The Lincoln Memorial is seen on June 20, 2026 in Washington, DC. The National Park Service continues to work to control and remove the algae bloom that has turned the pool green following the Trump Administration’s recent $14 million repair, resealing and painting project. (Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Three-time U.S. Olympian David Hearn told ABC News that police arrested him on Friday after he touched a piece of blue coating that was partially detached from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Hearn said he went on a bike ride on Friday afternoon and stopped by the Reflecting Pool as a “curious, concerned citizen”. Given his background in materials science, Hearn says he was interested to see the situation for himself after reading about reports of algae in the water and paint peeling off.
“I saw a piece of this loose end of this blue coating … I reached out and touched the end of that piece that was loose but still attached to the bottom,” Hearn told ABC News. “I was able to reach out and touch the edge of that that was still attached at the bottom and handled it a little bit.”
Hearn, who represented the U.S. in canoeing, said he was able to feel and bend the coating a bit.
“I did not remove, I did not damage, I did not rip, tear, break, destroy or harm any part of the Reflecting Pool,” Hearn said.
“The condition of that part and all other parts of the Reflecting Pool were in the same condition after I walked away as they were before I walked up to it.”
Hearn said as he was touching the material, a National Park Service employee told him to stop touching it. He said he then walked back to his bike where National Guardsmen told him that the Park Police wanted to talk to him.
“I had no idea I was about to be arrested,” Hearn said. “They didn’t say they were charging me, but they did start to handcuff me. They did not ever read me my rights. They did not allow me any phone calls for the ensuing five hours, and they did not detail the charges that were going to be leveled against me.”
The National Park Service has not replied to a request from ABC News about Hearn’s arrest or any others.
Hearn is set to appear in court on July 9.
Hearn said he was “fully cooperative” the whole time, did not resist and was held for five hours before being released Friday night.
Asked whether he is worried about what will happen to him next, Hearn said: “I am concerned. I’m very wary of our current government; I’m a single citizen being singled out in this way by my government. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.”
The Reflecting Pool has been plagued with algae and peeling paint in the days since the Trump administration completed a $14.65 million renovation. Visitors have been flocking to the pool over the weekend and some have taken to social media with photos and videos showing the algae and peeling paint.
President Donald Trump claims, without evidence, that the damage was committed by vandals, saying Saturday in a lengthy post on his social media platform that the pool would need to be partially drained to repair the peeling lining.
Trump said multiple people had been arrested for vandalism and blamed the condition of the pool on someone pouring “corrosive and destructive chemicals” into the pool and that “They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete.”
An administration official said on Sunday that as of Saturday night, five individuals had been arrested for vandalism, and five others had been issued citations.
The official added that 14 police reports had also been filed for alleged vandalism, including the alleged crime Trump described.
Hearn said he has “a lot of support.”
“I have several very respectable law firms who are offering to provide pro bono counsel, and we will be vigorously defending against these charges,” he said.
Alex Warren’s smash hit has just set a new record: It’s spent a combined total of 107 weeks at #1 on Billboard‘s various charts. The previous record of 106 weeks was set by “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus.
This means that “Ordinary” has been #1 for multiple weeks on multiple charts. For example, it’s racked 34 weeks and counting at #1 on Billboard‘s Adult Contemporary chart, and was on top for 30 weeks on Adult Pop Airplay. On Pop Airplay, it was #1 for 16 weeks. And on the Radio Songs chart, which includes all radio formats, it was #1 for 27 weeks.
“Ordinary” and “Flowers” are the only two songs ever to spend triple-digit weeks at #1. The next-longest reign is 87 weeks, held by The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights.” “Despacito” is next with 74 weeks, followed by “Blurred Lines” with 72 weeks.
In other Alex Warren news, he spent Father’s Day mourning his late dad, who died of kidney cancer when Alex was nine. He posted a photo of the two of them together and wrote, “Dad, you taught me everything I know today except how to live without you. You may be gone from this world but you’re still everywhere in mine.”
“In everything I do you’re there. Whenever I cry you’re in my tears, whenever I laugh it’s your voice I hear. At every show I still look for you in the crowd. I love you.”
Both of Alex’s parents are deceased, a fact he frequently references in his music and while onstage.
Billy Joel became the first rock act to headline Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York.
The show was night one of a two-night stand at the baseball stadium, part of Joel’s Storm Front tour.
