Trump names his triumphal arch a military complex; his own party's first question is who pays.

…(cont) The tinkerer went looking for the tool built to review that — the installation, not just the height — and came up with nothing. That tool existed. It was the historic-sites review, and it had just been switched off.

Monday, the muscle found the load-bearing crack the GOP had already spotted: Rep. Mike Simpson said the Pentagon's money has other places to go before it goes to an arch, whatever it's zoned for now. By Thursday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth had climbed into the cab and pointed at the wheel already on the dash: the Pentagon and the FAA, she said, have their own standing authority to reject the "foolhardy plan" outright — no new statute needed, no committee to wait on, just two agencies declining to certify a building for a use their existing reviews never once contemplated. The Hill called the turn "gonzo bonkers." NPR, with what can only be professional restraint, turned it into a fill-in-the-blank quiz.

The pilot's job was supposed to be finding the runway. Instead she's cataloging the agencies that already have the authority to say no, sitting exactly where they were left — unused — while the excavation continues on a site the review meant to police it stopped watching a week ago. The arch will have a foundation. It will not, on current paperwork, have had anyone check what's going on top of it.