NCPC approves plan to build Trump’s triumphal arch

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) on Thursday voted to approve plans to build a triumphal arch championed by President Trump between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The motion to approve the project passed by an 8-4 vote after listening to over 100 public remarks largely against the project after a nearly 9-hour meeting .

The commission approved the project during a virtual meeting that crashed at around 2:30 p.m. EST during public testimony before resuming roughly 40 minutes later. The stream moved to the NCPC’s YouTube channel after the stream crashed on its official government website.

NCPC Vice Chairman Stuart Levenbach reminded those listening that the commission’s “role is to evaluate the purpose from the standpoint of…the design of the project,” adding that the proposed Arch would transform a “tired traffic circle” into a “monumental gateway.”

The arch will be located on Columbia Plaza on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, symbolically linking Washington, D.C., and Virginia as a sign of unity following the national division that led to the Civil War in the 1860s.

Public testimony challenged the commission to not approve the plan, with many arguing that it was an insult to the service members and their relatives buried at Arlington and claimed that it was a vanity project spear-headed by Trump.

Many discussed the arch’s impact on D.C.’s airspace endangered those in the area, with one speaker referencing the 2025 midair collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people.

Several even called in from the protest site on the Memorial Bridge with their background showing the proposed arch with a red “X” covering it.

Former CIA analyst Holly Fletcher slammed the commission for how history will view them ahead of the vote. She called the arch “pointless” and “tasteless,” asking if commissioners want to side with “this mad king,” referring to Trump.

“Honestly, listening to your mental acrobatics and inexplicable sycophancy today, I am already embarrassed for you,” she said before the vote. “Because mark my words, Trump and his movement will not succeed … And we will remember your names and what you choose to do in this moment.”

“Do you want to be complicit in shameful, autocratic lunacy, or do you want to join our historic movement for democracy?” she added.

Ed Sterling, Vice President of Government Affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, asked the commission why it could “give final approval to a structure that doesn’t even have a clear purpose?”

Sterling noted that studies under Section 106 of National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) had also been “cut short.”

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) was the first to comment against the arch, saying that “revered presidents” were honored with structures in Washington after they served. He added, after emphasizing the lack of congressional approval on the project, that the U.S. is a “nation of laws, not kings or kangaroo commissions.”

NCPC chair Mark Paoletta challenged Huffman’s remarks, telling the California Democrat that he was “wrong” about the 1925 congressional authorization for the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, which the Trump administration has cited as its reasoning to construct the arch a century later. He said he was “wrong” in indicating that that project was “just about a bridge.”

Huffman replied that citing this and other historical records differed from congressional authorization or “legislative history.” He said he didn’t think that information will “fly” amid the court battle over the arch, “but you should try that argument in court and let’s see where it goes.”

At least two Republican House members spoke out in favor of the arch, Reps. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and Brian Mast (R-Fla.).