According to setlist.fm, Joel, who is from Long Island, New York, performed tracks from Storm Front, as well as classics like “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” “My Life,” “An Innocent Man,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “Uptown Girl,” “It’s Still Rock & Roll To Me,” “Only the Good Die Young” and “Big Shot.”
The set also included a performance of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Shout,” by the Isley Brothers, who put together the first-ever concert at the stadium, an ensemble R&B show that happened in 1969.
Joel ended the evening with “New York State of Mind” and “Piano Man.”
Joel released a video album and CD of the concerts in September of 1990.
In this June 27, 2016 file photo Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and president and founder of Greenspan Associates, speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Alan Greenspan, the longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve, has died, his wife confirmed. He was 100 years old.
“Alan passed away at our home this morning at the age of 100 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease,” Andrea Mitchell, his wife and a chief correspondent at NBC News, said in a statement published by the network on Monday.
The economist is remembered for leading the American central bank amid periods of historic U.S. economic expansion, while critics have also said his policies contributed to and exacerbated the mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2008.
Greenspan, a libertarian Republican, became the 13th chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System two months before the stock market crash on Oct. 19,1987, known as Black Monday. He was credited with moving quickly to alleviate investors’ fears after the crash and was instrumental in ensuring the Federal Reserve made plenty of money available to alleviate the impact on financial markets. Stocks quickly rebounded.
He was appointed Fed chair by four different presidents during his career, first by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Greenspan continued to serve as Fed chairman under presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He steered the U.S. economy through the economic boom in the 1990s, the dotcom bubble, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. His final term as chair ended on Jan. 31, 2006.
Under his leadership, the Fed fostered a distaste for regulation and promoted very low interest rates in the early 2000s — two phenomena critics say encouraged a bubble in housing prices that eventually burst with disastrous effects on the global economy.
During his tenure, and before the financial crisis began, the nation experienced one of the longest periods of economic growth in its history.
A decorated economist, first inspired by music
Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926, in New York City, the only child of Herbert Greenspan, a stockbroker, and Rose Goldsmith Greenspan, a retail worker. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old, and he was raised mainly by his mother and his grandparents.
An aspiring musician, Greenspan attended Juilliard for a year and played saxophone and clarinet before dropping out and enrolling at New York University. He went on to gain his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from New York University. He also engaged in some advanced graduate work at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under the influential economist Arthur Burns.
Though short-lived, his music career was an influential portion of Greenspan’s life, and he considered the move into economics a logical progression. He saw the organization of economic data into sound fiscal modeling as analogous to the organization of musical notes into tunes, according to Greenspan biographer Justin Martin in his book, “Greenspan: The Man Behind Money.”
“I get the same kind of joy from solving a hard mathematical problem as I do from hearing a Haydn quartet,” Greenspan once told The New York Times Magazine.
Greenspan taught economics at NYU between 1953 and 1955 and then founded the economic consulting firm Townsend & Greenspan, where he served as chairman and president from 1954 to 1974. He returned to the firm in 1977 and stayed until 1987.
President Richard Nixon nominated Greenspan to chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1974, the first of many government economic positions he would hold. Nixon resigned as president hours after Greenspan was nominated, but he continued to serve under President Gerald Ford. Greenspan also served as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and was a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office.
In the private sector, Greenspan served as corporate director for many companies, including Alcoa, General Foods and J.P. Morgan & Co. He also served as a member of Time magazine’s Board of Economists and a senior adviser to the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity.
In 2002, Greenspan received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to global economic stability. In 2005, President George W. Bush presented Greenspan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
He held the position of Fed chairman from the time Reagan appointed him in 1987 until 2006, serving an unprecedented five terms under four presidents before being succeeded by Ben Bernanke.
Greenspan is credited by many with facilitating the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. One day after the Black Monday stock crash, Greenspan affirmed the Fed’s “readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system” and the central bank moved to encourage banks to lend on their normal terms. Unlike prior financial crises, the events of Black Monday notably were not followed by an economic recession or a banking crisis and less than two years later, the U.S. stock market surpassed its pre-crash highs.
During his tenure, Greenspan developed a reputation for being a consensus-builder and for his strong anti-inflation stance, focusing more on controlling prices than on promoting full employment. He led the Federal Reserve through several events with major economic consequences, including two U.S. recessions, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
‘How could we have possibly got it so wrong?’
