Category: Washington Post

The White House stands about 70 feet tall. The Lincoln Memorial, roughly 100 feet. The triumphal arch President Donald Trump wants to build would eclipse both if he gets his wish.

Trump has grown attached to the idea of a 250-foot-tall structure overlooking the Potomac River, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments, a scale that has alarmed some architectural experts who initially supported the idea of an arch but expected a far smaller one.

The planned Independence Arch is intended to commemorate the United States’ 250th anniversary. Built to Trump’s specifications, it would transform a small plot of land between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery into a dominant new monument, reshaping the relationship between the two memorials and obstructing pedestrians’ views.

Trump has considered smaller versions of the arch, including 165-foot-high and 123-foot-high designs he shared at a dinner last year. But he has favored the largest option, arguing that its sheer size would impress visitors to Washington, and that “250 for 250” makes the most sense, the people said.

Architectural experts counter that the size of the monument — installed in the center of a traffic circle — would distort the intent of the surrounding memorials.

“I don’t think an arch that large belongs there,” said Catesby Leigh, an art critic who conceived of a more modest, temporary arch in a 2024 essay — an idea that his allies championed and brought to the White House. His allies also passed along Leigh’s recommendation of an architect, Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, who has been retained by the White House to work on the project.

Charbonneau did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked about the arch’s height, the White House on Saturday referred to the president’s previous comments.

“The one that people know mostly is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. And we’re going to top it by, I think, a lot,” Trump said at a White House Christmas reception in December.

The Arc de Triomphe — already one of the world’s largest triumphal arches — measures 164 feet.

Trump also told Politico in December that he hoped to begin construction of the arch within two months, a timeline that appears unlikely given that White House officials have yet to make the final plans public or submit them to federal review panels. Memorial Circle, the plot of land that the president has eyed, is controlled by the National Park Service.

The White House reiterated the president’s desire to have an iconic monument.

The arch will become “one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement sent to the Washington Post after this article’s publication. “President Trump’s bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come.”

Washington does not have a triumphal arch, making it unusual among major cities that have built arches to commemorate wars and celebrate milestones, and some historians and civic leaders have long argued that such a monument is needed.

Rodney Mims Cook Jr., an Atlanta-based developer and president of the National Monuments Foundation, proposed a peace arch to Washington leaders in 2000 before the plans were withdrawn in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Cook later built a monumental arch in Atlanta, the Millennium Gate Museum, intended to celebrate Georgia’s history.

Trump this month appointed Cook to the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel that would be set to review and approve the design of new monuments in Washington — including the president’s potential arch.

Trump on Jan. 23 also posted images on his Truth Social platform with no comment that depict three versions of a large triumphal arch, including one option with gold gilding — a hallmark of Trump’s construction projects. Asked about the president’s post, White House officials said that the arch design continues to be refined. The White House also said the plan to put a large Lady Liberty statue atop the arch, which was included in previous concepts presented by Trump and Charbonneau but not in the president’s Truth Social post, has not been abandoned.

City planners have eyed the land around what is now Memorial Circle for more than a century. A 1901-1902 report overseen by the Senate Park Commission, which laid the groundwork to construct the National Mall and beautify much of the city’s core, appears to envision some sort of structure in the circle, drawings show. Architect William Kendall in 1928 also presented plans to the Commission of Fine Arts to construct a memorial there.

Local historians and architectural experts have said that a large arch could change the relationship between several historic sites, including Arlington Memorial Bridge itself, which was intended as a bridge between North and South in the wake of the Civil War, and memorials for Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

“It’s a very somber corridor,” said John Haigh, the chairperson of Benedictine College’s architecture program, who visited Memorial Circle with his students last year to consider the arch project. “We discussed the gravity of putting an arch there,” particularly one intended to be triumphal.

The structure as planned could obstruct views of Arlington House, the former Lee estate that sits on a hillside in Arlington National Cemetery.

“I would be very concerned about the scale,” said Calder Loth, a retired senior architectural historian for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, warning that a 250-foot-high arch could alter pedestrians’ views as they approach Arlington National Cemetery from Washington. “It would make Arlington House just look like a dollhouse — or you couldn’t see it all, with the arch blocking the view.”

They also cautioned that, barring major changes to the circle, it could be difficult for pedestrians to visit a potential monument there, given the busy motor traffic.

Loth also invoked the vantage point from Arlington National Cemetery, where visitors often look across the river toward the Lincoln Memorial and the capital beyond — a view he said the proposed arch would reshape.

“How does it impact the panorama of Washington?” Loth said, invoking a question that he said should guide designers of monuments. “What is supposed to be doing the speaking?”

Leigh initially proposed a 60-foot arch that could pop up as a temporary structure to mark America’s 250th. Trump instead wants a permanent arch, more than four times larger, funded with leftover private donations to his White House ballroom project, which he has said could cost about $400 million. Publicly identified donors to the ballroom project, such as Amazon, Google, and Lockheed Martin, collectively have billions of dollars in contracts before the administration. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.)

