President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing forward with a monumental 250-foot arch near Washington’s National Mall. Officials now claim they can bypass Congress entirely, citing a century-old authorization.
Donald Trump’s administration plans to build 250 Ft Arch without Congress’s approval
The proposed site is Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout on the man-made Columbia Island, for his planned 250-foot arch. Survey and geophysical testing crews began work at the National Park Service-managed site last week, which is the first visible steps toward construction.
Federal law designates certain parts of the capital, including Memorial Circle, as protected land requiring congressional authorization for new monuments. Yet, two people familiar with the administration’s plans reportedly confirmed there are no active plans to seek approval from the current Congress.
Instead, Donald Trump’s administration is anchoring its legal argument in a 1924 report by the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission. That report proposed two 166-foot-tall columns topped with statues on Columbia Island, framing the Lincoln Memorial. Congress ratified the commission’s design in 1925. The bridge was built, but the columns never materialized. Trump officials now contend the 250-foot arch merely fulfills that past vision.
“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 recent court filing. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reinforced this stance before the Commission of Fine Arts, a body that Trump has his allies in.
“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.
The new proposal builds on the 1924 concept but supersizes it. While the columns themselves would match the original 166-foot height, they’d carry an additional 84 feet of pedestal and statuary, reaching 250 feet total. Critics are firing back. Lawyers suing to halt the project, watchdog groups, and Democratic lawmakers call the argument a legally flimsy end-run around congressional oversight.
(Source: The Washington Post)
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory.
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