Washington — A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from beginning construction on President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch late Thursday, siding — for now — with a group of Vietnam veterans and the District of Columbia and Virginia, which sued to stop the project.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that the government cannot start any “construction-related activity” for 14 days, while further legal proceedings play out. In a 33-page ruling, Chutkan wrote that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing the federal government did not follow required legal processes before moving to build the 250-foot triumphal arch. She also said Virginia and D.C. likely have standing to sue, pointing to “tangible economic harms” caused by traffic problems at the construction site.
The ruling came shortly after the National Capital Planning Commission voted Thursday night to approve plans for the arch, giving the final go-ahead for the monument that’s set to be constructed between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
The NCPC, which acts as the federal government’s planning agency for the region and is stacked with Trump allies, voted 8-4 to greenlight the project after almost 9 hours of public comments from members of Congress, veterans, architects and Washington, D.C., and Virginia residents.
Chutkan’s order aside, it’s unclear how soon construction of the arch could start, though the Justice Department said in a court filing last month that it could begin as soon as Thursday.
In a separate filing Wednesday night, the Trump administration said that a construction company “may be — but is not necessarily — arranging off-site preparations for construction mobilization in anticipation of permit approval” at the site.
Ahead of the meeting, the NCPC’s executive director, Mark Paoletta, recommended approval of the final site and building plans for the structure, which is supposed to celebrate 250 years of American independence.
Paoletta, the top lawyer at the Office of Management and Budget, heralded Mr. Trump’s “historic vision” for the structure and said it would be the “grandest arch ever built by mankind.”
But California Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said during the hearing that the arch is “illegal” and would “disrupt the solemn connection” between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
“This arch would dishonor America, our ideals, and our laws,” Huffman said during remarks to the planning commission, adding that Congress is the appropriate body for debating the proposed monument.
One Marine veteran who spoke in opposition to the proposal, Jimi Shaughnessy, said “a dominating arch with a carnival-like atmosphere of tourists, food trucks and buses is abhorrent and insulting to those who gave all and to their families.”
“Instead of focusing on the issues facing military families, this administration is intent on spending taxpayer dollars to site, plan, and design a monument no one asked for, and are content with bypassing any laws or regulations that may prevent them from breaking ground,” he said.
The arch itself will be 166 feet tall and topped with “three gilded figures” — a gold, winged female figure flanked by a gold flying eagle on each side — bringing its overall height to 250 feet, according to documents filed with the NCPC. The structure will sit close to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, though the Federal Aviation Administration determined it will pose “no hazard to air navigation,” with a “condition for safety lighting that includes a non-standard eternal flame and continuous floodlighting.”
The arch will also feature an observation deck, and the Trump administration has estimated that it could draw between 2,000 and 22,400 visitors each day.
It’s expected to take three years to build the arch, which will be located in the center of what is called Memorial Circle, across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial. It’s unclear how much the project will cost, and who will foot the bill.
Mr. Trump said in September that his “Triumphal Arch” would be a “top grade Military Complex” and house drones and sniper ammunition. But the documents from the NCPC do not include the military usage.
Lawyers for the Justice Department declined to provide more details about the national security features in an October hearing.
The commission received more than 1,300 public comments about the project, most of which were in opposition, it said.
The NCPC’s approval comes as Chutkan weighs how to act. A group of Vietnam War veterans, as well as the Commonwealth of Virginia and the city of Washington, D.C., have filed lawsuits arguing that the Trump administration is acting without congressional authorization and is not complying with the required procedures to construct the monument.
In an order Tuesday, Chutkan required the government to provide her notice within one hour of any NCPC vote and a thirty-minute notice to any preparation for construction of the arch to give her time to issue a decision on whether to block construction.
The government filed the required notices late Thursday, and Chutkan responded by issuing a temporary restraining order that blocked “construction, excavation, demolition, land-disturbance, utility installation, or roadway-closure activity, or any other construction-related activity” at the site.
In a hearing last month, Chutkan said the most important issue for her is whether the Vietnam War veterans had the legal right to sue. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court found that a group of plaintiffs who brought a similar suit to block the White House ballroom construction likely did not have legal standing to challenge the project.
In court filings, the Justice Department called the plaintiffs’ motions “breathless” and urged Chutkan to follow the Supreme Court’s decision in the White House ballroom case, but attorneys for the groups of plaintiffs argued that their legal arguments were different than the ballroom case and urged Chutkan to halt the arch’s construction.
Two of the plaintiffs, Vietnam veterans Michael Lemmon and Shaun Byrnes, told Chutkan in a hearing last month that the arch construction would impact their experience when visiting graves at Arlington National Cemetery, and said they would be harmed by the arch’s size and purpose.
In a separate suit brought in late October, Virginia and the District of Columbia sued, and the case was assigned to Chutkan, who had heard arguments the day before from the Vietnam veterans group. The state’s attorneys general argued that “as soon as Defendants break ground on this project, they will inflict irreparable harm” on them because “the Arch project will inevitably snarl traffic between the jurisdictions, produce pollution and stormwater runoff in the Potomac, interfere with emergency services, and pose numerous other challenges.”
