Since his party’s midterm election drubbing, President Trump has publicly retreated deeper into the big, bold and often-gilded Washington construction projects he sees as a lasting legacy. The construction, he said this week, is “relaxing.”
That serenity may not last long. In two short months, Democrats, concerned at the way Mr. Trump has seemingly brushed aside federal law in pursuit of his projects, will take control of Congress and have new powers to begin focusing on them, too. Federal judges also have become increasingly fed up.
The result is a looming high-stakes showdown over Mr. Trump’s glitzy building agenda, one that could alter the face of Washington for years to come.
The Trump administration is rushing to push as many projects as far along as possible before January, under the theory that lawmakers and the courts will be less inclined to halt or undo what is already done. That is a lesson Mr. Trump learned in his career as a real estate developer, and one he applied early in his term to abruptly demolish the White House’s East Wing and to build a luxury ballroom in its place.
“President Trump is moving at lightning speed because we don’t have time to waste in our mission to make America greater than ever before,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman.
But Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who is set to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats are considering how best to assert their new powers. Under consideration: language prohibiting the projects in federal spending bills or other must-pass legislation, intense oversight and lawsuits.
“These were illegal, unauthorized projects, just like the demolition of the East Wing, and Congress will assert its authority over federal government properties by denying funds for any more illegal purposes, which amount to criminal vandalism,” Mr. Raskin said.
For the better part of two years, Mr. Trump has attempted to build as he pleased throughout the nation’s capital, brushing aside concerns that he was circumventing Congress, the public, building codes, his own architects and numerous federal laws. He has bypassed or stacked review panels, reinterpreted decades-old statutes and moved at a pace seemingly intended to outrun the oversight of courts.
Some of those projects are finished: the paved-over Rose Garden, the White House helipad, the gilded Oval Office. On Thursday, the president took steps to make that last change permanent.
But most of his most prized projects remain unbuilt or unfinished. And what happens over the coming months could determine whether they stay that way.
Construction on the president’s planned triumphal arch was due to start this week, but a federal judge has temporarily halted it while litigation proceeds. Other projects have not broken ground: a Garden of Heroes (which Mr. Trump this week said would have as many as 500 statues), an elite-level golf course in East Potomac Park and a promenade behind the Lincoln Memorial. His renovation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts remains in limbo. Even his signature project, the White House ballroom, needs at least another year of work, the president has said.
Congress has many tools to stymie the president’s projects outside the court system. But Republicans have declined to use them.
“That could mean a joint resolution barring construction,” said Andrea Katz, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “It could mean an appropriations rider: ‘No funds shall be appropriated for any of the following construction projects.’ Obviously, they could do oversight.”
Stanley M. Brand, the former top lawyer in the House, said either chamber could vote to sue to enforce Congress’s constitutional role and block any projects it has not expressly authorized. It could also vigorously exercise its oversight role, conducting investigations that could cover anyone involved in the building blitz. That could include issuing subpoenas to donors or officials involved in spending decisions.
“If you authorize money for a purpose that’s not included in the appropriations law, you can be subject to suit and criminal penalties,” Mr. Brand said.
To be sure, not all of Mr. Trump’s construction projects are likely to spark congressional investigations. For instance, repairs to Washington’s fountains have drawn mostly praise by those who live nearby. Democrats argue that, regardless of the merit of any individual project, Mr. Trump must follow the law when carrying out building plans.
The president’s dominance of the planning commission that must approve his projects is also set to end with the new Congress, as many of his projects are still winding through review. Two members of the National Capital Planning Commission represent congressional committee chairs who will become Democrats in January, leaving the president in control of only half of the commission’s members.
Crucially, tied votes fail under the commission’s bylaws. And it is already too late for the president’s appointees to change those rules by the end of the year. That means that approvals for the president’s projects could grind to a halt after the commission’s December meeting.
The rush to build, and the newfound limitations on the president’s building power, were laid bare during a roller-coaster Thursday evening that began at the commission.
