WASHINGTON — A federal judge has stopped President Donald Trump from starting work on his planned 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington for 14 days. She acted less than two hours after a federal planning panel gave the project its final approval late on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order, a court order that blocks action for a short time while a judge considers a case. The order bars any construction, excavation, demolition, land-disturbing work, utility installation or road closures for the arch at Memorial Circle. Memorial Circle is the traffic island at the Virginia end of Arlington Memorial Bridge, which links the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery.
Hours earlier, the National Capital Planning Commission approved the arch by 8 votes to 4. The vote came after about nine hours of public testimony. More than 100 people spoke against the project, including veterans and Democratic lawmakers.
The District of Columbia and Virginia sued the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior on October 31, asking the court to stop the work before it began. Judge Chutkan combined their case with an earlier lawsuit, and in a 33-page opinion she found that Congress never authorized the arch and that the two governments are likely to win.
“The sheer improbability that a 100-year-old statute would contain authority, unknown to every previous administration, to erect a 250-foot arch at a principal location in the nation’s capital” shows how far the government must stretch to justify the project, she wrote.
The Trump administration argues that Congress did authorize the arch more than 100 years ago, in the same law that allowed Memorial Bridge to be built. Officials had told the court they could begin work right after approval, starting with six to eight months of digging and foundation work, running 20 hours a day. The whole job was expected to take about three years, with building above ground starting in May 2027 at the earliest.
The Justice Department also told the court that a contractor had already done site preparation work at Memorial Circle on October 31, apparently without authorization from the National Park Service.
Under the order, the government must update the court by November 9 on its efforts to notify everyone covered by the order, and formally confirm in writing that it is obeying it. The Park Service must also give the court 30 minutes’ notice of any construction activity at the site.
The 14-day order is not a final ruling on whether the arch can ever be built. Judge Chutkan has not yet decided a request for a longer block brought by three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian, who sued in February. The arch, modeled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but taller, is one of several building projects the president is pushing in the capital despite opposition from local officials and conservation groups.
Sources: Associated Press; CNN; USA Today; NPR; court filings in Lemmon v. Trump and District of Columbia v. National Park Service, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
