A federal panel led by President Trump’s allies is expected on Thursday to issue final approval for his planned 250-foot triumphal arch, allowing a blitz of construction that the Trump administration has said could begin almost immediately after the vote.
But broader, perhaps existential, challenges to one of the president’s prized projects lie ahead.
At the same time, a federal judge is considering whether to halt the project for circumventing congressional approval and a host of other laws. Democrats in Congress, fresh off a landslide victory in Tuesday’s midterm elections, are threatening to kill Mr. Trump’s arch when they take control of both chambers in January.
“The Great Gatsby party is over,” said Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, who plans to testify before the National Capital Planning Commission on Thursday. “The arch is an illegal project. It’s a monstrosity. It’s a slap in the face to veterans and to the history and the aesthetics of this sacred place. It’s unthinkable that this would be allowed to proceed.”
The vote on the arch comes as the Trump administration continues to reel from a historic defeat on Tuesday, when voters signaled that a key concern was the president’s priorities. Even with an electorate angry over high prices, Mr. Trump continued pushing forward on Wednesday on his glitzy projects in Washington, celebrating progress on his luxury White House ballroom.
There are 131 people signed up to testify Thursday before the commission, which has received almost uniformly negative responses about the arch. Many have argued that it would detract from the solemn atmosphere of the nearby Arlington National Cemetery.
Brent Leggs, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, plans to urge that the arch proposal be moved to another site that “more appropriately honors our nation’s commemorative goals and our shared obligation to protect America’s historic places.”
Despite the public outcry, Mark Paoletta, the chairman of the commission, has made it clear that the panel plans to move forward. The commission’s vote on Thursday, which would likely come after the public testimony, marks the final review step for the project. The administration has said in court that construction could start the same day.
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington could also rule as soon as Thursday on requests stemming from multiple lawsuits to halt the project. That could mean that the arch passes review, starts construction and then pauses all in a matter of hours.
A group of veterans in February brought an initial suit to block the arch, saying that their experience of the views and the solemnity at Arlington National Cemetery would be degraded by the towering monument. Last week, a separate suit brought by the District of Columbia and the state of Virginia introduced more concrete harms: They said the project would clog traffic, disrupt emergency responses, threaten the environment and require them to spend resources addressing those problems.
Judge Chutkan is now considering the two cases together. The second suit likely strengthens the challenge, legal experts said.
Looming over the litigation is an August Supreme Court ruling that allowed the president to continue construction on the White House ballroom. A group of preservationists had sought to block the ballroom, and the court found that their aesthetic objectionswere not enough to give them standing to sue. The administration has argued that the veterans opposing the arch are in the same position. But the state of Virginia and D.C. more clearly are not.
“They can cite things with real price tags,” David A. Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an email. The local governments may have to hire more police officers to manage the traffic caused by the arch, or increase environmental inspections of water runoff prompted by the project.
That could enable Judge Chutkan to move past the standing arguments, Mr. Super said, to the central question in the cases: Is the administration trying to build the arch without following the law?
Judge Chutkan has ordered that the administration alert her within 30 minutes of any construction activity or preparation for construction. Her comments at a hearing last week suggested that she was skeptical of the administration’s justification for why it needed to rush the project.
On the political timeline, however, the administration has just two months to set the project in motion before Democrats are expected to begin trying to obstruct it. A Park Service official said in court this week that immediately after the project is authorized, contractors would begin installing fencing around Memorial Circle, delivering gravel, staging equipment and connecting utilities to the construction site.
“The government’s arguments have been, ‘Oh, no final decision has been made, you sued too early, we don’t even know if we’re going to build an arch,’” said Nicolas Sansone, the lead plaintiffs’ attorney for the veterans suing over the arch. “That was ridiculous at the outset. It’s even more ridiculous now.”
The administration has repeatedly said it is aiming to finish the project before the end of the president’s term. But other documents it has compiled lay out a construction timeline that would stretch for three years or more.
There has also been a disconnect between what the Trump administration has told the courts about its plans for Memorial Circle, and what the president has told the planning commission.
In comments about the arch this week, Mr. Trump referred to the project as the “Triumphal Arc Military Complex,” and said it would be a site for drones and snipers.
However, documents submitted to the planning commission make no mention of a national security purpose for the arch.
“From a beautification standpoint, it’ll be the most beautiful arc in the world,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s more beautiful than the Arc of Triumph. Quality of material we’re using is at a better, higher level. The size is about 20 percent larger.”
He called the project “one of the great things we’ve ever done.”
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