Arlington County Sues to Halt Trump's Planned Triumphal Arch
The Arlington County Board filed a federal lawsuit Thursday opposing construction of President Donald Trump's planned Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle, becoming the first governmental body to take legal action against the monument. The suit argues the National Park Service is rushing construction without required environmental review.
The Arlington County Board filed a federal lawsuit Thursday opposing construction of the Triumphal Arch, President Donald Trump's planned monument at Memorial Circle, becoming the first governmental body to take legal action against the project. The suit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, argues that the National Park Service is moving too quickly toward construction without completing the full review process required by law.
The lawsuit contends that the agency responsible for projects on national park land is proceeding at full speed toward ground-disturbing construction. It states that although the agency has claimed no final decision to build the arch has been made and that it is engaged in a routine decisional process, that rushed process appears to be a pretext designed to shore up justifications for building the arch in accordance with the president's repeated directives.
The county is asking the court to halt what the lawsuit describes as the agency's feverish pace toward construction to ensure that the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act are followed and that proper analysis and testing are conducted. Memorial Circle sits on federal parkland west of the Potomac River, across the Memorial Bridge and immediately adjacent to Arlington County.
Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in a statement that the board filed the lawsuit because the community has the most to lose from what he called an egregious and unlawful proposed project. He added that the county has acted in good faith throughout the review process, pointing out the severe, unique, and wide-ranging negative impacts the project will have on the county and its residents, only to see those concerns ignored. The county is being represented in the lawsuit by the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The White House and the Interior Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The legal action comes just a day after Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, expressed concerns that the 250-foot arch compounds multiple safety issues that she said have gone unaddressed since a deadly January 2025 crash over the Potomac River that killed 67 people. Nelson also criticized Trump's plan to turn the arch into what she described as a top-grade military complex able to host drones and snipers while storing ammunition.
Though the arch has received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all tapped by Trump, a group of three veterans and an architectural historian sued in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying the project needs to be approved by Congress. The judge in that lawsuit said the administration must give the court 48 hours before undertaking any activities related to or in preparation for construction of the arch.
The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he remakes the city, from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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