Trump's arch gets a late-night green light. Will a judge stop construction?
Demonstrators stand at Memorial Circle to protest President Trump’s proposed arch on Thursday night as a federal panel heard hours of testimony from concerned citizens. It voted to approve the structure.
Tom Brenner/Getty Images
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Tom Brenner/Getty Images
A federal panel packed with administration allies has given final approval to President Trump’s proposed arch, after hearing nearly eight hours of impassioned pleas from veterans, lawmakers, residents and concerned citizens opposed to the structure.
The National Capital Planning Commission voted 8-4 to greenlight the arch, which would stand 250 feet tall on Memorial Circle, a traffic island on the bridge linking the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. The Trump administration has said it could begin excavation work that same day, despite lacking authorization from Congress and an ongoing legal challenge.
A group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian sued the government earlier this year, arguing that an arch is unlawful without Congressional approval, which the administration has not sought. The Democratic governments of D.C. and Virginia jointly filed a similar lawsuit last weekend.
D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkin consolidated the lawsuits and asked the government to notify the court within an hour of commission approval. That suggests she could issue an 11th-hour preliminary injunction to block construction, as plaintiffs have requested.
The day started with a protest on Memorial Circle, where dozens of people spoke against the arch. The grass underfoot was already marked with white paint. Lawyers for the government told the court in a midday filing that the lines were painted on Saturday by its designated construction firm, seemingly without authorization from the National Park Service.
The commission meeting began at 1 p.m. It was held virtually because of the high volume of public testimony: 131 people were signed up to speak.
Just minutes into public testimony, the livestream crashed, lengthening the meeting by about an hour until it was restored. Over the course of nearly nine hours, commissioners heard from dozens of veterans and their relatives, Democratic lawmakers, historic preservation experts and concerned citizens from D.C. and beyond.
Among their many concerns, critics said the structure would obstruct an important view, insult service members buried on the hallowed ground of nearby Arlington National Cemetery and add a layer of risk to the notoriously complicated D.C. airspace. They have questions about its legality and its cost, which the administration has not confirmed.
Many see the arch as part of Trump’s unilateral effort to memorialize himself in the nation’s capital — and described Democrats’ midterm sweep as a referendum against it.
“Leaving aside all of the legitimate concerns and challenges about the required approvals, funding, land use, single-source bidding, and peer review, the American people spoke this past Tuesday at the ballot box,” said former D.C. resident Emi Yamauchi. “They said enough vanity projects, enough corruption, enough Reflecting Pool travesties.”
Only a handful of speakers offered support for the arch, including Republican Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Brian Mast of Florida, both of whom are veterans.
Much of the night’s testimony was heartfelt and personal: Many speakers had family members buried — or plans for their own future burials — at Arlington National Cemetery. Several implored the commissioners not to ruin their reputations by recording their support for the arch.
“[These are] warnings about the threat your own behavior poses to your political power, your moral authority, the legacy you leave to your descendants, and your eternal souls,” said Stephen Eubank, some seven hours into the public testimony.
As the night wore on, a few speakers even questioned whether the commissioners — who were not shown on screen — were even listening. Many suggested the approval was a foregone conclusion, noting the political makeup of the commission and the fact that Trump-appointed Chair Mark Paoletta and several other members had expressed their support for the arch at the start of the meeting.
The commission started deliberating just before 10 p.m. The discussion lasted less than an hour.
The commissioners who spoke first were Trump allies and appointees. They thanked the speakers for taking the time to share their views, but — in brief comments — expressed their support for moving forward. They continued to cast the arch as a tribute to the nation and those who served, despite the broad pushback from individual veterans and veterans’ groups.
The Trump allies dismissed concerns that the arch would violate D.C.’s restrictions on building heights as well as federal environmental and historic preservation laws. They maintained that Congress authorized the project when it approved a pair of 166-foot columns on Memorial Circle in 1925, which were never built.
And they pointed to recent claims by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the monument will enhance national security — even though officials at the meeting confirmed that no such analysis or details were included in the final submission. In fact, Interior Department official Greg Wischer said “specific national security functions have been filed under seal” in court but that the National Park Service “has not been privy to any national defense preparations.”
The most vocal criticism of the arch came from D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson, a Democrat who sits on the council. He asked questions about the arch’s purpose — military and otherwise — earlier in the meeting and said, during deliberations, that he was dissatisfied with the government’s contradictory answers.
“We cannot approve final site and building plans until we have the final site and building plan,” Mendelson said. He introduced a motion to postpone the vote until those plans could be submitted, or until the commission’s next meeting in early December. The motion failed by a vote of 4 to 8.
Vice Chair Stuart Levenbach, a Trump appointee, expressed concerns about delaying the vote because the “project proponent is under a time constraint and wants the decision today,” suggesting the government wants to “commence building very quickly.”
Within minutes, the commission had given the arch its green light. The Trump administration notified the court within half an hour.
Arch critics look to the courts and Congress for relief
Historic preservation groups wasted no time slamming both the process and the outcome.
Brent Leggs, the president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, called the night’s vote a “sham.”
“It undermines the democratic process, violates federal statute, and insults our nation’s veterans who have made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said in a statement. “From the start, this Arch project has been driven by an artificial sense of urgency, while public opposition has been brushed aside.”
Jimi Shaughnessy, veterans program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement that the organization is disappointed but not surprised. He vowed to “bring this to members of Congress, to ensure this arch is never built. Not here. Not ever.”
Many Democratic lawmakers have vowed to stop — and investigate — the arch after they regain a Congressional majority in January.
Robert Weissman, the co-president of Public Citizen — the consumer rights nonprofit representing the veterans in their lawsuit — told NPR on Thursday that Congress doesn’t need to act to stop the arch, since it never actively approved it. That decision, he said, will be up to the courts.
But, he added: “It would be fine if Congress takes additional measures to block construction, since we’ve seen this lawless administration circumvent the law and court orders so frequently.”
Virginia Rep. Don Beyer has introduced a bill that would prohibit and defund the arch, and said Thursday he expects the number of co-sponsors to grow from 80 to at least 200 in the new year.
And Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, warned commissioners that companies and “officials working to advance a project not authorized by Congress will put themselves at legal risk.”
He argued that the project violates federal environmental and historic preservation laws, which fall within the jurisdiction of the House committee he expects to soon lead.
“I urge all officials and firms involved with this illegal project to consider the legal hazards they may be facing by advancing it, because, in case you hadn’t heard, we’ll soon have a new Congress that takes the rule of law very seriously,” Huffman said.
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