A Trump appointee on Thursday said the administration would end a federally required review of how President Donald Trump’s planned arch would harm historic sites.
“We are hereby terminating consultation,” Travis Voyles, the vice chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, wrote to local historic preservation offices and advocacy groups that had been consulting with the administration on how to reduce the harmful effects of the planned 250-foot-tall arch.
Voyles wrote that the advisory council would instead make its own recommendations and deliver them by Oct. 7 to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency is overseeing the arch project.
The move would conclude one of the last remaining steps before Trump can begin construction on the arch, which he has said is a priority to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary. The administration is hoping to win approval for the project from a federal commission, led by Trump allies, and begin construction as soon as November.
A spokeswoman for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation did not immediately respond to questions about Voyles’s letter and the council’s next steps.
As part of its required historic preservation review, the administration acknowledged that the arch would harm dozens of nearby sites, such as Arlington National Cemetery, and proposed mitigations, such as creating new signs and webpages to explain the project to the public. Local preservationists and consulting groups said the administration’s response was insufficient and urged the officials to shrink, move or seek alternatives to the towering arch.
“There has been no authentic negotiation,” said Charles A. Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a local advocacy and preservation group that participated in the review. “Everything is being taken off the table, and this is now being forced upon us.”
The Trump administration has authority to unilaterally end the review process, but Birnbaum and other advocates said the power had been rarely invoked and usually came after protracted negotiations that lasted months or years. The Cultural Landscape Foundation and some other advocacy groups were invited only to a single meeting, held on Sept. 9.
Under federal law, the administration must consult with local historic-preservation offices and seek to reach an agreement on how to “avoid, minimize, or mitigate” the harms of its planned project.
The arch would be constructed on Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington’s boundaries near Arlington National Cemetery and managed by the National Park Service.
Veterans groups and Democrats have urged Trump not to pursue the project, saying it would diminish the experience of visiting the cemetery and would be illegal since it has not been authorized by Congress.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (Oregon), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees money for federal parks, on Thursday will introduce legislation to deny funding for planning or construction of the arch at Memorial Circle, his office said. Merkley will ask senators to immediately pass the measure by unanimous consent, meaning that a single lawmaker could block the bill.
The Trump administration contends it does not need congressional approval for the arch because lawmakers a century ago authorized a somewhat similar project near the site.
Preservationists also told the administration this week that they wanted to continue discussing the arch’s impact, particularly after Trump announced Sunday that he would convert the arch into a “military complex” that would house snipers, drones and ammunition.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that he made the move “at the strong request” of the U.S. military, and “for National Security purposes.” The president has repeatedly invoked national security to defend his priorities, including his planned White House ballroom.
The tactic has frustrated Democrats and drawn criticism from several federal judges who say that national security alone cannot be a blanket reason for Trump’s construction projects to proceed.
Some experts in historic-preservation law said that further reviews are necessary if the administration is changing the purpose of the arch from a tourist attraction to a military complex.
“If we believe the President that he is turning what was a public memorial arch into a military installation complete with ammunition, explosives, drones and snipers, the Secretary of Interior will be permitting a different project than the one the agencies and the public have been reviewing,” Greg Werkheiser, an attorney with Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm focused on historic preservation, wrote in an email. “That’s a clear legal vulnerability.”
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