What happened
A Washington, D.C., nonprofit yesterday asked a federal court to pause President Donald Trump’s push to paint the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American flag blue,” arguing the makeover violates federal historical preservation laws. Trump last month said he’d chosen a “pool guy” who worked on his golf club swimming pools to coat and paint the leaking landmark, predicting it would cost $1.8 million. The Interior Department last week raised the price of the contractor’s no-bid contract to $13.1 million, The New York Times reported yesterday.

Who said what
Yesterday’s filing by the Cultural Landscape Foundation said the project was “part of a pattern” in which Trump rushes to transform historic public sites without seeking required approval. The Reflecting Pool’s neutral colors are a “fundamental” part of the “design intent” to “create a reflective surface” between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, foundation president Charles Birnbaum said in a statement. “A blue-tinted basin is more appropriate to a resort or theme park.”

What next?
Workers yesterday “began preliminary surveys and testing” of the proposed site of Trump’s massive Triumphal Arch, The Associated Press said. Like many of Trump’s “contentious” projects to “leave his lasting imprint on Washington,” the arch is being challenged in court.

What happened
European Union foreign ministers yesterday agreed to impose sanctions on Israeli settlers over increasing violence against West Bank Palestinians. The sanctions will hit unidentified “Israeli extremist settlers and entities” and “leading Hamas figures,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. The proposal, which required unanimous support from the 27 EU nations, was finally adopted after Hungary’s new government lifted former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s veto. 

Who said what
“It was high ​time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas (pictured above) said on social media. “Extremisms and ​violence carry consequences.” Israel and Hamas both criticized the sanctions, which were drafted last year amid “rising violence and expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank,” The Washington Post said. 

The financial penalties “could have massive implications” for the targeted Israeli organizations — Regavim, HaShomer Yosh, Amana and Nachala — and their work expanding “settlements and illegal outposts,” The Times of Israel said. But the penalties are “focused more against individuals and groups pushing for the de facto Israeli annexation of the West Bank” than “those involved in violent assaults on Palestinians.”

What next?
The sanctions will take effect “once legal and technical work is complete,” the Post said. 

The Children’s Speech Harmonization Plan enacted five years ago and more recent updates to the National Common Language Law are marginalizing Tibetan identity to the point of erasure, according to Human Rights Watch. And the compulsory use of Chinese as the primary language in schools in Tibet raises “serious concerns under international human rights law,” said a new report by the organization.

Both politically and legally, China is “steadily narrowing the space for minority autonomy in education, language and religion,” said The Diplomat. In December, the National People’s Congress revised the National Common Language Law. It now requires Mandarin to be the “fundamental teaching language” and mandates standardized textbooks throughout the education system. This codification of assimilation policies “marks a new phase” in Beijing’s strategy. It seeks “not merely to manage ethnic diversity but to fundamentally reshape it.”

Videos from Tibet posted on social media have shown young children “not even able to say their names in Tibetan, pronouncing them as if they were Chinese,” said Kris Cheng at The Guardian. And children who have been brought up speaking Tibetan stop speaking it within a year of beginning school.

During the early years of Communist Party rule, China “espoused a certain notion of pluralism for non-Han people,” but the space for tolerance has “narrowed,” said Joe Leahy at the Financial Times. The Chinese state now sees minority languages as “potential threats” to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” 

Viewed more broadly, China’s current policies in Tibet represent “more than a shift in language education,” said The Diplomat. They reflect a “structural transformation” in how China perceives ethnic minorities.