Trump's memorial arch faces new lawsuit from Arlington County, Virginia
[October 09, 2026]
By GARY FIELDS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Arlington County Board in Virginia filed a lawsuit
Thursday opposing the construction of the Triumphal Arch, becoming the
first governmental body to take legal action against President Donald
Trump's planned monument.
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, criticized the
speed at which the project slated for Memorial Circle has moved without
going through the full review process.
“The National Park Service, the agency responsible for projects on
national park land such as Memorial Circle, is proceeding full-speed
toward ground-disturbing construction,” the lawsuit said. “Although the
agency has claimed that a final decision to construct the Arch has not
yet been made and purports to be 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 marching orders.”
The lawsuit asks that “the agency's feverish pace toward construction of
the arch” be halted to ensure that the requirements of the National
Environmental Policy Act be followed and proper analysis and testing be
done.
“The Arlington County Board has filed this lawsuit because our community
has the most to lose from this egregious and unlawful proposed project,”
Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in a statement. He
added that the county has acted in good faith in 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 them
ignored.
Memorial Circle sits on federal parkland west of the Potomac River
across the Memorial Bridge and immediately adjacent to Arlington County.
The county is being represented in the lawsuit by legal advocacy group
Democracy Forward.
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A plane flies over an anti-arch structure lifted up by demonstrators
at Memorial Circle to protest the proposed Triumphal Arch, Thursday,
Oct. 1, 2026, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
The White House and Interior Department did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
The lawsuit comes just a day after Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson expressed concerns that the
250-foot (76-meter) 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 “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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