Donald Trump’s fixation on his White House ballroom endeavor is notorious for a great many reasons, but among the most prominent is the president’s broken promise: He repeatedly boasted that the public wouldn’t have to pay for the vanity project, and there’s ample evidence that those assurances weren’t true.

Unfortunately, this is apparently not the only example of its kind. The Atlantic reported:

The pathway that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office has long been paved in Tennessee flagstone. Every president since Harry Truman made the 45-second commute, and made it without complaint, until Donald Trump. The dun rock would not do. Instead, Trump wanted polished African granite, carved in Italy, with a flamed-finish stripe — slightly raised, to prevent slips — running down the middle. As workers tore up the flagstone in March, a reporter asked Trump who was paying for the enhancements. “Paid for by me,” he replied.

But that wasn’t true.

The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer obtained budget documents from the National Park Service (which have not been independently verified by MS NOW) that reportedly showed that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers nearly $700,000. The same report added that this is now also “part of a $1.3 million project that included repairing adjacent stone and masonry and providing new hardware for nearby doors.”

It dovetails with the park service spending nearly $350,000 to, as The Atlantic put it, “remove and replace the stucco on the colonnade wall, a project that cleared the way for Trump to affix gold frames and plaques mocking some of his predecessors.”

Broadly speaking, there are two main elements to this story. The first, obviously, is the importance of the gap between Trump’s claims and the truth: The more the Republican assures the public that they won’t be on the hook for his assorted fixations, the more we learn that Americans are in fact paying for many of his projects.

The second angle of note is the degree to which the White House is, for all intents and purposes, plundering the National Park Service.

About a month ago, The New York Times, relying on a federal contracting database, reported that the administration had redirected at least $67 million worth of park entrance fees to help fund Trump’s renovation projects in and around the nation’s capital. A related report from The Washington Post, published two weeks later, put the total at nearly $78 million.

That’s not illegal, but it’s a real problem for the parks that hoped to use those funds for repairs to deteriorating roads and infrastructure, among other things.

The Atlantic’s article advances this reporting, adding, “In order to pay for the president’s projects, the parks have had to cancel needed repairs, slash their budgets, and operate with fewer employees.” (When Scherer asked the Interior Department for a comment, a spokesperson responded by criticizing Obama-era spending on the parks. It wasn’t clear why that was relevant.)

Earlier this month, 11 senators sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum demanding answers from the administration on the use of national park entry fees for the president’s “vanity projects.”

“The lack of transparency around awards for these beautification projects, as well as the loss in revenue meant for the maintenance and betterment of our national parks threatens the public’s trust and the long-term integrity of our nation’s most beloved public lands,” the letter said.

There were no Republican senators among the 11 signatories.

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