ear canal to the point I had to cover my ears. I can hardly remember if I joined the chorus, or if the excitement was so heavy that I just felt like an equal part of it.
Seeing my neighborhood in this light will stick with me much longer than the 1-0 result, or the fact that neither of these teams (both of which I partially rooted for) made it far into the tournament. But these memories, I believe, are what the World Cup is really about.
So tell us about your most cherished memory of the 2026 World Cup in L.A. so far. And remember, no moment is too small. We may feature it in an upcoming story.
Sam Neill arrives at the premiere of “Apples Never Fall” on March 12, 2024, in Los Angeles.
Richard Shotwell/AP Photo/Invision
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Richard Shotwell/AP Photo/Invision
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” to playing Holly Hunter’s husband in “The Piano,” has died. He was 78.
In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor’s social media page.
His death was “sudden and unexpected,” the statement said, adding that he “remained cancer free” when he died. A cause of death wasn’t specified.
“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” his family wrote.
Actor came to world’s notice with ‘Dead Calm’ and ‘My Brilliant Career’
Neill was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy “Sweet Revenge” to chopping off Hunter’s finger in “The Piano” to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror “Event Horizon.”
In “Omen III: The Final Conflict,” he played Damien the Antichrist and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in “The Tudors.”
The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong’s 1979 film “My Brilliant Career,” which also introduced Judy Davis. He later appeared in Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm,” a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.
Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi’s “Plenty” and — again for Schepisi — in “A Cry in the Dark,” a film about the sensationalized aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian Outback. He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 miniseries “Merlin” and another as narrator of 2017’s “Wild New Zealand.”
‘Jurassic Park’ was his best-known film
Perhaps Neill achieved his highest level of fame in “Jurassic Park” playing paleontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs. He co-starred alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough.
His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”
Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn’t return for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park II” in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and “Jurassic World: Dominion” in 2022.
“It’s probably a little late to learn these things,” he told the Daily New of New York in 2001, “but I finally feel I’ve worked out how to be an action hero. I’m happier with Grant this time. He’s gnarly and grizzled, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing.”
Neill grew up in Northern Ireland, then New Zealand
Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. He was born Nigel Neill, but told interviewers he started to go by Sam because there were too many Nigels at his school.
His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in “Sleeping Dogs” in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.
Neill’s other film roles included playing a Soviet submarine officer who memorably dreams of a home in Montana in “The Hunt for Red October” and an investigator in director John Carpenter’s “In the Mouth of Madness.”
On the small screen, Neill played the malign Chester Campbell in TV’s “Peaky Blinders” and Thomas Jefferson in the four-hour CBS miniseries, “Sally Hemings: an American Tragedy.” On Apple TV+, he was on “Invasion,” playing Oklahoma Sheriff John Bell Tyson, a man late in his career searching for his purpose. In 2024 he starred opposite Annette Bening in the Peacock series “Apples Never Fall.”
Actor beloved in New Zealand as an unassuming celebrity
The actor became known in New Zealand as a modest and unassuming person who didn’t embrace celebrity. On social media, he often posted images of his farm animals, many of them affectionately named after celebrities and friends, like Laura Dern the chicken, Kylie Minogue the duck and Helena Bonham Carter the cow.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon mourned Neill as “one of the greats” in a statement posted to social media.
“He started out when there was barely a film industry to speak of,” Luxon wrote. “For more than fifty years he took New Zealand stories to the world and his talents helped make our film industry into what it is today.”
Neill was also a vintner and under his Two Paddocks brand, he produced pinot noir and riesling wines from his winery in the Central Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.
His memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?” came out in March 2023 and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to film,” a title approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” Neill told The Guardian in 2023, referring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends.”
He is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.
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