Veterans and Democrats intensify fight against Trump’s planned arch

Veterans and Democrats are escalating efforts to prevent construction on President Donald Trump’s planned arch as the anticipated start of site work approaches, arguing the project is illegal and would diminish the experience of visiting nearby Arlington National Cemetery.

VoteVets, a political organization aligned with Democratic veterans, on Tuesday launched a new messaging campaign to mobilize more veterans against the planned 250-foot-tall arch.

In a 2½-minute video, which was first shared with the Washington Post, speakers call attention to the Trump administration’s stated plan to spend 20 hours per day building the arch over several years, which they note could conflict with military burials. The arch also would feature an observation deck for tourists to gaze at the city — and look out at the cemetery.

“We don’t need tourists overlooking funerals. I’m just appalled,” Karen Meredith, a Gold Star mother whose son is buried at Arlington, said in the video.

Home of the Brave, a political advocacy group whose leaders and advisers include prominent Trump critics such as commentator Bill Kristol and former Biden administration official Susan Rice, is also supporting the campaign. In an interview, people involved in the effort said they would start with social media posts this week and could expand to paid promotion.

Meanwhile, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D., Maine) on Tuesday urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) to sue and halt construction before it begins. Johnson and other Republican leaders have shown no interest to date in blocking Trump’s construction projects.

“Congress has neither appropriated funding nor granted authority for this project under the Commemorative Works Act. The Administration is building it anyway, betting this body will do nothing to stop it,” wrote Pingree, the top Democrat on a House subcommittee that oversees funding for the Interior department. “I am asking you to take all necessary steps to file suit immediately, while there is still ground left to save.”

Trump officials, emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling last week that allowed construction of the president’s ballroom to proceed, signaled Thursday that site work on the arch would begin this month.

The court’s decision, which found preservationists seeking to stop Trump’s planned ballroom likely lacked standing, has become part of the administration’s construction strategy. Justice Department lawyers cited the ballroom ruling in asking a federal judge to dismiss a legal challenge brought by three military veterans and a historic preservationist, who are seeking to halt the triumphal arch.

The high court’s ruling also sent advocacy groups scrambling to reconsider how to oppose the president’s construction projects. Some say they are reassessing whether they need to have other individuals or organizations join their challenges.

Several legal experts pushed back on the Trump administration’s efforts to invoke the Supreme Court’s ballroom ruling to dismiss the arch and other projects.

“The Justice Department would like to turn the ballroom decision into a universal immunity card for presidential construction projects,” said Greg Werkheiser, a co-founder of Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm that has advised preservation organizations. “But the Supreme Court decided one standing question involving one plaintiff, one project, one factual record.”

Trump has spoken for nearly a year about his plans to build a triumphal arch that 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. The administration plans to erect it on federal parkland in Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout near Arlington National Cemetery and just inside the city’s boundaries.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last week that construction would soon begin.

“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum wrote on X.

While Burgum’s announcement catalyzed a wave of new legal filings, Trump officials have argued that it is too soon for a federal judge to decide whether the project can be halted because Trump and other officials’ statements are not binding and the project has not been formally approved. The National Capital Planning Commission, a federal review panel that reviews the administration’s construction projects, has issued preliminary approval for the arch but has yet to award final approval.

Trump officials also said last week that the work they plan to do soon at the arch site is for informational purposes.

“This activity is not construction, or demolition in preparation for construction, of an arch,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing Friday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ordered that the administration provide her with 48 hours’ notice “before engaging in any activity on Memorial Circle” other than on-site information gathering.

Preservationists have stressed that an arch does not belong in the solemn corridor between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Charles Birnbaum, the founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy organization, invoked 1916 comments by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., a landscape architect who helped design Washington.

Olmsted said that “to build a monumental feature such as an arch would be a ‘slap in the face’ to the Lincoln Memorial,” Birnbaum said in the VoteVets video.

Paul Eaton, a retired major general and VoteVets adviser, told the Post that he has heard from Republican veterans who are also opposed to a new structure towering over the cemetery. He called for veterans to submit comments to their lawmakers and to the National Capital Planning Commission.

“There’s nothing partisan about what we’re doing right now. It has everything to do with how the United States honors its dead,” said Eaton, whose father’s remains are interred at the cemetery. “That’s why we are so focused on this particular vanity project on the part of Mr. Trump.”