Any construction plan for the arch would probably need to go through several review panels and potentially require the sign-off of Congress, given laws around constructing monuments in Washington.

Trump’s interest in enlarging the arch mirrors his desire to expand the White House ballroom, which last year sparked clashes with James McCrery II, the architect initially tapped for the project. Shalom Baranes, the architect now leading that work, told federal review panels this month that White House officials have halted plans to make the ballroom even larger.

Leigh suggested a compromise location that could allow Trump his large monument without imposing on other structures.

“If you’re going to build an arch that big, you should build it in another part of town and one possible site that comes to mind is Barney Circle,” Leigh said, referencing a site in Southeast Washington next to Congressional Cemetery, overlooking the Anacostia River. “There’s nothing around it competing with it.”

A judge on Saturday declined to order the Trump administration to immediately scale back its immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, rejecting pleas from state officials who said the campaign was stepping on their sovereignty and endangering the public.

U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez said Minnesota and the Twin Cities had not definitively shown that the administration’s decision to flood the state with immigration agents, an initiative dubbed Operation Metro Surge, was unlawful or designed to coerce local officials into cooperating with other administration objectives.

However, while she denied the state’s request for a preliminary injunction ending the surge, the judge stressed that she was making not making a final determination on the state’s claims, a step that would take place after further litigation. She also cautioned that she was not deciding whether specific actions taken by immigration authorities during the surge were unlawful.

“It would be difficult to overstate the effect this operation is having on the citizens of Minnesota, and the Court must acknowledge that reality here,” wrote Menendez, who was named to the bench by President Joe Biden. “However, those are not the only harms to be considered. … Defendants have presented evidence that entry of the injunction requested by Plaintiffs would harm the federal government’s efforts to enforce federal immigration law.”

Immigration agents have flooded Minnesota in recent weeks, sparking protests as well as an intensive effort among residents to track and document the enforcement efforts. Federal authorities have shot and killed two people in Minneapolis since this surge began, prompting widespread outrage in Minnesota and across the country.

Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration on Jan. 12 in response to the surge, saying that federal agents had “stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional stops and arrests.”

In their lawsuit, Minnesota authorities said the Trump administration launched the campaign “to punish political opponents and score partisan points.” They said the federal government was putting public safety at risk, provoking protests, and undermining public trust in local law enforcement.

The Trump administration said Minnesota officials were “effectively seeking a state veto over the enforcement of federal law by federal officers.”

Federal officials wrote in court papers that the immigration crackdown has been a success despite attacks and threats against federal personnel. President Donald Trump campaigned on enforcing immigration laws, the Justice Department wrote, and “Minnesota is a crucial priority for immigration enforcement.”

Federal officials said in a court filing Monday that there were approximately 3,000 officers and agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection “conducting immigration enforcement actions in the greater Minneapolis area.”

Minnesota officials, in court filings and public comments, have said the situation in and around Minneapolis is dire and required urgent help from the courts. They have also pointed to the two recent shootings by federal authorities to bolster their case.

After an ICE officer shot and killed Renée Good on Jan. 7, Minneapolis launched its emergency preparedness protocols, leading to “significant additional work” for police and others in the city, Minnesota officials wrote in a court filing.

Federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, on Jan. 24. In a letter to the court the same day, Minneapolis and Minnesota officials said Pretti’s killing further illustrated the need for “a court-ordered respite” to the ongoing situation.

During a court hearing Monday, Menendez said that while “we are in shockingly unusual times,” she was skeptical about whether her authority let her decide if the immigration agents could remain deployed in Minnesota.

Menendez also questioned a letter Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) on the day Pretti was killed, demanding access to the state’s voter rolls and records relating to food assistance programs.

Bondi appeared to link these moves with a possible end to the immigration crackdown in Minnesota. During the hearing, Menendez asked whether the letter was akin to a ransom note.

The United Nations is on the verge of “imminent financial collapse,” in large part due to the failure of member states to pay their mandatory dues, Secretary General António Guterres said in a letter sent this week to the 193 U.N. ambassadors.

Leading the list of those in arrears is the United States, which owes nearly $2.2 billion in overdue and current assessments for the regular U.N. operating budget, dating back to the end of 2024, and hundreds of millions in funds pledged or assessed to other programs, according to a U.N. official.

Under a formula in which each nation pays annually according to its gross national income, population, and debt, the United States is assessed 22% of the regular budget, which for 2026 is $3.45 billion. Closely following is China, which is assessed 20% and paid up until the beginning of this year.

The next highest arrears, $38 million, is owed by Venezuela, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the United Nations. Caracas’ vote in the General Assembly has been suspended, as mandated by the organization’s charter for any member that doesn’t pay for two years.

“We have managed difficult periods of unpaid assessed contributions before,” Guterres wrote without mentioning any specific country. “But today’s situation is categorically different. … The current trajectory is untenable.”

