The Trump administration is paying a Maryland gilding studio $5 million to coat horse statues in real gold — 23.75-karat gold leaf to be exact. The administration handed out the $5 million contract without reviewing other bids to try to negotiate a lower price.
It’s not Trump’s money, so what does he care?
The horses, known as the Arts of War and Arts of Peace, sit at the edges of the National Mall. They haven’t been fully restored since the 1970s. Their gold coating is patchy. Their stone bases are cracked and dirty. They need work. Real conservation work.
What they’re getting instead is a rush job for a deadline.
A NOTUS investigation published Thursday details how the National Park Service handed the $5 million contract to The Gilders’ Studio in mid-April, citing the urgent need to finish before July 4 — the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and Freedom 250 Great American State Fair.
The agency posted its public notice for the project for only six days. It did “limited” market research. Any competing company would have had to commit to completing the work in under four months.
That’s not how you protect historic landmarks. That’s how you guarantee corners will be cut.
The Park Service told NOTUS that The Gilders’ Studio was uniquely qualified for the project. Other gilding experts disagreed. Peter Sepp, who runs a major gold-leaf supplier in New York, said other companies could do equal-quality work and weren’t even contacted.
Several contractors told NOTUS reporters they’d been instructed by the Park Service not to talk to the media. Multiple gilding experts wouldn’t be quoted by name out of fear of losing future federal work.
The bigger bill
The horses are one line item on a much longer list. The Interior Department is spending at least $95 million on D.C. “beautification” projects, all of them initiated between December 2025 and April of this year, all of them rushed for July 4. About $20 million of those contracts have not previously been reported.
The most absurd entry so far: the $13.1 million job to repaint the National Mall’s reflecting pool blue. The New Republic reported that contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings is pulling a 20 percent profit margin on the deal — and that the final cost is roughly seven times what Trump originally promised the work would run.
The administration is also spending millions to repaint the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House white, drawing a lawsuit from historic preservation groups. Its current “dim” paint job is intentional — the White House is meant to stand out.
Then there are the contractors themselves. A company called Manguiri Contracting that primarily does trash collection, debris removal, and HVAC repair for the federal government somehow landed three contracts worth roughly $6.5 million to repair fountains and repave marble.
Before this year, Manguiri had never held a federal contract worth more than $1 million. Now they’re responsible for the marble at the MLK Jr. Memorial and the fountains at the John Paul Jones Memorial on the National Mall.
Meridian Hill Park’s renovation ran $800,000 over its original quote. Freedom Plaza’s jumped $500,000 in a single month. The pattern is consistent: vague timelines, ballooning costs, no competition, no answers.
The real cost
Set aside the aesthetics for a second. Set aside whether gold-leafed horses on the National Mall are a tasteful tribute to America at 250 or a tacky monument to one man’s gold-obsessed vanity.
The actual scandal here is procedural. When you skip competitive bidding, you guarantee taxpayers get overcharged. When you give a four-month deadline for delicate conservation work on 80,000-pound bronze statues that have been corroding since 1951, you guarantee shoddy results.
One local expert told NOTUS what anyone with common sense already knows: “Anytime you rush something, there are always problems.”
These statues survived 75 years of weathering. They are about to get a rushed gold paint job on a no-bid contract because one man wants the National Mall to glitter for his anniversary party.
But he’s an REAL man. An alpha. ‘High T’ Alpha men are obsessed with gold leaf, marble floors, and golden ballrooms. Didn’t you know that? 🙄
And while $95 million flows out the door for fountains and gold leaf, the same administration is:
- gutting Medicaid.
- Cutting SNAP.
- Defunding scientific research.
- Cancelling cancer studies.
- Slashing housing assistance.
- Stripping medical care from veterans.
- Sending masked agents to disappear our neighbors.
Our neighbors… the people who clean the offices on the Mall, who drive the Metro past these monuments, who actually live in the city Trump has called “crumbling and ugly” — their lives are getting harder while the Park Service hands out gold paint contracts.
This is what authoritarian aesthetics look like. Gilded horses for the regime, austerity for the rest of us. Cracked granite underneath, paid for by people who can’t afford their rent.
The America 250th anniversary is supposed to mean something. A country that threw off the gilded crowns of kings shouldn’t be using public money to gild monuments for a man who would wear one if he could. 👑
