Trump's arch is on the verge of federal approval. But a judge could block construction

This could be a make-or-break week for President Trump's triumphal arch. For months, the Trump administration has barreled toward his dream of building a 250-foot arch in Washington, D.C.: rubber-stamping and side-stepping various federal reviews, cutting out Congress and announcing imminent construction despite a lack of final approval and an ongoing legal battle. In May, the entirely Trump-appointed Commission for Fine Arts approved the arch's design — still incomplete at the time.

In September, a federal council packed with Trump allies abruptly terminated a historic preservation review that participants had already criticized as rushed. It all comes to a head on Thursday, when the National Capital Planning Commission will meet to consider final approval for the controversial structure. The arch is the only item on the agenda; the meeting will be online-only and is expected to take five hours because of the high volume of public participation.

Nearly 120 concerned citizens have signed up to speak, an unusually high number for such meetings and a symbol of the widespread public opposition. Democratic lawmakers, veterans, historic preservationists and more than 100,000 people have spoken out against the arch in written comments, local protests and previous commission meetings. Among their many concerns, critics say the structure would obstruct an important view, insult service members buried on the hallowed ground of nearby Arlington National Cemetery and add a layer of risk to notoriously complicated D.C. airspace.

They see the arch as part of Trump's unilateral effort to memorialize himself in the nation's capital. The White House has repeatedly said the arch will "enhance the visitor experience at Arlington National Cemetery" and be "one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world." "It will be one of the great things we've ever done," Trump said from the Reflecting Pool on Monday, giving the arch — alongside several other D.C. construction projects — valuable airtime in his last in-person remarks before the midterm elections. The planning commission is widely expected to greenlight the arch.

It approved preliminary site and building plans over the summer, and its new Trump-appointed chair, Mark Paoletta, expressed his enthusiastic support for the arch in an op-ed published last month. The administration says that after a successful commission vote, all that's needed to break ground is sign-off from its own Department of the Interior. In fact, the government notified a federal judge late last month that, pending those two approvals, "construction could commence as early as" Thursday.

It filed that notice as part of the ongoing lawsuit brought by Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian who argue the arch is unlawful without approval from Congress. The Trump administration has not sought that, instead citing Congress' century-old authorization of a pair of columns on that traffic circle that were ultimately never built. The plaintiffs promptly asked District Judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a preliminary injunction before Thursday's meeting to block the administration from "taking any steps to construct, or to direct or facilitate construction, of any structure in Memorial Circle, absent congressional authorization" while the case plays out.