Veterans who earned the right to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery are now saying they'd rather skip it, because Donald Trump wants to plant a 250-foot triumphal arch at the cemetery's front door. Three of them are suing the administration over it. This is what "making things beautiful" looks like when a man who called fallen soldiers "suckers" and "losers" gets to redesign the nation's capital.
The Arch Nobody Asked For
Here's the setup: Rodney Mims Cook, chair of the Commission of Fine Arts and a Trump appointee, has been pushing for a triumphal arch in Washington for 26 years. His Atlanta office literally sits on top of a smaller version of the arch he wants to build. He proposed the D.C. version as a private citizen decades ago. Now he runs the body responsible for approving it. If you're trying to find a more obvious conflict of interest, good luck.
The proposed arch would stand 250 feet tall, which is taller than most buildings in the city, and would go up in a traffic circle at the base of Arlington National Cemetery, directly across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial. According to CBS News, critics say it would obstruct the historic sightline between a cemetery built during the Civil War and the memorial to the man who ended that war. The administration's response to that concern has been, essentially, that great nations build beautiful things.
Veterans Are Done Playing Nice
Vietnam veteran Shaun Byrnes told CBS News he'd always planned to be buried at Arlington. He earned that right. Now he says he and his colleagues are reconsidering, and he's one of three veterans who have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop the arch. "I was angered by it," Byrnes said. "There are 400,000 American veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery. We thought this was disrespectful, particularly coming from a man who called Americans who'd volunteered and served, wore the uniform in various wars, 'suckers' and 'losers.'" Trump has denied saying that, for whatever that's worth.
Think about what it takes to get a veteran who earned burial at Arlington to say he'd rather not be buried there. That's not a casual opinion. That's a man who watched friends die, who served his country, now deciding that the place where he was supposed to rest in peace has been contaminated by someone else's ego project. That's the headline the administration doesn't want you to focus on.
Trump's Capital Makeover, Brought to You by No-Bid Contracts
The arch is just one piece of a broader remaking of Washington that Trump has been executing with remarkable speed and minimal public input. CBS News reports that his face now adorns multiple government buildings. The National Mall's reflecting pool has been resurfaced. The East Wing of the White House was demolished in a surprise move. A new "Garden of Heroes" with 250 sculptures is proposed. His name was added to the Kennedy Center before a judge ordered it removed. There's a planned ballroom addition to the White House. There's a proposal to overhaul the public golf course along the Potomac.
The D.C. Preservation League has filed six lawsuits against the administration, largely over the use of no-bid contracts and the complete absence of Congressional authorization or public input. Rebecca Miller, the group's executive director, put it plainly to CBS News: "The city isn't his own personal portfolio." The Commission of Fine Arts, which is supposed to provide independent review of exactly these kinds of projects, approved the White House ballroom in under two months. The commission is now composed entirely of Trump appointees. Cook, its chair, called Trump "a builder president" and said his conversations with him are confidential. So the review body is a closed loop of true believers moving fast and calling it progress.
The Part Where Toxic Debris Ends Up in a Park
Speed has consequences. The Trump administration has described the White House demolition work as "deferred maintenance and repairs," which is a creative way to describe tearing down an entire wing of a building. Miller told CBS News, "Demolishing the entire East Wing isn't 'deferred maintenance.'" The administration has claimed the wing was contaminated with asbestos and lead paint, but as Miller noted, those reports have not been made public.
What has been confirmed: some of the debris from that demolition was dumped in a nearby park. CBS News reported this without anyone in the administration offering a satisfying explanation. The reflecting pool, freshly resurfaced under this beautification push, is already experiencing problems, with sealant coming up and algae blooms forming. When you skip the process, you skip the part where experts tell you what's going to go wrong.
The Price Tag Is Climbing Fast
CBS News reports the total cost of Trump's D.C. transformation has already topped $100 million and is projected to reach nearly $1 billion, drawing from both public and private sources. At least $80 million of that has been diverted from national parks. Let that sit for a second: money pulled from the parks that belong to every American, redirected to build monuments and ballrooms and arches that one man decided he wanted.
The Department of the Interior told CBS News in a statement that "great nations build beautiful structures and works of art that cultivate national pride and love of country." Which is a true statement, technically. Great nations also don't typically dump asbestos debris in parks or override the burial preferences of veterans to install a vanity project that the guy who approved it first proposed from his private office 26 years ago.
The Dingo Take
There's a version of this story where a president leaves a legacy of genuine civic beauty in the nation's capital, something that future generations look at and feel pride. That's not this story. This story is about a man who skipped the process, handed approval power to loyalists, diverted $80 million from national parks, and is now building a 250-foot arch at the entrance to a cemetery full of people he reportedly called suckers. The fact that veterans are reconsidering their own burials to avoid being associated with this should be disqualifying in any sane political environment.
Charles Birnbaum, the landscape expert who spoke to CBS News, described Washington's design as a quilt, where every addition for 250 years has honored the structure of what came before it. What Trump is doing is not adding to the quilt. It's cutting it up and using the pieces to make a banner with his name on it. The Commission of Fine Arts, which exists precisely to prevent this kind of thing, is now a room full of people who agree with whatever the president wants. Cook literally sits in his office on top of a miniature version of the arch he just voted to approve.
The lawsuit from the veterans might stop the arch. Six lawsuits from the D.C. Preservation League might slow the rest of it down. A judge already made Trump take his name off the Kennedy Center. But the reflecting pool is already blooming algae, the East Wing is already rubble, and $80 million is already gone from the parks budget. Some of this damage does not get undone. Shaun Byrnes, who earned the right to be buried at Arlington and is now reconsidering it, should not have to file a lawsuit to protect the dignity of 400,000 graves. The fact that he does tells you everything about whose interests are actually being served here.
