Veterans ask federal judge to block Trump’s arch unless Congress approves it

The Justice Department said Wednesday construction will begin on Nov. 5.

With the Trump administration signaling that work on the triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery could begin two weeks from Thursday, opponents of the project urged a federal judge to issue an order blocking the construction unless it is authorized by lawmakers.

The request for a preliminary injunction comes a day after the Justice Department filed notice with a federal judge indicating that construction on the arch could begin on Nov. 5, immediately after the National Capital Planning Commission is set to grant its final approval of the project.

Judge Tanya Chutkan had previously ordered that the government must give at least 14 days’ notice before starting work on the arch. Wednesday’s notice would keep with that timeframe.

The Vietnam-era veterans who have brought a lawsuit against the arch asked Chutkan to step in so that the administration can’t “render the arch a fait accompli before this Court has made a final determination whether Defendants’ project is unlawful.”

The veterans’ filing accuses the administration of having “barreled ahead, doing site testing, drawing architectural plans, and seeking approvals from commissions populated by friends of the administration.”  

All the while, the filing says, the Trump administration has “failed to obtain (or even to seek) approval from the one body that, by law, must authorize the project: Congress.”

The administration argues that the bill signed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925 providing for the construction of Memorial Bridge also authorizes the arch, because the initial plan called for columns at the end of the bridge.

Opponents describe the administration’s argument as “entirely untethered” from the text of that 1925 law.

Trump’s proposal would put the 250-foot arch in a traffic circle across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial at the foot of the national cemetery. It currently faces legal challenges by the veterans and preservationists.

The administration acknowledged in September that the arch would cause “adverse effects” on the setting and views along the rive, but those impacts “cannot be fully avoided” because the arch’s location is “central to the undertaking.”

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