Trump’s arch is poised for final approval two days after the president’s election drubbing

By Sunlen Serfaty, Isabelle Khurshudyan, CNN

(CNN) — A final vote to approve President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch on Thursday is poised to kick off a fresh round of legal wrangling as efforts to stop its construction intensify through the courts.

The National Capital Planning Commission, one of two federal agencies that oversees architectural and design changes in Washington, is expected to greenlight the 250-foot monument at its afternoon meeting. The Trump administration has said it can begin construction the same day.

Approval from the commission, which is stacked with Trump-appointed supporters, would mark the closing step in jamming through one of the central projects in the president’s quest to reshape Washington’s landscape, and which the White House is eager to move forward with before a new Democrat-controlled Congress comes to power in January.

Trump has said the goal would be to complete the arch before he leaves office in two years.

But that aggressive timeline is likely to be complicated by legal challenges, including a high-profile lawsuit brought by veterans and preservationists. The opponents say its scale and location would disrupt the sightline of the row of national landmarks that includes the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington House and the Robert E. Lee Memorial, and that the towering monument will break the solemnity of funerals of Arlington National Cemetery.

They argue that the project is illegal because it does not have approval from Congress, pointing to the Commemorative Works Act which requires congressional authorization for new monuments in Washington.

On Wednesday, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who is overseeing the case, has said she must be told of any decision by the planning commission within an hour. The administration must also give 30 minutes notice before any action on construction.

However, the order would not, on its face, stop groundbreaking, and the Trump administration has gotten around court-ordered limits to act before.

Critics are expected to attend the meeting to offer public comment against its approval, and a protest is planned before the planning commission convenes.

But ahead of the meeting, the commission’s chair said he would vote to approve the project, calling it an “historic effort” by Trump.

A president’s personal endeavor

The arch is just one example of the president’s efforts to leave a legacy in DC. Construction and renovation projects around Washington, from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the Kennedy Center, have figured heavily in his second term — something his critics have labeled “vanity projects.”

Yet the president began his first public appearance on Wednesday following an electoral rout for his party in the midterms celebrating progress on the construction another high-profile endeavor, the White House ballroom.

Sitting in the Oval Office in October as his triumphal arch was first being proposed last year, Trump presented different scaled models of the structure — envisioned to be the largest arch in the world.

Asked by a reporter who the arch was for, Trump pointed to himself and said: “Me.”

The president later has said the arch will commemorate the nation’s 250 anniversary, the American spirit, the American military and American “competence.”

More recently, he has argued that the arch, located in a busy traffic circle near the Potomac River, would serve both as a tourist attraction and a military complex to store drones and ammunition.

While the final plans submitted for the planning commission to approve Thursday did not include the military components Trump described, administration officials have said they would not require any structural modifications and could be fully integrated into the existing design.

The administration has already laid out an aggressive plan for construction that would include two 10-hour shifts daily for work to happen nearly around the clock.

Chutkan asked an administration attorney last week, “What’s the harm to the government to wait three or four months? What’s the rush to put this arch up?” She asked if the president’s main desire is to “bedazzle the city.”

Trump has said plainly that he wants his arch to rival the famed Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

“The most beautiful one is the one in Paris, the Arc de Triomphe. It’s beautiful, big. Ours is going to be bigger and more beautiful,” he has said.

Adverse effects

In a review released by the National Park Service in August, the administration has acknowledged that the arch would have “adverse” effects on as many as 42 historic sites, with the most serious concentrated on six near the structure. These include Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial corridor and Arlington House, a memorial to Robert E. Lee featuring the home where he lived before leading the Confederate army.

Among the adverse effects to surrounding landmarks, the report found that the arch would alter the “design continuity” of iconic Washington settings and would alter views of surrounding monuments. When completed, the arch will be seen all the way to the US Capitol, the Georgetown waterfront and the Pentagon, among other viewpoints.

NPS said it considered alternatives — including a smaller arch, a relocation, a no-build option and eliminating the proposed statues on top. But none of these were taken up because they would either have “greater impacts to historic properties or would not meet the location-dependent purpose of the undertaking.”

But ultimately, the agency concluded that the arch must stay at the proposed site on the banks of the Potomac River as the project is “inherently location dependent” and “not interchangeable” with any other placement.

That assessment, known as a Section 106 review, is mandated under the National Historic Preservation Act and requires independent groups that have an interest or expertise in historical preservation matters related to a project to sign off.

Last month, the administration said it will end the Section 106 review, terminating the consulting process, essentially giving up on reaching an agreement, and allowing Trump to bypass a significant hurdle in the approval process for getting built.

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