Trump Tries to Fast-Track National Arch Amid Aviation Risk Concerns

President Trump is trying to rush through his “Triumphal Arch” in Washington, D.C., even as it could pose problems with local airports.

Through the National Park Service, the Trump administration has submitted plans that call for construction taking place 20 hours a day, in two-10 hour shifts, in the hopes of finishing the project within two or three years, before his term ends. In order to speed up completion, Trump plans to use concrete clad in granite instead of the natural marble and limestone used for other monuments in Washington.

The planned site for the arch, across from the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, is only 3,000 feet away from Reagan National Airport, on a flight path within the airport’s main approach and departure corridor. Because it’s so close to the airport, a preliminary review by the Federal Aviation Administration said the arch would need to be lit with red obstruction lights.

The arch will be an estimated 250 feet high, much higher than Paris’s famous Arc de Triomphe, which is 164 feet high. Cranes used to construct the arch may be as high as 320 feet tall, creating a hazard for planes near the airport, which could be flying at 500 feet of altitude. The FAA is currently working on a full review of the project.

Trump isn’t seeking any approval from Congress for the project, which hasn’t gone over well with Democrats on Capitol Hill, as the president also hasn’t sought approval for his White House ballroom, repainting the Reflecting Pool, or other construction projects.

“Running through all these incidents is an inexplicable disregard for legal process,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, the leading Democrat on the Senate’s permanent subcommittee for investigations, wrote in a letter Tuesday to the National Park Service.

Military veterans have sued to stop the arch, citing the lack of congressional approval, and warning it would obstruct views of Arlington National Cemetery. But Trump doesn’t care, seeing all of his pet construction projects as his presidential legacy, as opposed to the well-being of Americans.

President Trump on Wednesday threatened to bomb Iran again after the United States reportedly hit two water facilities in the country that served 20,000 people.

“We hit ’em hard yesterday. We’re gonna hit ’em again hard today, in case you don’t turn on your television set,” Trump said in the Oval Office while signing a $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement. “And we’ll see what happens with a deal. We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers.”

The U.S. launched military strikes on Iran Tuesday—just one day after Iran shot down a U.S. helicopter—further fraying the ceasefire. Iranian state media reported Wednesday that among the targeted facilities were two large water reservoirs in Hormozgan, on the coast of the Strait of Hormuz. The attack threatens to plunge thousands of Iranian civilians into a water deficit as the hottest months in the region approach. This is yet another attack on civilian infrastructure in Iran that serves to collectively punish civilians and risks worsening their already war-torn conditions.

“In a region already facing extreme heat, chronic water scarcity, and a rapidly warming climate, the loss of drinking-water infrastructure is more than physical damage,” Iranian environmental expert and Virginia Tech geophysicist Manoochehr Shirzaei told The New York Times. “It threatens the health, resilience, and daily survival of entire communities.”

Nearly 2,000 civilians have been killed in Iran since Trump started the war, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Representatives Sarah McBride and Nancy Mace have spent years trading barbs due to the South Carolina lawmaker’s numerous attacks on the transgender community. But on Tuesday, after Mace lost the state’s gubernatorial Republican primary race, McBride kept her comments short and sweet.

“Congress’s top bathroom sheriff, Nancy Mace, was on the ballot,” McBride commented to Axios. “And while all of the votes have not yet been counted, she’s in a respectful 5th place. I don’t like to punch down and I believe in the politics of grace, so I’ll just say, Happy Pride, Nancy.”

McBride was elected to represent Delaware’s sole congressional district in 2024, and subsequently became Congress’s first openly transgender lawmaker.

Mace, meanwhile, couldn’t keep her head above water in her GOP primary, failing to advance to a runoff in a loss that will cap her turbulent, rollercoaster career. Mace’s term in Congress ends in January.

She was initially considered a favorite in the race until her popularity was suddenly kneecapped by several scandals, chief among them her political rebuke of Donald Trump in order to release the Epstein files last year.

In an interview published before the primary, Mace recognized that while she had likely tossed the president’s support by pushing to release the files, she also didn’t have any regrets, describing herself as an “independent conservative” and ardent MAGA candidate.

“That’s the sole reason I didn’t get the endorsement, because I voted to release the Epstein files, and I’m okay with that,” Mace told Politico. “I’ve worked very hard to expose pedophiles, and child rapists, and sex trafficking in my state, and will continue to do it regardless of the outcome of the election.”

