Senior House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) on Monday said he is against using defense spending to fund President Donald Trump’s planned triumphal arch, noting that other military needs should be prioritized. Trump said on Sunday that his planned arch will now be a military complex to house drones and snipers…
Page A2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 21 September 2026
Republican Objects to Funding Trump's 'Military Complex' Arch With Actual Military Funds
As it ran on the front
On September 3rd, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum gave the arch two names in one filing — the "Great Triumphal Arch" and the "Military Observation Deck" — and on the record that day, called neither one a monument. A day later, on September 4th, attorney Nicolas Sansone told Common Dreams the administration "has no legal authority to begin work" on the arch at all. By September 5th, three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian had filed an emergency motion in federal court to stop excavation anyway.
Thirteen days after that, on September 18th, the Federal Aviation Administration cleared the arch to exist: its review found the planned height poses no safety hazard to planes near Memorial Circle, and the project was allowed to advance. The agency that grounds things had signed off. The agency that grants permission to dig had not.…
…(cont) That is where the file stood Sunday, when President Trump told the country the arch would no longer just be an arch. It would be, he said, a "Military Complex," built to house snipers and drones. All together now — that is the White House's own upgrade, delivered on camera, applied to a structure still short a legal floor to break ground on.
The upgrade lasted one day. On Monday, Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee and a Republican, said he does not want the arch funded out of defense spending. Other military needs, he said, should be prioritized first. The president's monument had spent one news cycle as a military complex before a member of the president's own party looked at the bill and asked that the actual military's money go to the actual military.
Nothing here required Simpson to oppose the arch. He didn't. He opposed the ledger — the line item that would take money appropriated for the armed forces and spend it on a 250-foot structure whose safety review just cleared it to stand near an airport, and whose legal authority to be excavated is still, as of this filing, unresolved in federal court. The arch has a name for its guns now. It does not yet have a permit for its foundation. And according to the man who sits on the committee that writes the checks, it does not currently have a claim on the military's checkbook either.
File stays open. The court motion is still pending. The FAA has spoken. The Appropriations Committee has not voted. Clause by clause, the arch keeps acquiring new departments and new objections at roughly the same pace, and neither one has caught up to the other yet.
“They can't get a permit to dig the hole, but they've already named the guns that go on top of it. Now even the guy who signs off on defense spending is saying don't pull real military money for a monument that isn't cleared to break ground. That's not a policy disagreement, that's one arm of the government catching another arm mid-grab.”
“Look, Congressman Simpson isn't against the arch — he's against the funding source, which, fine, that's a totally different thing. He's not saying kill the military complex, he's saying pay for it out of a different account, which is exactly the kind of fiscal discipline this party has always stood for. Did I just call moving the bill to another drawer "fiscal discipline"? Let's not dwell on that.”
Earlier in this story
- Arch With No Legal Basis to Break Ground Gets Promoted to 'Military Complex' With Snipers, Drones By Mitch · the supper edition, 20 September 2026
The receipts
The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday found that President Donald Trump’s proposed new monument in Washington, D.C., does not pose a threat to air safety, allowing plans for the grand arch to advance. Architects have situated the “Triumphal Arch” on an empty traffic island in Memorial Circle, lying between the Lincoln Memorial…
President Donald Trump is arguing that another one of his projects around Washington, D.C., is being built for national security purposes.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.