US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that Congress has not enacted any statute authorizing President Donald Trump’s planned 250 foot triumphal arch, rejecting the administration’s legal and national security justifications in a 33 page opinion halting construction for at least 14 days. The Trump administration argued that a 1925 law approving the Arlington Memorial Bridge and two 166 foot columns at Memorial Circle gave federal commissioners discretion to approve the arch, a claim Chutkan wrote needed only to be stated “to reveal its flaws.”
Chutkan also faulted the administration’s contention that the monument near Arlington National Cemetery is needed for national defense, noting that those arguments materialized for the first time in last week’s opposition brief. Granting a temporary restraining order sought by Washington, D.C., and Virginia, the judge found that both jurisdictions have standing to sue because they would incur unrecoverable administrative costs and burdens as soon as work begins, adding that the federal government “cannot suffer harm from an injunction that merely ends an unlawful practice.”