WASHINGTON — Get off the train at Union Station, walk outside and gasp at that iconic view of the Capitol dome in front of you. 

Cross the street and the first thing you run into is a construction site surrounding walled-off Columbus Circle. On the wall is a huge poster of President Donald Trump wearing a hard hat (and a coat and tie).

“Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP,” the sign says.

That’s just the start of what a tourist will encounter as they sightsee in the heart of the nation’s capital. Or these days, the nation’s capital as brought to you by Donald Trump.

The Trump reminders are all over. Walk the tourist walk from the Capitol down and around Pennsylvania Avenue, past the White House and on to the Lincoln Memorial and it’s clear who’s in charge.

Whether or not this is affecting tourism is unclear. Destination DC, a nonprofit organization that markets the area as a global tourist destination, doesn’t keep month-to-month data. It found in 2024, before the Trump boom, a record 27.2 million people visited the city.

“Tourists who are pro-Trump will be drawn to his eponymous sites. Those who oppose him will not. Most tourists will pay no attention to his projects but will enjoy all the historic and exciting venues and exhibits in Washington,” said Barbara Perry, professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center 

She said Trump’s propensity to “destroy, rebuild, construct, and name numerous sites and institutions for himself is most unusual.”

Trump likenesses 

Trump detailed his plans in a March, 2025, executive order, “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful.”

“Its highways, boulevards, and parks should be clean, well-kept, and pleasant,” he said of the nation’s capital. “Its monuments, museums, and buildings should reflect and inspire awe and appreciation for our Nation’s strength, greatness, and heritage. Our citizens deserve nothing less.” 

Previous incumbent presidents’ pictures were usually confined to 8-by-10 portraits hanging in post offices or deep inside other federal buildings, as they were careful not to splatter their names and likenesses so publicly.

“Typical presidents want to avoid looking arrogant by honoring themselves while in office or even after—except for their presidential libraries, starting with FDR. They usually feel humbled if a Navy ship, for example, is named for them while they are extant: Bush I and Ford come to mind,” Perry said of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford.

Both served in the Navy and saw combat in the South Pacific.

Democrats are furious about the Trump makeover. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, calls Trump’s actions “narcissism” and is pushing the “Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego Act.”

“Donald Trump doesn’t get to slap his name on any public institution he chooses. We don’t have kings or dictators in America, and this legislation stops him or any future sitting president from creating monuments to glorify themselves,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

The bill is likely to go nowhere in the Republican-run Congress.

So for now, tourists can stroll around the Mall and see how Trump has tried to transform the nation’s capital.

Starting at the Capitol and heading south down Constitution Avenue until it splits off to Pennsylvania Avenue, here goes:

Albert Pike statue

Status: Installed at Judiciary Square, about four blocks from the Capitol.

Details: “The only public sculpture in DC to commemorate a Confederate general,” says the DC Historic Sites team website. Pike was a slave owner and a senior officer in the Confederate Army.

The memorial was “toppled and burned on Juneteenth of 2020, as protests continued across the country in response to the murder of George Floyd,” the website says. Floyd was a Black man killed by a white policeman in Minneapolis, sparking protests around the country.

Last year, the Trump administration had the Pike statue restored and placed at its present location. 

The action was part of an executive order Trump issued in March 2025. He ordered a review of memorials or statues that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” 

The order also affected the Smithsonian Institution, which Trump said “has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” 

Trump banners on federal buildings

Status: Huge banners with Trump’s face hang from the Judiciary and Labor Departments.

Details: “American Workers First” says the Labor banner, with Trump’s vastly enlarged face atop the saying. Another banner features President Theodore Roosevelt. 

The banners, which cover almost three stories of the building, are visible from both heavily-trafficked Constitution and Pennsylvania avenues.

About six blocks away, on Pennsylvania Avenue at the Justice Department — which a few years ago investigated Trump for possible crimes — there’s a new, three-story banner where he looks down at the street atop the saying “Make American Safe Again.”

When the Labor banner went up, then-Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer told Trump about it at a Cabinet meeting, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

“Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker,” she told him.

Bonus sighting: As you walk along Pennsylvania Avenue, don’t miss another “Thank You, President Trump” banner hanging on a construction wall across from the National Gallery of Art near 4th Street.

White House ballroom

Status: Walk up Pennsylvania Avenue starting at the 1500 block and you’ll see the White House East Wing is gone. It’s a rubble-laden construction site now, where Trump is trying to build a 90,000 square foot ballroom with a military installation underneath. The project is to be privately funded, though Senate Republicans are seeking $1 billion for security in an immigration bill.

Details: The project is embroiled in a still-evolving legal battle. The April 25 assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where a gunman threatened the president and top officials, may be changing minds.

Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Montana,  last month introduced legislation to authorize the ballroom. “A President of any party should be able to host events in a secure area without attendees worrying about their safety. This is common sense. Let’s get it done,” he tweeted.

Last week, Justice sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. “This (ballroom) project will ensure that events like the horrific attack on Saturday night do not happen again,” it argued.

Reflecting Pool

Status: Keep walking toward Constitution Avenue. You’ll see the Reflecting Pool between the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Renovations are underway and expected to be completed by July 4. The pool is being cleaned and painted blue.

Details: The pool has often been criticized for being dirty and leaking. 

Trump’s effort is going a step farther than others who have launched renovation and cleaning projects. He said the project will cost $2 million, far less than other recent refurbishing efforts, according to his TruthSocial website.

“It was filthy dirty and it leaked like a sieve for many years,” Trump said in a video posted to the site. 

He’s having it painted “swimming pool blue,” a color that appalls many preservationists.  

Kennedy Center

Details: The city’s premier cultural center is about a 20-minute walk away. Perhaps no Trump change has provoked more outrage among his Washington critics than his renaming of the capital’s cultural center.

He said during a visit to the center in March 2025 that “it needs a lot of work,” adding it should have better seats and more “Broadway hits.”

The president overhauled its governance, creating a board that named him the center’s chairman, changed programming to suit his tastes, and announced the center would close this summer for two years for renovations.

Status: While the center’s board renamed the site the Trump-Kennedy Center, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex officio member of the board, has taken legal action in federal court seeking to stop the name change, saying only Congress can do so. The case is pending.

Monumental Arch

Details: Trump wants to build a 250 foot arch — taller than the nearby Lincoln Memorial and the tallest in the world — at the traffic circle at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. The circle leads to the Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, connecting to the Lincoln Memorial.

Status: The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, packed with Trump appointees, approved the arch’s concept design in April. 

The arch, the commission said in its approval letter, “would contribute positively to the honorific landscape of Washington, D.C., for many generations.” It requested more information for the next phase, including plans for better pedestrian access and sculptures.

Court battles await, notably from a group of Vietnam veterans and others. 

They say the arch would distort the clear view from the cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial, as well as disrupt the symbolism of the bridge, designed to join the North and South.

Off the usual paths

Go away from the main tourist routes and there’s yet more evidence of the Trump rebranding. The United States National Institute of Peace is now the Donald J. Trump National Institute of Peace. The change is meant “to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history,” said a State Department tweet.

Then there’s what tourists won’t see.

“Visitors who take the garden tour of the White House this spring will miss the beautiful Rose Garden outside the West Wing and the Jackie Kennedy Garden outside the East Wing, of blessed memory,” said Perry. “Both gardens, planned by the Kennedys, plus the East Wing itself have been obliterated by the incumbent.” 

The Rose Garden, the White House says, “was turned into a patio with roses lining the perimeter, developing a space dedicated to hospitality and entertaining. Today, the Rose Garden is used to host many guests of the president for events and dinners.” 

East Potomac Golf Course

While the East Potomac Golf Course isn’t right on the main tourist route, it’s just off to the side on an island not far from the Jefferson Memorial, with a view of the Washington Monument. The Trump administration has reportedly wanted to close and then revamp the historic site. Preservationists and local folks are furious.

Reports say he wants to convert it to a championship golf course — one that some think will make it an exclusive club, instead of the current affordable public setup that’s popular with locals. NOTUS wrote that the National Park Service is scheduled to start landscaping.

The links currently have two nine-hole courses, an 18-hole par 72 course, miniature golf, a driving range and a restaurant. 

The D.C. Preservation League and two local residents Sunday asked a District Court judge to halt any Trump project. 

“Trump is taking a public park away from the American people while spending their hard-earned taxpayer dollars to build a private, elite club from which he’d personally profit,” Democracy Defenders Fund Executive Chair Norm Eisen said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes on Monday did not stop the project, saying reports about the course’s overhaul did not provide enough evidence for her to act, but she warned that if she sees that certain renovations are underway she could reconsider.

National Mall Superintendent Kevin Griess said Monday there were no plans to begin renovation work but a safety assessment was underway, The Associated Press reported.

WASHINGTON — Tucked into President Donald Trump’s new budget request is a plan that could dramatically change — and, critics say, slash — how much money and help states provide to people needing jobs and training.

Trump’s latest budget proposes a federal “Make America Skilled Again’’ grant that would combine a dozen current programs and provide $3.4 billion in spending for certain employment and training programs, down from $4.65 billion anticipated this fiscal year.

The president’s plan would fund block, or general, grants to states, which could then tailor the spending to employment and training needs.

There’s no formula in the budget proposal detailing how or where the money would be distributed, other than a requirement that at least 10% be spent on an apprenticeship program and 3% on innovations. The secretary of the Department of Labor could also reserve up to 0.75% on “program accountability” and technical support.

