NPS Document Says Trump's 250-Foot Arch Will Harm 37 Historic Sites, Tells Officials to Sign Off by Monday Anyway

Since Burgum's Sept. 3 announcement that ground would break within two weeks on the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, the National Park Service has produced its own written admission that the project will damage the historic landscape it sits in. According to a National Park Service document obtained by The Washington Post and reported by Dan Diamond, officials wrote that "adverse effects cannot be fully avoided" at Memorial Circle, the traffic roundabout near Arlington National Cemetery where the 250-foot arch is planned.

The document, circulated Tuesday, Sept. 15, is a proposed Memorandum of Agreement that NPS is asking local historic-preservation officers to sign as part of a federally required review under the National Historic Preservation Act. Senior NPS official Tammy Stidham asked recipients to sign by noon Monday, Sept. 21, according to an email obtained by The Post. VoteVets, the progressive veterans' advocacy group, said on Bluesky that the government's own review found the arch would affect 37 different historic sites and that officials concluded construction should proceed regardless.

NPS does not require the preservationists' consent to move forward. The agency's position, laid out in the document, is that the harm is real but the location is non-negotiable: "the proposed location at Memorial Circle is central to the undertaking." To offset the damage, NPS proposed mitigation steps including new interpretive signs and webpages, managing construction to avoid interfering with burials at the cemetery, and documenting the current landscape before work starts.

Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation called the process an example of "overt hostility to public input and the regulatory process," warning the arch will permanently alter what he considers one of the country's most symbolically significant landscapes. Preservationists, veterans groups and others have pushed the administration to shrink the monument or move it, arguing it would overshadow Arlington and break the sightline the cemetery's designers intended between the burial grounds and the Lincoln Memorial.

An Aug. 28 National Park Service report, cited by both Breitbart and The Epoch Times, already found the project would have "direct and indirect adverse effects" on sightlines connecting the arch site to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. The government now puts a specific number on it: 37 affected sites. NPS is asking outside preservation officers to formally sign off on a plan the agency admits does harm.

The Legal Fight and What's Still Pending

A federal lawsuit filed by three veterans and an architectural historian, represented by Nicolas Sansone of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, argues that "congressional authorization is necessary and lacking for this project." Sansone told The Associated Press his side is prepared to ask a judge to intervene if excavation proceeds before the legal questions are resolved, saying he is "very confident" the challenge will succeed. The Justice Department has countered that Congress already authorized large structures at the site decades ago and delegated design authority to the National Park Service.

The arch has cleared the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose commissioners were all appointed by President Trump, but still needs final sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission. NPS officials told The Washington Post they hope to submit the project to that commission by November. Burgum has defended the arch on X, calling it "one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture" and pointing to decades-old congressional discussions about a memorial at the site as precedent.

The design, inspired by Paris's Arc de Triomphe, calls for a mezzanine at 166 feet, a 24-foot observation deck, and a 60-foot Lady Liberty statue on top, with "ONE NATION UNDER GOD" and "Liberty and Justice for All" inscribed on the structure, according to The Epoch Times. At 250 feet it would stand well above the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial, roughly half the height of the Washington Monument.

A Second Front: Warning Signs at the Smithsonian

The arch isn't the only Interior Department project reshaping how Washington presents its own history. In a Sept. 3 letter to Senators Lisa Murkowski and Jeff Merkley, the top members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Burgum said the administration is preparing a dozen signs, at an estimated $7,000 each or roughly $84,000 total, to be placed on National Park Service land warning visitors that Smithsonian leadership has used the National Museum of American History to "advance personal, radical ideologies," according to NPR.

The letter, tied to Trump's July executive order "Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution," accuses museum director Anthea Hartig of treating history as "a prime tool of social justice" and criticizes exhibits it says present views "inconsistent with biology, including ideologies that sex is not binary." It also references outgoing Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch's "history of invidious discrimination and anti-white animus," a claim the Smithsonian did not comment on. Bunch, who announced his retirement effective the end of 2026 on Sept. 8, told NPR the timing had nothing to do with the administration's pressure campaign. The sign text has not been finalized, per the Interior Department's letter to Murkowski.

Both projects now sit at the same procedural fork: NPS has the legal authority to move forward without third-party sign-off, but a court challenge on the arch and continued Senate Appropriations Committee scrutiny of the Smithsonian signage mean neither fight is settled. Excavation on Columbia Island was slated to begin within the two-week window Burgum announced Sept. 3, putting the start date around this week, while the veterans' lawsuit remains active in federal court.