A review found that Trump’s arch will harm DC. His appointee just ended the process

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Donald Trump’s administration is abruptly ending a federally required review to determine how badly the president’s plans for a massive arch will harm the nation’s capital, already facing a flood of construction projects remaking Washington, D.C., in his image.

Last month, the National Park Service acknowledged in a lengthy report that Trump’s “triumphal” arch will unavoidably create “adverse effects” and harm historic sites, but the administration plans to go through with the plans anyway.

In a letter to local governments and advocacy groups Thursday, a Trump appointee leading an advisory board for the project said they are ending further review. “We are hereby terminating consultation,” wrote Travis Voyles, the vice chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

“They seem to be making up the rules as they go along,” Charles Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, told The Independent.

The advisory council will now make its own recommendations to Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency is overseeing plans for the 250-foot-tall monument, which the president claims will also be loaded up with “large numbers of drones, plus Snipers.”

“They basically said, ‘it’s going to move forward,’” Birnbaum said. “They wrapped this in ‘national security’ like they did everything else.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly invoked spurious national security concerns to push plans for his pet projects, including a White House ballroom and efforts to block reporters from the White House.

Last week, the president said the arch will become a “top grade Military Complex.”

The towering arch will “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage,” according to Trump.

The advisory council is an ostensibly independent federal agency that advises the White House and Congress on historic reservation law but has been wielded as a political tool to implement Trump’s vision of Washington.

Thursday’s letter effectively ends a review process before construction can begin on the project, which would install a mammoth arch at an axis between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, obstructing a century-old horizon line intended to represent U.S. unification in the aftermath of the Civil War.

The administration is seeking final approval from a federal commission, loaded with Trump allies, to begin construction as soon as this fall.

The National Park Service identified 42 historic properties that will be impacted by the project and “alter the character, setting, and design continuity of a nationally significant commemorative landscape whose significance is defined by axial relationships, formal circulation patterns, designed views, and symbolic connections between Washington, D.C. and Arlington.”

The project will obstruct views of the Washington Monument, Arlington House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol dome, among other sites, and would “adversely affect several National Mall and monumental-core resources,” according to an August assessment.

Plans for the arch “and its potential effects on historic properties have raised significant public interest,” Voyles wrote Thursday.

But “additional consultation” on the proposal is not likely to result in agreement on a memorandum of understanding to “resolve adverse effects,” he added.

Implementing alternatives to “avoid or minimize the adverse effects would alter the fundamental nature of the proposed undertaking and fail to achieve its goals,” Voyles wrote.

“In recognition of the public’s significant concerns regarding the adverse effects the undertaking would pose to historic properties, we are hereby terminating consultation pursuant,” he said.

The council directed The Independent to Voyles’s letter and precedence for terminating the review process but did not have additional comment.

While the Trump administration does have authority to unilaterally end the process, it has rarely been invoked and usually follows protracted negotiations that often take months or years. The Cultural Landscape Foundation and other advocacy groups were only invited to one meeting about the project.

A federal lawsuit from veterans groups accuses the administration of obstructing views of military cemeteries that would “dishonor” their service and legacy. The lawsuit also accuses the administration of illegally subverting congressional authority, and advocates have argued that the structure is subject to the Height of Buildings Act, which limits buildings to 130 feet.

Earlier this month, Burgum announced the administration would begin “excavation work” at the site, which the National Park Service later clarified was an archeological assessment, not a groundbreaking.

A federal judge has ordered the administration to provide at least 14-days notice before construction begins.

“What’s unprecedented here is the dozens of dozens affected,” Birnbaum told The Independent. “The beauty of the city of Washington is in its exemplar plan of the baroque and Beaux-Arts … We believe this is avoidable.”