Washington DC—At 4:30 on Friday afternoon the rush hour traffic is winding its way through the Memorial Circle bird nest of winding roads outside Arlington National Cemetery. Over 27,000 vehicles, 1,100 cyclists, and 1,200 pedestrians pass by Memorial Circle on an average workday. Many will pass by while the resistors are there. The Arch Resistors have been planting their banners in the grass near Memorial bridge for 8 weeks now. Its just feet from where the Arch is planned to be built. Only 9 have shown up this Friday but many showed up earlier that morning when a soaking rain was falling so those returning for the afternoon protest are worn out.
They’re still feeling a certain bliss from Tuesday’s blue wave tsunami election route of the Maga party. Thousands of districts across every State shifted towards the Democratic party. Both chambers of Congress turn blue on January 3. Yet the Arch Resistance did not take the day off even though most others were relaxing and breathing a sigh of relief. They know the moment of battle over the arch is at its pitch and it still could go either way.
One of the arch resistors is Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright, who flew into Washington DC from Hawaii for the second time to stand in the grassy circle and hold a banner, ‘No Arch.’ The flight from Hawaii cost something north of $1,500.00 but she’s there and does not mince her words or set aside her feelings about the Arch. In fact Col. Wright is one of the main reasons why the arch resistance is still going. She asked other Veterans to continue going to the circle until after the election when she would return. Now she’s back on the grass after testifying at the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) of her opposition to the arch. A spokeswoman for Veterans for Peace, Hawaii chapter, she emphatically states that the Arch is not going to be built, and even then, over her “dead body.” She speaks at length about the many reasons why the Arch should not be built; the least of which is the affront to Veterans she knew who gave their final full measure in war. Some of them she knew now lay not far from where she stands.
As the orange wisps of clouds surrender to a windy deep blue and purple hue, the Autumn sun fades behind the Arlington House. Another Veteran who stands there also chimes in, “Its that time again,” he says dryly. And someone else answers, “Time for what?” “It’s time to turn on the letters,” says Bob Fasick, a Vietnam Era Veteran. He pulls a group of giant letters spelling ‘No Arch’ out from a giant black plastic trash bag and in his daily ritual he links them on a rope between two poles and turns on batteries illuminating them with LEDs. “Let them hang freely,” he tells a friend trying to display them. He’s about as salty as Col. Wise, but he gets things done. For the last eight weeks he and other Veterans have been showing up on the desolate patch of grass to display their banners and signs and resistance messages against the arch. He has carried the banners and letters back and forth on the metro many times to over the last eight weeks.
The night falls and only then it becomes apparent that every resister at Memorial Circle is in their 70s. This reporter, the youngest person there, wonders why there are no youth present. Maybe it’s an unfair question in ponder. Youth are in school, working under unfair economic conditions or maybe the appeal to defend a cemetery’s last resting place for Veterans is something they are not yet attuned to. Many were seen marching like armies from universities to voting booths. They are out there fighting the same fights too, maybe just in general they don’t know anyone close to them who fought, and came home in a box. This is an unspoken issue among the Veterans, especially those who fought in wars from Vietnam to Iraq. Some of those Veterans are standing in Memorial Circle yet they utter not one single word about those wars.
Those who have shown up are still determined as ever to beat the Arch project. The public for which they stand passes by in its SUVs, pickup trucks, bikes, and buses and there’s a steady cascade of honking and thumbs up approvals. Gone are any signs of opposition trolls who would typically voice their outright hostility towards the arch resistance—that was until Wednesday the day after their party’s agenda came face to face with a resolutely fed-up electorate—and lost 75% of the country in an historic one day vote. Now if the Arch Resistance could only tap into that energy a little more, their opposition might tip the tide more dramatically in their direction.
But then on Thursday, November 5, a flurry of developments made it much more likely that the arch would be further delayed. A marathon 9-hours hearing of public comments before the NCPC saw over 120 opposition speakers denouncing the proposed project. A few supported it—but only 4. But within an hour of the last comment the president’s hand-selected NCPC approved the Arch anyway by a vote of 8-4.
Within an hour of that, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), blocking arch construction for 2 weeks and gave the Arch Resistance a reprieve. This was part of a lawsuit by DC and Northern Virginia against the White House arch project in part, for certain economic hardship the 3-years’ construction would have based on traffic and commercial bottlenecks. Veterans opposed to the arch encroachment on the sanctity of Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of over 430,000 war Veterans and their spouses, would indirectly benefit from this TRO. They had filed another suit in February 2026 against the arch.
In publishing her 33-page TRO, Judge Chutkan wrote, “[T]he District and Virginia have offered
enough proof “indicating that the harm is certain to occur in the near future” to show irreparable harm.” She also wrote that “the most straightforward of Congress’s planning
directives,” remains in force today. Now codified at 40 U.S.C. § 8106, the statute provides in full: “A building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.”
The arch project was allowed to advance without Congressional oversight because Congress under Mike Johnson adjourned without exercising oversight or determining whether opposition to it was justified throughout the rushed approval process.
If not for Judge Chutkan’s TRO, the U.S. Department of Interior would have signed off on the last approval orders to begin construction on Thursday, November 5, and by Friday the project would have been blocking traffic. Even the grass had been painted with white lines to demark boundaries of the arch pedestal before the NCPC hearing. That was until Mother Nature stepped in and erased it with her soaking rain on Thursday.
Any delay of the project would push the arch project back and closer to January 3rd, the day the 120th Congress would be sworn in. The new Congress would be out for revenge against a president who tore down nearly every liberal institution Congress had funded and built in the last 80 years. It would be out for blood like an eagle searching for the bandits who stole its eggs. A new Congress taking seriously its rightful and responsible roles would certainly trigger an entire set of new legal challenges and parameters against the arch construction and it could potentially stymie the project even further.
The Arch resistance knows that they are having a delay effect on the project by being there every day, morning and evening and the election has given them new hope and put a few more gallons of fuel in their fuel tanks. Other groups have enjoined their efforts and gotten the attention of Congressman Don Beyers (D-VA), who also testified at the NCPC hearing on Thursday. “In my time in Congress, I have never seen a project with such profound, widespread opposition from the very people who it will affect most,” he said in his testimony.
During a recent No Kings 4 rally high profile personalities showed up. Had it not been for the attention the small group drew to the arch resistance, the energy behind it would not have had a platform from which to grow.
Judge Chutkan’s TRO has given them even more gas. Over 100,000 written comments have come in opposing the arch. The plan to build it was rushed and skirted legal procedures and funding requirements under Title 40 U.S.C. § 8106.
The arch resistance now knows that they are turning the tide. They plan to keep returning. The biggest battles in Memorial Circle are yet to come. That is because authoritarians don’t know when they have been beaten and they don’t leave quietly unless they are resoundingly defeated and forcibly removed.
The 120th Congress has not been seated yet. The White House intends to build the Arch, build its golf course, and remove and replace the Kennedy Center, if it can get away with it.
There are plans to step up the resistance on all of the vanity project battlefields. If construction equipment is moved into the circle and a fence is erected Veterans will show up. Many Veterans have already raised their hand to support a direct action to block construction but their names and numbers are being kept a close secret. They’re out there though. If the Veterans at the circle like Col. Wright are any indicator of what they look like, then in 14 days they’ll be ready.