Congressional Republicans are moving ahead with other ways to fund, and in some cases revamp, federal job programs, though they showed little interest in Trump’s MASA proposal that was also in his budget request last year.

The Trump plan

The MASA effort is another in a series of administration initiatives aimed at streamlining job training programs’ administrative costs and making them more responsive to changes in the workplace.

The Labor Department referred questions about the plan to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to questions.

At the National Skills Coalition, an advocacy organization for skills-based training, Megan Evans saw the MASA effort as a way of making deep cuts that ultimately hurt workers and employers, she said in an interview.

“The administration says it’s trying to streamline,” said Evans, the coalition’s senior government affairs manager. “But in reality it’s combining deep cuts with risky consolidations and rollbacks.”

The White House last year issued a detailed report and a video on its strategy, outlining how “workforce programs are fragmented across agencies, stifled by red tape, and too often misaligned with the skills employers need.”

These issues, it said, “pose particular risks as the United States advances toward a bold reindustrialization agenda and navigates the transformational impact of AI (artificial intelligence) on the workforce.”

In the budget released this month, the administration called the program “a key part of the administration’s strategy to fill the growing demand for skilled trades and other occupations,” along with some other programs, including the tax cuts enacted last year.

Changes in getting money and help

While MASA aims to reduce administrative costs, a long-sought goal of administrators across the country, popular programs would be consolidated under the block grant, including several with strong constituencies. 

Among them are programs for adult training and employment, youth training and employment, the Labor Department’s Re-integration of Ex-Offenders program, Native American programs and others.

The National Skills Coalition saw trouble in folding these programs into a single grant.

“These programs weren’t created in a vacuum,” it said in a blog post last year. “They each serve distinct populations.”

Merging them would be “making it harder for people to access training that fits their lives and needs,” the group said.

It also had doubts about whether block grants would in fact be more efficient.

“By combining multiple workforce programs into a single grant, it becomes significantly harder to track program outcomes, monitor equity and assess whether specific populations–such as veterans, youth, people with disabilities, or former incarcerated people–are being effectively served,” the coalition said.

Some state and local officials share the concern. 

“Washington state is already facing significant budget shortfalls, and this proposal would further widen that gap,” said Marisol Tapia Hopper, director of strategic partnerships & funding at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County.

She said combining the programs into a block grant “functions as a reduction in workforce investment, applying a one-size-fits-all approach to a system that is already chronically underfunded.” 

The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group comprising all the nation’s governors, has taken no position on the proposal.

“Workforce training is a huge bipartisan priority for governors,” said Jack Porter, NGA program director for workforce development & economic policy.

“Federal support is critical to standing up effective workforce programs, but the federally funded workforce system as it stands now comes with a lot of red tape that shifts time and focus away from the goal, which is (to) provide workers with training,” he said.

Congressional reluctance

Congress has shown little enthusiasm for the administration’s consolidation.

Earlier this month, the Republican-led U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee proposed a comprehensive job training blueprint.

Among its ideas: providing funding for on-the-job learning and strengthening the system that holds state and local workforce boards responsible “for delivering positive outcomes for workers and job seekers.”

The bill would have adult education programs governed by the Labor Department. The aim would be to “connect adult education to apprenticeships, sector partnerships, and employer-led training especially as artificial intelligence reshapes skill demands.”

Included in the legislation, which a committee spokeswoman says is clearly “in line with the broad goals proposed in the president’s budget,” is a Make America Skilled Again pilot program.

It would permit states to apply to combine different workforce funding streams and then spend them on programs that best suit their needs.

The bill, said committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., in a statement, “modernizes a struggling and underutilized workforce development system, delivering reforms that strengthen participant outcomes and ensure greater accountability for taxpayer dollars.”

In the U.S. Senate, Republicans began pushing changes that will help people get access to current programs.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Republicans’ aim is to “increase Americans’ access to job opportunities by eliminating red tape, increasing flexibility, and modernizing the workforce system.”

The goal is to create one-stop centers where people can get information about jobs and training. The measure would “help Nebraskans find great jobs more efficiently,” said Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Nebraska Republican who co-sponsored the bill.

Spending bill season

At the moment, Democrats and Republicans appear deadlocked on how to proceed. The House Appropriations Committee plans to write labor spending legislation in June. The Senate has not announced a schedule. 

The partisan lines are forming.

The Trump labor budget “attacks workers and small businesses by undermining workforce development programs at the Department of Labor,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., top Democrat on the House workforce panel, in a statement.

Without the specific programs, he said, “many workers will struggle to provide for their families.”

Walberg sees a need for big change.

“The workforce is evolving rapidly, and legislation designed over a decade ago is no longer meeting today’s demands,” he said.