A Panel Packed With Trump Loyalists Rubberstamps His Plans to Build ‘Arc de Trump’ Without Congressional Approval

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts—packed with the president’s allies after Trump fired all of the previous members—has approved plans for a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch opposite the Arlington Memorial Bridge, in Washington, D.C. Survey teams are already on the site even though Congress has yet to approve Trump’s latest vanity project. The administration bizarrely claims it does not need this approval.

The Washington Post explains:

[A]dministration officials have cited a 1924 report by a federal commission charged with designing the Arlington Memorial Bridge. That report called for building a pair of 166-foot-tall columns, surmounted by statues, on Columbia Island that would frame the nearby Lincoln Memorial. Congress formally ratified the commission’s report in 1925, and the Memorial Bridge was soon built. However, the columns were not constructed, and Trump officials today argue that in building the arch they would be carrying out past lawmakers’ wishes. …

“The notion Congress a century ago authorized construction of this 250-foot arch in Memorial Circle is absurd,” said Wendy Liu, a lawyer at Public Citizen Litigation Group. “This is their playbook,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California). “The fact that they’re trotting out this tortured argument that a 100-year-old authorization for something totally different satisfies a law today is laughable, but consistent with their pattern of ignoring Congress.”

There is no law too old or obscure that our Dear Leader won’t dig out and torture to satisfy his vanity.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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