Give algae the Nobel Peace Prize!
Algae did not pay me to write this column but after I’m finished, I think you’ll agree that algae owes me some money. I mean, has any chlorophyll-based organism ever received the kind of breathless PR that the pond pool scum taking over our nation’s Capitol has gotten the past few days? Since its first bloom following the president’s much-vaunted Reflection Pool rehabilitation, algae has smothered more than just D.C.’s pre-eminent water feature, but also our collective psyche. To which I say: good! To which I further say: give algae the Nobel Peace Prize!
Somehow, a single-celled life form has done what the combined brain power of millions could not: it took algae to finally fully undress our emperor. (And not because he was planning to paddle in said Reflecting Pool.) The emperor, needless to say, is not pleased. On Truth Social, Trump has been raging against fictitious “vandals” cutting a fictitious 350-foot gash in the pool liner, but it was algae that lit the fuse.
It was algae that finally said, “Enough!” Algae that demonstrated a persistent courage the Republican Party lacks. Algae that led a new American Revolution – this one a Green Revolution. Algae that mobilized bored National Guardsmen from picking up trash to standing guard against the tyranny of eukaryotic life forms, not to mention any rebellious antifa teens daring to die a toe in the pool. The so-called invasion at the Southern Border has been replaced by one within the confines of a two-thousand-foot-long, thirty-inch-deep wading pool. It was algae that could not be intimidated by the threat of a presidential lawsuit.
Nobody likes to be embarrassed, of course, and the emotional octogenarian at the helm of our country is no exception. We certainly can’t blame him for being humiliated at the botched, no-bid job he laid in the lap of his Mar-a-Lago pool guy. After all, to blame the corpulent, cigar-wielding Dick Tracy villain who got the job would be to question Dear Leader’s judgment. If we can’t trust him to hire the right guy to do something as simple as painting the Reflecting Pool “American flag blue” without turning it into the world’s largest Petri dish, after all, how can we trust him to hire the best and brightest to, say, run the Department of Defense?
Yet, for all of the incompetence and negligence on permanent display by this administration, it managed to somehow surprise me that the guy who f–ks up everything f–ked this up, too.
Meanwhile, algae is getting a much-needed boost. Already, we’ve got “pro algae” protestors marching along the pool deck. Plant biologists are flooding the nation’s news networks, marking possibly the first time anybody has cared what they have to say about anything. How long before sales of spirulina spike? How many algae-themed Halloween costumes must we anticipate this fall? Algae, bane of standing water, you are finally having your day in the sun. And the sun is being very, very good to you.
The “drain the swamp” jokes have, of course, been plentiful. The memes utterly delectable. (My favorite so far is an image of Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker standing in the Reflecting Pool as if they were in the trash compactor room on the Death Star.) It’s as if the nation’s English teachers conspired to teach their students a lesson in metaphors. Perhaps literary devices will be the next thing this administration tries to ban.
After all, they’ve already arrested half a dozen people, including a former Olympian, for crimes against pool liners. Trump has taken to his social media site to threaten these scofflaws with prison sentences of up to 10 years for… well, nobody quite knows what for but since when do these nutsacks feel the need to justify judicial abuse? If algae could be handcuffed, the White House would have staged a primetime perp walk spectacle on Fox News by now.
But here’s the gorgeous thing about algae: they can’t arrest it. And, at least up to this point, they certainly can’t kill it. The hydrogen peroxide they initially used to temper the bloom only succeeded in rotting the Reflecting Pool’s epoxy. (Again, the metaphors… write themselves.) In a fit of pique, the Parks Department has now surrounded the pool with a fence in what one Internet wag called “literal Watergate.”
Sadly, algae probably won’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. It won’t get a ticker-tape parade down Constitution Avenue. There will be no presidential medal hung around its microscopic neck. It will instead receive the same reward accorded every whistleblower in modern America: extermination.
The pumps will keep pumping. The chemicals will keep flowing. Contractors will be summoned. Consultants will consult. Eventually, they’ll figure it out. The Reflecting Pool will once again become a pristine mirror reflecting the Lincoln Memorial, tourists will return to taking selfies, and the Great Algae Uprising of 2026 will pass into history.
Before it does, though, a thank you to algae. Thank you for showing us that the mightiest can fall—or at least nap—for want of a good hydrologist. Thank you for giving us mammals a reason to cheer again. Not only are you good for producing oxygen for the planet but, now, for a populace desperately in need of a little breathing room.