She ultimately placed last—far behind Trump’s pick, Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, who came in first with nearly 29 percent of the vote just two weeks after receiving his endorsement. Mace has already backed South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in the runoff, despite the fact that she accused him of protecting alleged child sex abusers earlier this year.

A top staffer at the Department of Justice asked to recuse himself from work related to Donald Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” so he could cash in on it. 

The sudden request from Patrick Davis, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, concerned his colleagues because he’d been charged with liaising with Congress in order to  set up the president’s slush fund, according to two administration officials who spoke to Politico. 

“[Davis] has relationships with the senators, and it was a very tough time for him to back out,” one of the officials told Politico. “In a very fraught moment, with legislative affairs and stuff with the Hill, DOJ needed to have the head of leg. affairs involved.”

Davis’s potential claim to taxpayer dollars relates to his prior work as Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley’s top investigative counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Davis was one of dozens of congressional aides whose phone and email records were quietly subpoenaed during the investigation into alleged Russian interference, following the 2016 presidential election. Davis only discovered the subpoena years later. 

“It felt like a violation, not simply on a personal level, but more importantly of the separation of powers given the nature of our oversight work,” Davis previously told The New York Times. 

The two administration officials told Politico that Davis didn’t have a valid reason to recuse himself because the fund hadn’t been formally set up, and Davis would have been useful in preparing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche before he appeared on Capitol Hill to answer questions about the fund.

“It was a hard issue and he just didn’t want to deal with it and didn’t want to be there to address the difficult conversations,” one official told Politico. “The thing was a cop-out.”

A DOJ spokesperson told Politico that Davis had temporarily recused himself “out of an abundance of caution,” and it was later determined that the recusal was not necessary for “a number of reasons.” 

Earlier this month, Blanche confirmed that plans for the fund are dead, but he and Trump have continued to rave about the idea. 

Other members of President Trump’s Cabinet began to consider Vice President JD Vance a “conspiracy theorist” as he pushed for the release of the Epstein files and an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell in the midst of their panicked attempt to snuff out the biggest controversy of Trump’s second term.

New reporting from The New York Times reveals that while the Cabinet remained staunch in their public defense of Trump, there was chaos behind the scenes last year over Trump’s deep connections to the sexual predator. Vance played a large role in the internal discord, as he seemed to be the loudest voice pushing “the darkest theories about Epstein and a cabal of predators hidden within the country’s ruling class”—leading White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to call him a major conspiracy theorist.

When Trump’s Cabinet learned that The Wall Street Journal was set to publish its story on Trump’s birthday letter to Epstein, the team met in the Situation Room to discuss their options. Vance pushed for the administration to fully release the files quickly, suggesting that they have Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell either do an interview with Tucker Carlson or testify before Congress. In Vance’s mind, this would solidify Trump’s alibi and secure confidence with their MAGA base—which happened to care very much about the Epstein files. Both plans were struck down, and the team pointed out that Maxwell would want something in return.

“Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls, would create a huge P.R. problem,” communications director Steven Cheung argued.

“We can’t offer Ghislaine Maxwell anything,” said White House deputy chief of staff James Blair. “A, I don’t know why we would. And B, if we give Ghislaine Maxwell any sort of break whatsoever and then she turns around and says nice things about us, or says nice things about us and we give her a break, it will undermine the entire point of her saying good things. That will feed the conspiracy theory, period. If there’s nothing for her to say that hurts us, we shouldn’t have to offer her anything.”

The report makes it abundantly clear that there was no consensus on how to handle the political tsunami of the Epstein files, as it also details the falling out between former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former FBI Co–Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and FBI Director Kash Patel. The drama between them came to a head after a tumultuous few months in which Bondi went from claiming she had Epstein’s client list sitting on her desk to handing out big white binders to MAGA influencers, to then claiming there was essentially nothing new in the files.

“You fucked this thing up from the start,” Bongino screamed at her, a day after the DOJ memo claiming there was nothing more in the files to be released. “The way you’ve been talking about this—that dumb fucking charade with the Epstein files, the ‘They’re on my desk’ nonsense, all the promises to the folks out there.”

While it’s unclear where Vance stands among Trump and the rest of the Cabinet now, it’s clear that he’ll have to answer for the internal decisions made last summer for the entirety of his political career.