Excavation for Trump's 250-Foot Arch Starts in Two Weeks. Crews Will Work 20 Hours a Day.

The triumphal arch President Trump has been showing off in renderings for most of a year stops being a rendering in about two weeks. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Thursday that excavation begins within a fortnight at the traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac from Washington and just north of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The structure is 250 feet tall, clad in granite, topped by three gilded statues, and fitted with an observation deck. Crews are expected to work 20 hours a day, year-round, for two to three years. On that schedule the arch would be finished toward the end of Trump's second term.

The administration frames it as a monument to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and argues the site was contemplated in earlier architectural plans for the capital. The approvals are largely in hand. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts granted final approval in May. The National Capital Planning Commission gave preliminary approval in July, with requested changes. The Federal Aviation Administration studied the airspace question earlier and concluded there was no adverse effect on airport operations, though the structure will have to carry red obstruction lighting.

None of that has settled the argument. Democrats, historic preservation groups and veterans' organizations have opposed the project since the first renderings surfaced. The objections have been consistent: a 250-foot mass of granite in that spot interrupts the sightlines that tie the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge and Arlington together, and it puts a presidential monument at the doorstep of a national cemetery. A veterans group has sued, arguing the administration cannot build it without congressional authorization. That case is still pending, and no court has stopped the work.

The arch is one piece of a broader construction push around the capital that Trump has personally driven, and it has run into the same pattern each time — federal design commissions signing off, outside groups objecting, litigation trailing behind the shovels. The president has also backed permanently fencing Lafayette Square, an idea previously rejected in order to keep public access to the grounds outside the White House.

What is unusual here is the timeline. Federal monument projects in Washington normally take a decade or more from concept to dedication, and most of that time is spent on review. This one moved from renderings released in April to a final Fine Arts Commission approval in May and dirt moving in September. The 20-hour construction day is the mechanism for compressing the build itself.

The administration has not made public a total cost or the funding source. That gap is likely to become the substance of the fight once the excavators arrive, because the pending lawsuit turns on exactly that question: who authorized this, and with whose money.