From The Washington Post:
Trump officials say they can build 250-foot arch without Congress’s approval
To build a triumphal arch near Arlington Cemetery, the administration hopes to rely on a 100-year-old authorization for a different project on the site.
The administration has also begun the process of seeking approvals from a pair of federal arts and building commissions that Trump has stacked with his allies, with another hearing slated for Thursday morning.
from a pair of federal arts and building commissions that Trump has stacked with his allies, with another hearing slated for Thursday morning.
But under federal law, certain parts of the city — including Memorial Circle, which is managed by the National Park Service — are considered protected land, and monuments built there require congressional authorization.
White House and agency officials have repeatedly declined to answer whether they will seek authorization for Trump’s arch from the current Congress. Two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s plans, said there are no active plans to do so.
Instead, administration officials have cited a 1924 report by a federal commission charged with designing the Arlington Memorial Bridge. That report called for building a pair of 166-foot-tall columns, surmounted by statues, on Columbia Island that would frame the nearby Lincoln Memorial.
Congress formally ratified the commission’s report in 1925, and the Memorial Bridge was soon built. However, the columns were not constructed, and Trump officials today argue that in building the arch they would be carrying out past lawmakers’ wishes.
“Congress authorized the arch project when it approved the design set out in Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission’s report,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a filing last month.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has made similar arguments, including at a meeting of the Commission of Fine Arts last month.
“President Trump believes that this year’s celebration of 250 years of American independence is the perfect moment to finally realize this long-standing, over-century-old vision, but yet unfilled vision for Columbia Island,” Burgum said as he encouraged the Trump-appointed arts commissioners to support the project.
Burgum also said the administration’s new proposal is “building on” the 166-foot-tall columns conceived a century ago, noting that the columns for Trump’s planned arch would also be 166 feet tall. But they would be topped by an additional 84 feet of pedestal and statuary to bring the arch’s total height to 250 feet.
The administration’s argument has been panned by lawyers suing to halt the project, outside experts and Democratic members of Congress who say it defies precedent and is an attempted work-around of federal law.
“The notion Congress a century ago authorized construction of this 250-foot arch in Memorial Circle is absurd,” said Wendy Liu, a lawyer at Public Citizen Litigation Group. The firm, the litigating arm of nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen, is representing military veterans and an architectural historian who are challenging the project because it would alter the views between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
The authorization was “for a now-defunct commission to design and construct Arlington Memorial Bridge, which was completed a century ago, pursuant to a 10-year construction and funding schedule,” Liu added. “It did not authorize this arch.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees national parks, has said that the administration was obligated to seek congressional approval for the arch. In an interview on Wednesday, he drew comparisons to Trump’s decision to tear down the White House’s East Wing and begin resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool without congressional authorization.
“This is their playbook,” Huffman said. “The fact that they’re trotting out this tortured argument that a 100-year-old authorization for something totally different satisfies a law today is laughable, but consistent with their pattern of ignoring Congress.”
Huffman is among several top Democrats on committees overseeing federal lands and resources who have joined the legal challenge to the arch.
Sarah Blaskey, Jonathan O’Connell, Olivia George and Jonathan Edwards contributed to this report.
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