Starting in June 2003, the Federal Reserve set the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks typically borrow from each other, to one percent for a year. Though its intention was to lower the cost of borrowing and stimulate the economy, critics said the rate was too low and encouraged investments in risky subprime mortgage-backed securities, which they say contributed to the financial crisis in 2008.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a research organization seen as an authority on measuring economic performance, later said that the recession officially began in December 2007.
In September 2007, Greenspan published a book that was both a memoir and economic commentary, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” in which he criticized the George W. Bush administration for overspending and admitted that he supported the administration’s tax cuts without stressing the need for spending cuts.
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2012, Greenspan said, “one day before Lehman Brothers crashes, conventional wisdom was not even certain that we would fall into a recession.”
“In fact, we learned many months later that the downward trend had actually started,” Greenspan said. “How could we have possibly got it so wrong? I mean, I actually was saying, ‘Yes, recession is coming, not that we’re here yet.’ We didn’t know that it had already hit.”
In October 2008, Greenspan acknowledged to a congressional committee discussing financial regulation that, “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
After Greenspan finished his term as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006, he established Greenspan Associates, an economic consulting firm in Washington, D.C.
With Greenspan as president, the firm had four employees as of October 2012. His client list has included giant finance clients like German firm Deutsche Bank and hedge fund Paulson & Co.
Personal life
Greenspan married artist Joan Mitchell in 1952. The couple divorced in 1953 after less than a year of marriage, and the marriage was later annulled. The two remained friends.
His first wife is remembered for introducing him to novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, with whom Greenspan shared a friendship, a belief in free-market economic ideals and a philosophy of objectivism. In his 30s and early 40s, Greenspan spent many hours sitting with Rand’s band of followers, known as the “Collective,” discussing topics including politics philosophy, current events and economics.
In addition to Burns at Columbia, Rand and her group were instrumental in helping hone Greenspan’s capitalist, free-market economic philosophy, according to Martin, Greenspan’s biographer.
The group’s open style of debate and discussion served Greenspan well in his various governmental roles. During his career in public service, he became known for a well-developed ability to communicate with Congress without offending those with opposing viewpoints or politicizing his messages.
Though he was said to back revamping the Social Security system and raising the retirement age, Greenspan was wary of how his public statements as Fed chairman might move markets. He rarely granted interviews. He was known for making openly ambiguous public statements about the state of the U.S. economy, once telling Congress, “If I’ve made myself too clear, you must have misunderstood me.”
Greenspan married NBC News correspondent Mitchell in 1997. Their marriage was officiated by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“We’ve had the most wonderful marriage,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2012. “It gets better every year. We’re still very much together in love.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces his resignation as UK Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, outside No.10 Downing Street on June 22, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Monday he would resign as the leader of his party and as prime minister, setting the stage for the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister within a decade.
Starmer, who said he spoke on Monday with King Charles, said he expected to remain in office until a successor was chosen from within his Labour Party.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” he said outside 10 Downing Street. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”
Starmer, who had led Labour since 2020, was elected to lead the country in a general election 2024. His replacement is expected to be chosen by his party.
Starmer said he asked party leaders to open nominations for a successor on July 9. He did not give a date for his departure from 10 Downing Street, but said he expected a new prime minister to be in place by September, when Parliament returns from its summer recess.
The resignation announcement followed months of turmoil for Starmer, with some members of his own party criticizing his leadership, saying he had not been able to deliver the rapid change needed after taking office following 14 years of Conservative Party rule in Britain.
Many in Starmer’s Labour party had written to Starmer asking him to step down following local elections in May, which saw the party lose more than 1,000 seats on local councils, results that were widely interpreted as a repudiation by British voters of Labour’s performance under the prime minister’s leadership.
A formal challenge to his premiership had not yet begun as of Monday, but some members of his party have in recent weeks coalesced in public support of Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, as his potential successor.
Burnham, who won a special election on Friday to become a member of parliament representing Makerfield, was expected to be sworn in in the House of Commons on Monday.
Following Starmer’s announcement, Burnham said on social media that he would seek a nomination in the Labour leadership contest.
“People want to see progress on economic growth, cost of living, public services, housing and opportunities for the next generation,” he said. “Political change should never distract from the responsibility to improve people’s lives.”
Another potential successor, Wes Streeting, a member of parliament who resigned from his position as Starmer’s health secretary in May, threw his support behind Burnham on Monday.
