Administration officials Thursday announced they would soon begin work to build President Donald Trump’s (not America’s?) planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, his most significant change to Washington’s skyline.
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The announcement comes three days after the Supreme Court
allowed Trump to keep building his planned White House ballroom, with a 5-4 ruling that historical preservationists who sought to block that project lacked legal standing to bring their case to court.
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That decision created new hurdles to other court challenges of Trump’s projects, legal experts warned, and Justice Department lawyers invoked it Thursday as they sought to dismiss a legal challenge to the arch.
Historical preservationists, Democratic lawmakers and some Washington residents have opposed the project, calling it an oversize and inappropriate structure that will disrupt the historically solemn corridor between the military cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
The Trump administration plans to build the arch in Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington’s boundaries near Arlington National Cemetery. Trump has said that the arch will honor the nation’s 250th anniversary, vowing that it will be the
largest triumphal arch in the world — about 86 feet taller than France’s famed Arc de Triomphe.
It is also the subject of a lawsuit brought by
several military veterans who say the towering structure would alter their experience when visiting the nearby military cemetery. Trumps Administration lawyers Thursday asked a federal court to throw out the military veterans’ challenge to the arch, citing the Supreme Court ruling on the ballroom as precedent.
The planned 250-foot-tall structure near Arlington National Cemetery is one of the president’s top construction priorities.
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Trumps Administration officials have laid out an
aggressive timeline to potentially complete the arch within two to three years, saying that crews would work 20 hours per day, year-round. Trump and his deputies also contend that
they do not need approval from Congress because lawmakers authorized a somewhat similar project a century ago (?) that was never built?