Republican administrations and lawmakers have long criticized the U.N. as wasteful, liberal, and ineffective — and in some years has reduced or temporarily withheld partial payments. The Trump administration has refused to pay at all, although it has not officially informed the U.N. whether it intends to make any future or overdue payments.

Although annual payments are usually due in January, many countries pay in tranches throughout the year. The Biden administration left office last January with its second-half 2024 assessment unpaid.

The U.S. mission at the U.N., where President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Waltz serves as ambassador, did not respond to queries on the budget.

Trump has said the U.N. has great “potential” but is not living up to its promise to keep world peace. In an executive order signed early this month, he ordered U.S. withdrawal from 66 international organizations, agencies, and commissions, nearly half of them at the U.N., because, he said, they “undermine America’s independence and waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective or hostile agendas.”

Trump’s recently announced Board of Peace, originally designed as the supervisory board for implementing his Gaza peace plan, has led to concerns that he plans to replace the U.N. altogether.

In a letter sent to 60 world leaders invited to join (25 have officially signed up so far, none of them major U.S. allies), Trump said the board would “embark on a bold new approach to resolving Global Conflict.” Trump appointed himself board chair, with personal veto power over membership and virtually every action it might take.

Responding to reporters Thursday who asked whether he thought the board was a U.N. competitor, Guterres said: “In my opinion, the basic responsibility for international peace and security lies with U.N., lies with the Security Council. … No other body or other coalition can legally be required to have all member states to comply with decisions on peace and security.”

“Global problems will not be solved by one power,” Guterres said.

Trump has also withdrawn U.S. participation from other U.N. agencies whose budgets are separate and voluntary, including the World Health Organization. Other voluntary humanitarian programs include refugee and natural disaster aid, to which the administration last month pledged $2 billion, a fraction of what Washington has contributed in the past.

In addition to the problem of unpaid dues, Guterres in his letter called on the General Assembly to revise a system in which any budgeted money that is unspent at year’s end is returned to member governments, whether or not they have paid their dues.

“We are suffering a double blow: on one side, unpaid contributions; and on the other side, an obligation to return funds that were never received in the first place,” he wrote. “In other words, we are trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle; expected to give back cash that does not exist.”

U.N. officials expect this problem, if left unaddressed, to increase exponentially by 2027, as the amount of money that must be returned cuts into each new year’s available funds. The U.N. could run out of cash as early as July, by some accounts, if neither the dues nor the financial system is addressed.

Guterres, whose term expires at the end of this year, sounded the alarm last year and proposed cutting the regular operating budget by as much as 20% via staff cuts, streamlining, building sales, and relocation of some offices from expensive locations such as Geneva to less costly regions. The General Assembly finally approved a 2026 regular budget that was 7.6% lower than last year.

In an interview with the New York Post earlier this month, Waltz claimed U.S. credit for forcing the U.N. to accept “actual real cuts for the first time in its modern history. … They’ve never seen anything like it.”

Saying he was now pushing to revamp pension and compensation plans, Waltz stressed the importance of the U.N. to international diplomacy. “There needs to be one place in the world where everyone can talk,” he told the New York Post. “We want that one place in the world to be in the United States, not in Brussels or Beijing.”

JERUSALEM — Airstrikes killed at least 32 people in Gaza overnight Friday, according to hospital and emergency response officials in the enclave, as Israel launched what it said were extensive strikes targeting Hamas militants and weapons sites.

It was one of the bloodiest nights in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump in October, as the peace process enters its precarious second phase. Israel is due to open the key Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Sunday and begin allowing the limited entry and exit of people — a concession made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under pressure from Trump.

Egypt, a mediator in the conflict, condemned the strikes as the latest of Israel’s “repeated violations” of the ceasefire. An Israeli security official said Hamas had provoked Israel with “blatant violations” of the ceasefire by sending eight militants out of a tunnel in Rafah the previous night.

Israel also struck weapons storage, manufacturing, and launch sites in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

The Gaza Civil Defense emergency response team and hospital officials said Israel struck a tent in Khan Younis that housed the Abu Hadayed family, killing seven people; a residential home in the al-Nasr neighborhood west of Gaza City; and a police station in Gaza City’s Sheikh Redwan area.

The majority of the 32 dead as of Saturday afternoon were women and children, according to Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal.

The Israeli military has killed 509 Gazans and injured more than 1,400 since the ceasefire took effect Oct. 11, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli campaign has killed more than 71,000 people in the enclave since October 2023, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The Israeli government launched the campaign after Hamas led an assault on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 251 back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli officials.

The IDF believes the number of deaths in Gaza is about 70,000, not including bodies buried under rubble, a senior Israeli military official told Israeli reporters on background this week. The IDF is still reviewing how many of the dead were combatants and how many were civilians, the official said.

After Israeli media reported the official’s comments, the IDF clarified that it was not disclosing formal casualty estimates.

“The details published do not reflect official IDF data,” Lt. Col Nadav Shoshani wrote on X. “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels.”