“We could spend the summer exaggerating our small differences, or we can roll up our sleeves and help [Burnham] to deliver the change our Party and our country needs,” Streeting said in a statement. “That is the choise that I am making and I hope that everyone else will back Andy, too.”
Starmer long said he intended to see out his full five-year term, which began with his party’s 2024 landslide election victory, which also delivered Labour a historic majority in the House of Commons.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, praised Starmer after his announcement, saying, “It can take many leaders years to grow into the statesman you became in just two years. European and Ukrainian security is stronger because of you. Thank you, dear Keir.”
ABC News’ David Brennan, Jamie Dorrington and Zoe Magee contributed to this report.
Curry Barker’s next film has landed at Universal Film Group. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Obsession director’s next film will be released by the studio along with Blumhouse Atomic Monster. The outlet describes it as an eight-figure deal for Barker to write, produce and direct his third film …
An animated Pippi Longstocking series is in the works. Variety reports that Studiocanal is teaming up with its Paddington production partner Heyday Films to develop a new animated show based on the book character. The series will focus on Pippi, who arrives in a small town and changes it forever …
We now know the celebrities who will fill in for Jimmy Kimmel and host Jimmy Kimmel Live! during his traditional summer break. Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, Jelly Roll and Rosie O’Donnell are set to host the show over the summer months. The announcement was made during Kimmel’s monologue on Thursday, which was interrupted by Matt Damon, who used a Trojan horse to sneak onstage …
It’s been a whirlwind 2026 for new male artist of year Tucker Wetmore, picking up his trophy from the Academy of Country Music just before “Brunette” became his third consecutive #1.
Simultaneously, he’s been on the road with the song’s namesake tour.
“The Brunette World Tour has been crazy,” Tucker says. “I was overseas for seven weeks straight. Before that, I was a month and a half here in the States, and then [I’ve] got another month and half, two months in the fall.”
“It feels like it’s the tour that never ends, you know, but it’s been such a blessing,” he adds. “And the shows are getting bigger, the fans are getting crazier, and hopefully the music keeps up.”
All the shows he’s done have a singular moment in common that Tucker loves.
“My favorite part is seeing people’s faces light up when they hear their favorite, like, song or lyric or guitar lick or whatever it is, and like seeing visual reactions to stuff that I’m pouring my heart out into my music, you know, and seeing them relate to the songs and just, like, scream their favorite lyric at the top of their lungs,” he says. “It’s my favorite thing in the world.’
You can tune in to see Tucker on Thursday’s CMA Fest special, which starts at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
He resumes the Brunette Tour at Cowboys Music Festival in Calgary, Alberta, on July 2.
Katy Perry during her concert at the O Son do Camiño Festival, on 18 June, 2026 in Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. (Alvaro Ballesteros/Europa Press via Getty Images)
Katy Perry has launched her Out of Office tour of summer festivals, and when it comes to her wardrobe, everything old is new again.
The more money you donate, the more entries for each drawing you will receive. For example, $15 will get you 150 entries, while 100 bucks gets you 2,000 entries. The money raised will go to Katy’s Firework Foundation, which works to empower children from underserved communities through the arts.
So far, you can enter to win two outfits. The first is a two-piece polka dot bra and skirt top she wore June 18 at a festival in Spain. It’s originally from the the Hello, Katy tour and is available until July 11.
There’s also a two-piece blue outfit with a pink bow, which she originally wore in 2009 in Lisbon, Portugal, during the Hello Katy tour. She re-wore it June 20 at the Rock in Rio Lisboa Festival in Lisbon; that one is available until July 13.
Olivia Rodrigo, ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’ (Geffen Records)
Olivia Rodrigo seems pretty consistent for a girl with three albums.
Her latest release, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, has debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, just as her previous albums — SOUR and GUTS — did. It sold 485,000 units in its first week, which is not only Olivia’s biggest sales week of her career, but also the biggest sales week of any album so far this year by a solo artist.
The album scored the biggest streaming week of the year by a female artist, and the biggest vinyl sales week of the year by a female artist. It was preceded by two singles — “drop dead” and “the cure” — which debuted at #1 and #5 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.
When the project was first released on June 12, it broke the Spotify record for the most-streamed album in a single day by a female artist this year, and the biggest 24-hour streaming debut on Amazon Music of any album of 2026.
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love also debuted at #1 on the British and the Australian charts.
Olivia’s The Unraveled Tour will launch Sept. 25 in Hartford, Connecticut.
