Trump officials say planned Memorial Circle arch will harm historic sites, despite going ahead

National Park Service instead suggests measure to mitigate the impact of the planned Memorial Circle monument, which is facing opposition from veterans groups

The Trump administration is admitting that Trump’s proposed “Triumphal Arch” in Washington, D.C., will harm historical sites, but claiming it must be built anyway.The Washington Post, citing a National Park Service document and email correspondence, reports that government officials fully acknowledge that the proposed arch, which would be built on the Memorial Circle traffic roundabout, would overshadow the nearby Arlington National Cemetery and have negative impacts on other historic sites, including the Lincoln Memorial.The “adverse effects cannot be fully avoided,” an NPS document states, but there’s nowhere else that the arch can be built because “the proposed location at Memorial Circle is central to the undertaking.” The document is a proposed agreement that Trump officials want historical preservation organizations to sign as part of federal requirements.“NPS recognizes that Memorial Circle is located within a highly sensitive historic and commemorative landscape and that the Undertaking’s location contributes to adverse effects to historic properties whose significance is associated with setting, design, feeling, association, spatial organization, circulation, and contributing views and vistas,” the document states.The only remedies the White House is offering to these negative effects are new signs and web pages explaining the project to the public, managing construction so as not to interfere with burials at the cemetery, and documenting the surrounding landscape before beginning to build.An email states that the NPS asked historical preservationists and other groups to review and sign the agreement by noon Monday, which would overcome legal hurdles and secure final approval for the arch. The White House hopes to submit the project to the National Capital Planning Commission for final approval as early as November.Three veterans and an architectural historian have sued to stop the arch’s construction, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last week ordered the government to give 48 hours before breaking ground on the project, which the Trump administration is fighting. But considering that the White House just admitted that the underlying reason for the lawsuit is valid, the arch may be tied up in court for a while.