U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is again putting distance between her and President Donald Trump, with a spokesperson saying this week that the Maine Republican believes his plans for a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch should go through Congress.
The argument echoes Collins’ position in May, when she opposed Trump’s $1 billion request for security upgrades tied to his White House ballroom overhaul, and it comes as she seeks a sixth term against Democrat Troy Jackson, who has built his campaign around tying her to the president.
But Collins’ distancing has been somewhat muted compared with the rest of Maine’s congressional delegation, which escalated its fight against the archway this week, arguing the administration is defying a court order and bypassing federal law to break ground.
The archway planned for Memorial Circle in Washington has sparked a lawsuit from a veterans group and outcry from lawmakers who say the 250-foot structure requires congressional approval before construction can begin.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from the liberal 1st District, on Tuesday urged House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, to file a lawsuit to block early plans for the arch. That followed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s recent announcement that over the next two weeks, excavation would begin on the “Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck.”
Breaking ground would ignore a pending lawsuit and bypass congressional authorization required by the Commemorative Works Act, Pingree said.
“Americans are watching this White House pour concrete over the rules of their own government, and they are furious,” the congresswoman said in a statement.
Like the ballroom and other White House overhauls, the arch, which critics say would deface the sightline between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, is yet another front in a battle over what many Democrats say is executive overreach by Trump.
Pingree’s push comes after independent Sen. Angus King joined an amicus brief in February backing a lawsuit over the arch filed by a group of Vietnam War veterans and a former architectural historian.
King, who caucuses with Democrats and is the ranking member on the National Parks subcommittee, and other lawmakers wrote to Burgum and administration officials in June, arguing the arch falls under the Commemorative Works Act and would violate two century-old statutes, including one on height restrictions in Washington.
“This proposal is stone cold illegal,” King, who caucuses with the Democrats, said in an interview Wednesday. “A judge has entered an order: no breaking ground until you come back to court.”
King said the arch — modeled after Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris — is a “far cry” from unbuilt columns approved in 1925 that the administration recently cited as justification for moving forward. He added that if the president thinks it’s important and that the American people want the arch, the administration should “make the case and get a bill passed, but they’re not even remotely trying to do that.”
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat from the 2nd District, said Wednesday that regardless of whether it’s a worthy project, the arch calls “into question the separation of powers.”
“Congress has not approved or funded this project, but the president claims a more than century-old authorization gives him the power to build it anyway,” he said. “This kind of dispute is exactly what the courts are for, and Congress is uniquely suited to call the question.”
Cheyenne Gallivan, a spokesperson for Democrat Troy Jackson, the former Maine Senate president challenging Collins in November and linking the senator to Trump’s agenda, called the arch “yet another example of Donald Trump wasting our tax dollars,” along with the White House ballroom and renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The Trump administration in a court filing Friday said it plans to conduct archaeological surveys, not construction, later this month, NPR reported. A federal judge ordered the administration to give two days’ notice before any work beyond the surveys.
The White House in a statement did not address the criticism by lawmakers and veterans.
“The Triumphal Arch in Memorial Circle is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said Wednesday.