Mr. Trump’s allies on the panel hurried through a marathon session to issue final approval for his planned 250-foot arch along the Potomac, between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The president hoped to begin work that same night.
“As I understand it, the project proponent is under a time constraint and wants the decision today,” said Stuart Levenbach, the Trump-appointed vice chairman of the panel.
He left unstated what that time constraint was. But the outcome of the election loomed over the meeting — and was invoked by several people testifying who implored the commissioners to recognize widespread opposition to the project.
After the commission’s late-night vote, the administration immediately alerted the Federal District Court judge overseeing a lawsuit seeking to block the arch, Tanya S. Chutkan, of the outcome, and then of its final decision to begin construction. She halted the project minutes later.
On Friday morning, with no construction underway, allies of the president rolled out a slickly produced website promoting the arch. The website is credited to the United States Triumphal Arch Foundation. That group, incorporated in Delaware earlier this year, lists its president as Randy Evans, a lawyer who served as ambassador to Luxembourg during Mr. Trump’s first term. It is not listed in the I.R.S.’s database of tax-exempt charities. Mr. Evans did not respond to questions sent by The New York Times on Friday evening.
Representative Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery and Ronald Reagan National Airport, hailed the ruling halting the arch but said that “this fight is not over.”
“While this decision prevents Donald Trump from immediately implementing his plans to create a monument to his own ego, the courts and Congress must put in place permanent safeguards to stop the Trump administration from violating the law and proceeding with this project,” he added.
Before Democrats in Congress can do that, opponents of the president’s projects fear a rush of construction.
“I’m expecting between now and the seating of the next Congress a worst-case scenario,” said Charles Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has sued over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the Kennedy Center and the Garden of Heroes.
Just as the administration quickly tore down more than 400 trees in East Potomac Park over Columbus Day weekend, Mr. Birnbaum is warily eyeing the holidays, when Washington empties out.
“There will be no gatekeepers present,” he said, “and they’re going to try and create an air of inevitability.”
The administration is already pushing forward with the president’s next priorities. Initial plans for the luxury golf course in East Potomac Park are scheduled to come before the Commission of Fine Arts, an advisory body, this month and then the planning commission in December. And the government has said it plans to close most of the park on Nov. 15.
The administration has also submitted to the fine arts commission this month plans for significant changes to West Potomac Park, a strip of land just south of the National Mall where Mr. Trump has proposed the Garden of Heroes. The submitted plans make no mention of the garden, but plaintiffs suing to block it have noted in court that they bear a “striking resemblance” to public renderings of it.
“This is not the Garden of Heroes,” a National Park Service official insisted last month in a meeting with outside groups consulting on the project.
But judges have increasingly lost patience with similar government pronouncements — that it is just doing “routine maintenance” on the golf course, that it is merely mulling ideas about what to build.
“What we saw with the ballroom is that they are fine pushing the boundaries of what the court has said, and they seem to be fine angering the judges,” said Phil Mendelson, the Democratic chairman of the D.C. Council, who sits on the planning commission and has on several occasions been the only vote opposing the president’s projects. “But I think their ability to keep doing that is going to get more difficult.”
He said he expects that the incoming Washington mayor, Janeese Lewis George, will confront the administration more forcefully than the current mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, has. Ms. Bowser has largely adopted a nonconfrontational stance with the president during his second term, given Washington’s limited self-governance and vulnerability to interference from the president and Republican-controlled Congress.
Three members of the planning commission who represent Ms. Bowser or were appointed by her have followed that strategy, too, abstaining from some votes that might anger the president. All of them voted, using muted language, to oppose the arch on Thursday, another sign of the coming change.
Even if the restraining order on the arch is lifted, it is unlikely that the government can get far with the project before January. A construction timeline outlined by the government said it would take two to three months to prepare the site, stage equipment and excavate. That is all before the foundation work could begin.
David A. Fahrenthold contributed reporting.
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