The Trump administration has managed to turn a renovation at the Lincoln Memorial into a story about criminal accusations and peeling paint, which is quite an accomplishment for a project whose primary responsibility was to remain underwater.
Before we get to that, I owe you an explanation for yesterday’s silence, because I had every intention of posting before the day developed several competing opinions about my schedule. Ezra had a doctor’s appointment in Coos Bay, a town I generally avoid unless I have a reason to be there, which means every necessary trip becomes an opportunity to complete enough errands to postpone the next one. I picked up paint, a gift for my husband’s grandmother, who recently lost her dog, and several other boring things that have already consumed enough of my life without receiving space in this newsletter.
My poor little man had shots, a heel poke, and a venous blood draw, none of which received his approval. He nestled into my chest for as long as he could and endured the rest, while I tried to be the reassuring adult despite being entirely uncertain which of us was more upset. He recovered his enthusiasm considerably faster than I did, eventually riding through Fred Meyer in the cart, pointing and laughing at everything that deserved his attention, which was apparently most of the store.
When we got home, the internet was out, and it stayed out until eleven last night. By then, Ezra had developed a fever after his shots and wanted to spend several hours lying on my chest, which was adorable, heartwarming, thermally unreasonable, and very much needed. I couldn’t finish my work, but I could hold my baby, and for a little while the same outage that had frustrated me gave me permission to stop trying to do both at once.
Meanwhile, my husband and daughter spent the day cleaning and renovating a trailer for his grandmother. She is moving out of her apartment and onto her son’s property so she doesn’t have to spend so much time alone, but her son, my husband’s uncle, has been working long hours and threw his back out. He wasn’t going to be able to finish the trailer before she needed to leave her apartment, so my husband stepped in to help close the gap.
That is the kind of person he is, and apparently the kind of person our daughter intends to be, because Daddy can almost never go anywhere without his little helper. Between the two of them, his grandmother had people showing up to help make the next part of her life possible, even with everyone’s own limitations and unfinished responsibilities. So that was yesterday, and I’m sorry I couldn’t get a piece out to you. We spent the day caring for the people we love, rearranging what we could because somebody needed us, which seems like a reasonable foundation for any household and an increasingly ambitious expectation of its government.
According to reporting from Reuters and Forbes, drawing on documents reviewed by The New York Times, Atlantic Industrial Coatings acknowledged problems with both the design and execution of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation. Workers hadn’t applied enough primer in some areas, and incompatible materials contributed to the liner blistering and coming loose. The project cost about $14.7 million and was rushed ahead of the Fourth of July celebrations.
Trump repeatedly blamed vandals, and federal authorities charged people, including former Olympian David Hearn. Prosecutors later moved to drop Hearn’s case after evidence pointed to flawed installation. The new reporting adds the contractor’s own account of its mistakes, while the Interior Department continues to insist vandalism also damaged the pool. Apparently, we have reached the point in American governance where a coating fails to adhere and the public is asked to consider whether it has a political agenda.
My husband spent yesterday helping finish a trailer because the person who needed it had a deadline, and the useful response was to do the work. A government renovation went wrong, and people found themselves facing criminal accusations while the explanation involving the actual renovation struggled for recognition. That’s a consequential difference in how responsibility gets distributed when something fails. The pool can be repaired, but a dismissed case doesn’t erase the experience of being arrested and publicly blamed. An administration that moves quickly to identify villains owes the people it accuses at least as much urgency when the evidence starts pointing elsewhere.
Over in public health, the paperwork offers a different kind of national portrait. Surgeon general nominee Nicole Saphier’s ethics agreement lists holdings in Philip Morris, Altria, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and McDonald’s, alongside pharmaceutical companies and health insurers. For a movement organized around making America healthy again, the investment portfolio has certainly taken an expansive interest in the subject.
The agreement, published by the Office of Government Ethics, also says she will divest the assets listed in its appendix within ninety days of confirmation, with conflict-of-interest restrictions in the meantime. Those commitments matter, and the presence of a stock in someone’s portfolio does not, by itself, establish that they have misused public office.
Still, I would like the people seeking responsibility for the country’s health to bring at least as much attention to corporate incentives as they bring to the habits of the people buying the products. A parent making decisions in a grocery aisle has a budget, a tired child, and whatever options are available nearby; the companies filling those shelves have an entirely different kind of power, and public health leadership should be willing to examine it.
Having worked in healthcare quality and compliance, I care about what happens after the reassuring language has been written down. The divestments need to happen, the restrictions need to be followed, and the decisions need to serve the people who will live with them. A promise to protect the public becomes useful when somebody can show you how it’s being kept.
That obligation extends to the conditions outside our doors, where dangerous heat is increasingly refusing to respect the calendar we built around it. A study published September 10 in AGU Advances examined forty-five years of climate data and found that seasons of extreme dry heat expanded significantly across about half the world’s land area, with a similar result for humid heat. The changes were uneven: in the western United States, extremes increasingly extended beyond the historical heat season, while other regions saw more expansion before it began.
According to Columbia Climate School’s explanation of the research, that timing matters because people may encounter dangerous temperatures before they have acclimated, or after months of already enduring them. Cooling centers and heat alerts are often organized around a summer calendar, leaving communities with a practical question about whether their preparations still match the danger.
September can arrive with school supplies, autumn decorations, and a perfectly confident pumpkin display, while the atmosphere continues conducting business on its own terms. The researchers also caution that observations alone can’t determine exactly how much of the uneven seasonal shift comes from human-caused warming versus natural variability and other regional influences. The findings nevertheless make a clear case for examining when heat protections begin and end, and for preparing for heat that increasingly overlaps with other hazards, including wildfire season in the West.
For public officials, the next questions should be concrete. Can a cooling center remain open when dangerous temperatures arrive outside its usual schedule? Can a school adjust activities, and can an outdoor worker get protection when the weather has outlasted the season everyone planned for? Those answers require staffing, money, and a willingness to change a plan when the conditions change.
I keep thinking about yesterday, about my husband finding a way to help his grandmother and our daughter following along because being useful to someone she loves already makes sense to her. I think about Ezra, who had a hard morning, found something to laugh at in the grocery store, and eventually needed somewhere safe to lay his head.
We can’t personally hold together every failing system, and families shouldn’t be expected to make up the difference indefinitely. We can, however, recognize the obligation those systems are supposed to fulfill, because we practice some small version of it whenever we rearrange our lives around another person’s need.
The people entrusted with public power owe us that same willingness to respond, on a scale large enough to matter. When the work fails, they need to account for it; when their interests conflict, they need to resolve them; when the dangerous season grows longer, they need to keep the doors open longer. The country we leave our children should be governed with at least as much care as they are already learning to give.
Geddry’s Newsletter is supported by readers. If this work helps you make sense of the news and the lives caught inside it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or restacking it to help someone who might find it useful.
Well done, Shanley and family.
When is someone going to reach this regime some new words, like 'empathy' and 'responsibility'?
Coos Bay is a great town to pass through on the way to somewhere else!