Today is Friday, Aug. 14, the 226th day of 2026. There are 139 days left in the year.

President Donald Trump’s botched repairs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool have landed the National Park Service in a tight spot, forced to serve the public while managing his controversial demands. Critics say Trump demands including revising park exhibits and demolishing structures risk damaging the agency's reputation. This year's Reflecting Pool project faced issues like peeling sealant and algae. The Republican president blames vandalism. But charges against a suspect have been dropped after it was found to be a botched installation. Critics say the controversies undermine the park service, an agency popular with Americans. The White House defends the pool project, saying Trump is delivering on a promise to make Washington beautiful.

In April, President Donald Trump announced that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was being renovated to address long-standing cosmetic and structural issues. He initially promised a gleaming blue pool that would be fixed in a week at a cost of $1.5 million, much less than what previous administrations had paid for work on the national landmark. But four months later the results of the project have not lived up to Trump’s rhetoric, which has in some cases become increasingly hyperbolic.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Trump administration improperly ended a multi-billion-dollar program for clean energy projects. This decision supports a lower court's ruling that nonprofits chosen to run the Biden-era effort should have access the funds. The ruling is temporarily on hold, allowing the Environmental Protection Agency time to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, known as a "green bank," was designed to finance small energy projects. The Trump administration accused the nonprofits of mismanagement and fraud, freezing the funds. The groups denied wrongdoing and sued, claiming legal violations.

Federal appeals court says Trump administration wrongly terminated multi-billion program to boost clean energy projects.

The Trump administration is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars for programs designed to counter China’s growing influence worldwide. It comes after having put a halt to many of those initiatives last year during a flurry of budget and personnel cuts. The administration notified Congress late last week that it intends to spend $175.8 million to replace outdated and aging undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to prevent China from moving in. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the notification Monday. The funding appears to be part of a broader push to restore support for initiatives aimed at blunting Chinese influence globally that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more.

President Donald Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners just as the clock ran out Friday on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court. Gas prices soared above $4 this week as the U.S. and Iran launched more attacks. And U.S. applications for jobless benefits tumbled to the lowest level in more than five decades last week. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 18 declined by 22,000 to 187,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s the fewest number of weekly applications since the week ending Sept. 6, 1969.

The Trump administration has again acknowledged in court documents that it terminated $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state,” in this case, 16 states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The statement contradicts repeated assertions by Energy Secretary Chris Wight and other officials that the projects were canceled because they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or had other problems that made them a poor investment of taxpayer dollars. Democrats and environmental groups seized on the latest court filing, saying the administration had “weaponized” the federal government to kill good jobs and punish working families.

Andy Burnham faces major challenges ahead as the latest British prime minister to take up residence in 10 Downing Street. He inherits a cost-of-living crisis and foreign policy issues that include wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. After leading Greater Manchester as the northwest English city's mayor, Burnham now faces domestic issues on a national scale, such as boosting the economy and improving public services. He plans to raise living standards and may consider a wealth tax. On foreign policy, he supports NATO and Ukraine but has criticized Donald Trump in the past. Burnham also faces sensitive issues like Israel's war with Hamas and migration. He will set out his plan on Tuesday on how his government will fund an effort to lower living costs.