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Page B50From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 1 November 2026

Trump arch gets no budget line, two defense secretaries, and three lawsuits

By RuthThe Money Desk

“The History Behind Trump’s Arch”, 1 November 2026 (Photo via The New York Times — the original report)

As it ran on the front

No appropriation for a triumphal arch has ever cleared Congress. The ledger line simply does not exist. The arch is rising anyway, planned between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and three separate lawsuits now stand between the drawings and the ground.

Start with the money question, because somebody on this desk has to. On September 20th, President Trump said his planned arch would now double as a military complex, built to house drones and snipers. The next day, Monday the 21st, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he opposed paying for the project out of the defense budget, and that other military needs should come first. Nobody on the record has answered him. He is still asking.…

…(cont) Two days later, on September 23rd, President Macron was asked whether the arch was built to outdo his own Arc de Triomphe. He said monuments are bigger than ourselves. He did not say who was paying for this one; that question was never his filing to answer.

By September 28th, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation had stopped asking too. Its vice chairman notified the preservation group consulting on the project that the consultation was closing, because answering the public's concerns would require deviating from the president's vision. A preservation group called itself "gobsmacked." The record does not show the consultation reopening.

On October 9th, Arlington County, Virginia, filed the first lawsuit seeking to halt the project. That filing sat alone for three weeks.

On October 29th, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin each filed court declarations calling the arch a "generational defense opportunity." Neither declaration carries a dollar figure. Neither names an appropriation. The phrase is doing the work the budget line still is not.

This week, the ledger changed shape, not size. Virginia and the District of Columbia filed suit, joining Arlington County as plaintiffs, bringing the total to three pending lawsuits against a project with zero dollars appropriated on the books. The gap between the filing and the funding has not closed, hon. It has acquired two more plaintiffs.

Representative Simpson's question from September is still sitting there, unanswered, while the structure he asked about is argued over in federal court as a defense asset. Somewhere between "generational defense opportunity" and three lawsuits in three jurisdictions, the appropriation he asked for still has not been filed. The ledger does not say who pays. It only says, so far, who sues.

“They don't have a budget line, so they built a war footing instead — call it a "generational defense opportunity" and suddenly a 250-foot arch is a national security asset, same as a submarine. That's the con: no appropriation means no vote, and no vote means nobody on your side of the aisle ever has to say yes or no to it out loud. Three lawsuits later, the drones-and-snipers story is still the only funding answer anybody's gotten.”
Sal
“The Pentagon isn't spending a dollar that hasn't been — look, "generational defense opportunity" is a term of art, it means the project serves defense goals, it doesn't mean there's a line item, why would you even — I'm not saying there's no appropriation. I'm saying the appropriation question is premature. Did I say premature? That's not a defense, that's a delay.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

The History Behind Trump’s Arch
The New York Timesmainstream§

The history of triumphal arches is long and messy. Where does Donald Trump’s proposed edifice fit in?

The White House ballroom was announced at $200 million and now costs $400 million; the East Wing was demolished for it Fortune, 6 April 2026

Hegseth, Mullin call Trump’s arch a ‘generational defense opportunity’
The Hillmainstream§

President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch would be a “generational defense opportunity,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin have argued in court declarations. Critics have dismissed Trump's attempts to link the arch to national security needs as a smokescreen to push through a divisive…

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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.