Virtual National Capital Planning Commission meeting for Donald Trump’s triumphal arch crashes amid heated debate

The virtual National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) meeting on Thursday to likely approve President Trump’s triumphal arch crashed after 90 minutes.

The livestream went down during public testimony largely against the project and after a tense exchange with Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). NCPC tech experts were looking into the issue, Reuters reported.

The meeting resumed following a recess after the crash, and the stream was moved to the NCPC’s YouTube channel shortly after 3 p.m. EST, roughly 40 minutes after the stream crashed.

Commissioners and NCPC Chair Mark Paoletta spoke out in favor of the arch, which the Trump administration wants to build at the western end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge between Washington, D.C., and Virginia, between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Paoletta cited the 1925 congressional authorization for the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, which the Trump administration has cited as its reasoning to construct the arch a century later.

“I recently walked across the Memorial Bridge and walked the grounds of this empty traffic circle,” Paoletta said speaking in favor of the arch. “It is fundamentally at odds with the intent of the 1925 act, which is still in effect. It dishonors our veterans and leaves a key monumental gateway to Arlington, that Congress authorized, uncompleted. This is a national disgrace.”

Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service, called on the NCPC to reject the final proposal to build the arch.

“Our most revered presidents earned their place of honor,” he said during the public testimony before the stream crashed. “They didn’t try to bestow it on themselves with gaudy tributes. The monuments to them came later, after history had judged that they were deserved.”

He added, after emphasizing the lack of congressional approval on the project, that the U.S. is a “nation of laws, not kings or kangaroo commissions.”

Paoletta cited letters written by Ulysses S. Grant III, grandson of the 18th president, who wrote that Columbia Plaza on the bridge was incomplete, and asked Huffman when it was completed. Huffman argued that the congressional authorization was for the bridge, not for an arch.

“I am asking you a question, you are wrong that it’s just about a bridge,” Paoletta said.

Huffman replied that citing letters differed from congressional authorization or “legislative history.”

“I don’t think it’s going to fly, but you should try that argument in court and let’s see where it goes,” he replied, referring to the ongoing court battle with veterans and preservationists against the arch’s construction.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) spoke in favor of the arch and asked if the proposal had congressional approval.

“Should our nation finish construction of a project to honor its veterans on our semiquincentennial anniversary?” Clyde said. “As a member of Congress and a 28-year Navy combat veteran, I believe the only answer to both of these questions is yes.”

Before the meeting crashed, a man named Peter Siegel challenged the reasoning for the arch’s purpose, noting remarks President Trump made last year that it was for “me.”

“That’s for the long and short of it,” Siegel said. “As far as I can tell, the National Capital Planning Commission’s mission, in its current make-up, is to realize Trump’s desire, regardless of the multiple adverse effects on national register of listed properties.”

After the meeting resumed, Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) defended the project. 

“You think about the Stars of David and those plain, white crosses across Arlington National Cemetery,” he said. “Each one of them a testament to the freedom of the United States, the service that was given to ensure the freedom of people across the United States of America, and those are the testaments to each of those lives.”

“This arch,” he continued, “this monumental arch, that is an opportunity for us to have the greatest masterpiece of tribute that has ever existed, paid to heroes of the United States of America.”

Commissioner Phil Mendelson, chair of the Council of the District of Columbia, who has inquired about specifics in the Trump administration’s proposals for the arch in the past, asked earlier in the meeting for clarification on the purpose of the project, among other questions.

Department of the Interior’s Greg Wischer replied that it “fulfills a 100-year plan to build a monumental work on Columbia Island.”

“But I would note as well that the [Extended Detection and Response] says that the purpose is to celebrate America’s semiquincentennial,” Mendelsen replied, later adding that he was “just trying to understand the purpose, but maybe I’ve gotten enough of an answer.”

Other commissioners also praised the arch. Paul Ingrassia, the acting General Counsel at the General Services Administration, compared the project to “a blank canvas that is long overdue and long inviting, I think, something of this stature.” 

Updated at 3:46 p.m. EST.