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WASHINGTON — <\/span>The Arlington County Board in Virginia filed a lawsuit Thursday opposing the construction of the Triumphal Arch,<\/a> becoming the first governmental body to take legal action against President Donald Trump’s planned monument.<\/p>\n The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, criticized the speed at which the project slated for Memorial Circle has moved without going through the full review process. <\/p>\n \u201cThe National Park Service, the agency responsible for projects on national park land such as Memorial Circle, is proceeding full-speed toward ground-disturbing construction,\u201d the lawsuit said. \u201cAlthough the agency has claimed that a final decision to construct the Arch has not yet been made and purports to be engaged in a routine decisional process, that rushed process appears to be a pretext designed to shore up justifications for building the Arch in accordance with the President\u2019s repeated marching orders.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawsuit asks that \u201cthe agency’s feverish pace toward construction of the arch\u201d be halted to ensure that the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act be followed and proper analysis and testing be done.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Arlington County Board has filed this lawsuit because our community has the most to lose from this egregious and unlawful proposed project,\u201d Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in a statement. He added that the county has acted in good faith in the review process, pointing out the \u201csevere, unique, and wide-ranging negative impacts\u201d the project will have on the county and its residents, only to see them ignored.<\/p>\n Memorial Circle sits on federal parkland west of the Potomac River across the Memorial Bridge and immediately adjacent to Arlington County.<\/p>\n The county is being represented in the lawsuit by legal advocacy group Democracy Forward.<\/p>\n The White House and Interior Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n The lawsuit comes just a day after Association of Flight Attendants-CWA<\/a> President Sara Nelson expressed concerns that the 250-foot (76-meter) arch compounds multiple safety issues that she said have gone unaddressed since a deadly January 2025 crash<\/a> over the Potomac River that killed 67 people. Nelson also criticized Trump\u2019s plan to turn the arch into \u201ca top grade military complex\u201d able to host drones and snipers while storing ammunition.<\/p>\n Though the arch has received early approval<\/a> from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all tapped by Trump, a group of three veterans and an architectural historian sued in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying the project needs to be approved by Congress. The judge in that lawsuit said the administration must give the court 48 hours before undertaking any activities related to or in preparation for construction of the arch.<\/p>\n The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he remakes the city, from renovating one of its storied public golf courses<\/a> to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center<\/a> for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n