Trump wants his arch approved Thursday — and to immediately start work

President Donald Trump hopes to win approval Thursday for his planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, which he calls a necessary addition to Washington. He may end the day with work finally underway - or blocked by a federal judge.

The National Capital Planning Commission, which Trump has stocked with allies, on Thursday afternoon began reviewing final plans for the arch, proposed near Arlington National Cemetery. The commission is expected to approve the project - after extensive public testimony and debate - and administration officials say they could begin construction immediately.

The project's opponents have beseeched U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to stop work before it starts. "The Court should not allow this lawless project to evade scrutiny," Brian Schwalb and Jay Jones, the attorneys general for D.C. and Virginia, wrote in a joint court filing Wednesday.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who sits on the National Capital Planning Commission, pressed Trump officials Thursday on their project plans, the president's claims that the arch would double as a "military complex" and the expected number of tourists.

"What is the purpose of this memorial?" Mendelson asked, noting that lawmakers a century ago envisioned a pair of columns symbolizing the nation's reunification after the Civil War - a different plan than what the administration is pursuing. He also warned that the project could hamper emergency evacuation from Washington.

Trump has spent more than a year touting his plan for the arch, which he says is needed to commemorate the nation's 250th anniversary. The monument would rise in Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington's boundaries. The current Congress has not authorized the project, and opponents argue it would violate multiple federal laws, overwhelm the site and wrongly overshadow the national military cemetery.

The Trump administration says building the arch will complete the century-old vision for the site that Congress had authorized. The president extolled the arch again Wednesday while touring another of his projects, a new White House ballroom, and touted his continued efforts to remake Washington.

The triumphal arch is "like the Arc de Triomphe, but better, more beautiful actually, much more beautiful," the president told reporters at the White House, invoking the Parisian arch that inspired his own.

More than 120 people have signed up to testify at Thursday's National Capital Planning Commission hearing. The initial speakers included four lawmakers who split on whether the arch should be approved, several Vietnam War veterans who said it would harm their experience of visiting the military cemetery, and advocacy groups that urged Trump to stop the project.

Many called the planned structure and site unsuitable. The representative of an architects association criticized Trump's design, and the head of the D.C. Preservation League said the towering structure would violate a federal law limiting the height of new buildings.

"This commission's own 2001 Memorials and Museums Master Plan rules out Memorial Circle for a memorial ," Bryan Clark Green, an architectural historian, told the panel.

Mark Paoletta, a White House official who chairs the commission, said Thursday that he plans to approve the project, praising Trump's "historic vision" and saying the project would provide "a generational security opportunity" to protect the capital.

The empty space at Memorial Circle "dishonors our veterans and leaves a key monumental gateway to Arlington that Congress authorized uncompleted," Paoletta added. "This is a national disgrace."

Trump last month added more political appointees to the commission, including the Interior Department's Kevin Lilly and the Pentagon's Ricky Buria. Six of the panel's 12 seats are controlled by Trump, and two more are held by his GOP congressional allies, who have swiftly approved the president's past projects. Lilly, a veteran, said Thursday that he supported the arch because it honored America's ideals and military service.

GOP Reps. Andrew Clyde (Georgia) and Brian Mast (Florida) joined the hearing to argue that the arch should move forward. Both men are military veterans, and the Trump administration has contended that the arch would honor veterans rather than impose on the cemetery.

Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman (California) and Don Beyer (Virginia) called the project illegal, portrayed it as a monument to Trump and said the administration needed to submit the plans to Congress for approval.

Huffman's comments drew a response from Paoletta, and the two men argued for several minutes about the intent for Memorial Circle and the nearby Arlington Memorial Bridge. Paoletta said the Democratic congressman was wrongly characterizing the scope of the original, century-old construction plan, citing correspondence from long-ago officials.

"This is tortured stuff," Huffman told Paoletta. "Why don't you take your shot with Judge Chutkan on this one? … I feel pretty good about where that's going to come down."

Chutkan, who is weighing two lawsuits against the arch, has ordered the Trump administration to provide immediate updates about the project's status and construction plans. She has also voiced skepticism of Trump's national security arguments for the project, saying officials have failed to provide evidence for that purpose and suggesting that the administration should not invoke national security as a "talismanic" justification for controversial projects.

"What is the harm of waiting?" Chutkan asked a DOJ official last Friday, as she heard dueling arguments from the administration and lawyers for Vietnam veterans and a historic preservationist. "What is the rush to put this arch up?"

The D.C. government and state of Virginia sued the next day, contending that the project would impede traffic, interfere with emergency evacuation planning and cause other local disruptions. Trump officials have argued that the alleged harms are too speculative and that the challenge should be thrown out.

The Trump administration has closely guarded its plans for some of Trump's projects, and has declined to release the names of contractors teed up to work on the arch or how it will be paid for.

A vehicle bearing the logo of a division of Grunley Construction, a local firm that has worked on the White House's Eisenhower Executive Office Building and other government buildings, was seen at the site on Tuesday according to a photograph posted by independent journalist Andrew Leyden.

The Interior Department, which is managing the arch project, and Grunley Construction did not respond to requests for comment about whether the company is involved in the project. The Justice Department late Wednesday night said in a court filing that Grunley Construction "may be - but is not necessarily" preparing for work on the project.

Trump officials have told Chutkan that contractors are prepared to fence off Memorial Circle and begin staging supplies nearby as soon as the arch is approved by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Interior Department formally authorizes the project shortly afterward.

D.C. and Virginia leaders say work should be paused now.

"The District and Virginia are plainly harmed by the construction of a massive Arch that will clog traffic on a major thoroughfare, undermine emergency preparedness, inflict environmental damage, and subvert the region's historic plan," Schwalb and Jones wrote in their filing. "Those irreparable injuries will begin to accrue the moment construction begins."