United States Triumphal Arch

The United States Triumphal Arch is a triumphal arch proposed by Donald Trump in 2025 that would be located on Columbia Island in Washington, D.C., United States. The 250-foot-tall (76 m) arch would celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence. The site is Memorial Circle, a traffic circle on Memorial Drive between the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge and Arlington National Cemetery. It is directly across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial at the west end of the National Mall. Surveying work started in mid-May 2026. The arch has been referred to by some media as the "Arc de Trump" (a play on "Arc de Triomphe"). Background In an April 2025 article titled "Washington Needs an Arch", in the conservative publication The American Mind, art critic Catesby Leigh detailed the visual effect that an arch would have on the axis of monuments on the National Mall. Leigh also observed that Washington D.C. is the "only major Western capital without a monumental arch". In an October 2025 Washington Post article titled "Trump eyes a triumphal arch to mark America's 250th anniversary", Duncan G. Stroik, an architectural professor at the University of Notre Dame and former appointee to the United States Commission of Fine Arts, called Memorial Circle "underutilized" and said he "would want it to be a monument that is architecturally sophisticated, but also something that speaks to everyone." Development On October 15, 2025, Trump showed reporters in the Oval Office a model sitting on his desk of a proposed arch that he wished to build. CBS reporter Ed O'Keefe asked him: "Who is it for?" Trump replied: "Me. It's going to be beautiful." O'Keefe asked if it would be called "The Arc de Trump", a nickname that was immediately adopted by the media. Later that evening, guests were shown three differently scaled models of the arch at a dinner in the White House's East Room for donors to the ballroom expansion. The largest version would reportedly dwarf the iconic structures closest to it, including the Lincoln Memorial. The large arch, which Anastasia Tsioulcas, writing for NPR, said was evocative of the neoclassical style favored by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, would be surmounted by two eagles and a golden winged figure variously described as an angel or a suggestion of Victory. Trump said it represented Lady Liberty. The arch would celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, and Trump said that construction of the arch would be completed in time for the anniversary. He said that it was "fully financed", and that some of the funds left over from the ballroom project would be used to fund the arch. On December 16, 2025, Trump announced that Vince Haley was to be in charge of the project. On December 31, 2025, Trump said construction of the arch would start within two months. Nicolas Leo Charbonneau has been retained as the architect for the project. On January 23, 2026, Trump presented another design of the Independence Arch, measuring 250 feet (75 meters), one foot for every year of the independence of the United States. This would be taller than the Arc de Triomphe, which measures 164 feet (50 meters), and almost half as tall as the Washington Monument, at 555 feet (169 meters). On February 19, 2026, the advocacy group Public Citizen filed a lawsuit on behalf of three Vietnam War veterans to stop the project, arguing it had not received proper approval from Congress or appropriate independent government agencies. Construction had not yet begun. They were concerned about disrupting the sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and the Arlington House, a view that represents the national unity that came after the Civil War. After Trump opted for the largest design presented to him, some architects who were initially supportive of an arch (including Leigh) expressed their opposition to an arch of such size at the proposed location. By using an already existing AECOM contract, press research indicated the administration bypassed a public bidding process and NPS geotechnical and site survey work for the Triumphal Arch started in mid-May 2026. The administration, stating that Congress had approved a similar project a century earlier that was never built, said this should cover the arch and thus it would not seek congressional approval. That law provided for a pair of 166-foot-tall (51 m) columns. On May 21, 2026, the Commission of Fine Arts approved a revised design that eliminated an eight-foot-tall base (2.4 m) and four golden lions, which the Commission had pointed out were "not native to the United States". The arch itself was to remain 250 feet (76 m) tall. On June 24, 2026, Trump opened the Great American State Fair on the National Mall as part of the 250th anniversary celebrations, where a scaled-down model of the arch was displayed. See also 2026 Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation White House State Ballroom References