Trump’s Washington arch wins key approval, but judge could still block construction
What happened
A federal judge halted construction of President Donald Trump's 250-foot (76-metre) Washington arch for 14 days, hours after a planning commission approved the project.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued the temporary restraining order on Friday and ordered the government to file a status report on Monday.
The National Capital Planning Commission voted 8-4 for the arch on Thursday, after a hearing of nine and a half hours in which dozens of witnesses spoke against it.
Virginia and the District of Columbia sued to stop the work, arguing that Congress never authorised the arch, and Chutkan consolidated their suits with others from Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian.
The administration says Congress cleared a monument on the site over a century ago, but DW reports that plan called for two columns, not an arch.
Without the order, the justice department said, six to eight months of excavation and foundation work could have begun this week, with above-ground building no earlier than May 2027.
Summary written by AI from 3 independent sources (TimesLIVE, DW, Guardian) and checked automatically against them for copied text and numbers that are not in the sources. How we work
Open on the live globe →Who reported it
- 2026-11-06 05:22 UTCCopenhagen Post · cphpost.dk ↗
- 2026-11-06 06:03 UTCTimesLIVE via Reuters · timeslive.co.za ↗
- 2026-11-06 06:30 UTCDW · dw.com ↗
- 2026-11-06 06:36 UTCGuardian via AP · theguardian.com ↗
- 2026-11-06 07:32 UTCAl Jazeera · aljazeera.com ↗
- 2026-11-06 07:56 UTCIOL · iol.co.za ↗
- 2026-11-06 10:42 UTCMyJoyOnline · myjoyonline.com ↗
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