Team Trump ready to circumvent Congress to build president’s 250-foot arch

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Keeping up with Donald Trump’s many renovation and construction distractions is a daunting task. In the midst of a war and economic tumult, the president has spent months preoccupied with his ballroom vanity project, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the installation of a White House helipad and the construction of a White House venue for an upcoming UFC fight.

Alas, that’s just the start. The Republican has also been fixated on his desire to turn the Eisenhower Executive Office Building into a giant white blob, his stated interest in renovating the White House Treaty Room, his specific marble and paint preferences for the Kennedy Center, his plans for a “statue garden,” his sudden interest in fountains around the nation’s capital and the dozen or so other renovation projects Trump has prioritized in and around the White House complex.

And then, of course, there’s the president’s crusade to build a “triumphal arch” that, according to Trump, would be erected for him personally.

The plan to build a 250-foot arch just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, in front of Arlington National Cemetery, has run into several pitfalls. For one thing, there’s an ongoing lawsuit that might very well succeed. For another, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently told Congress under oath that the project is only at the “discussion” stage, and when evidence to the contrary emerged, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, argued that the Cabinet secretary came “pretty damn close” to committing perjury.

In case that weren’t quite enough, The Washington Post reported last week that the Republican administration was moving forward with plans to start work on the arch “by piggybacking on an existing, unrelated contract for engineering services” a mile away, which in turn would “allow the administration to bypass a potentially lengthy public bidding process.”