Full Breakdown
Trump’s Proposed Arlington Arch Casts Long Shadows Over Nation’s Memorials
By Drooid · · How we work
Proposed Arch and Projected Shadow Impact
President Donald Trump has announced plans for a 250-foot triumphal arch at Arlington National Cemetery. A to-scale 3D model created by *The Washington Post* estimates the structure’s shadow would fall on burial sites on 284 days each year. The analysis indicates the shade would cover the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame on 18 days, his memorial on 50 days, and the Military Women’s Memorial on 109 days. It would also darken headstones of veterans from the Civil War through the Vietnam War, as well as those of formerly enslaved people. On more than 30 days the shadow would extend over parts of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Reflecting Pool, and on 110 days it would touch a memorial to an assassinated president. According to the model, on July 28—Jacqueline Kennedy’s birthday—the arch’s shadow would fall on President Kennedy’s flame and grave while a new flame atop the arch burns.
Official Statements & Responses
The department’s 23-page report did not detail its methodology, and its shadow estimates largely align with the *Post* model.
Legal Challenge and Timeline
Three Vietnam veterans and a preservationist have filed a lawsuit seeking an emergency halt to the construction; a federal judge is currently weighing the case. A planning commission populated with Trump allies could approve the project as early as later this month, with groundbreaking expected shortly thereafter. Trump has boasted that the arch must be “a little bit larger” than Paris’s 164-foot Arc de Triomphe, and the design includes its own eternal flame.
Verbatim Quotes
- “There are a lot of families out there who are going to visit their loved one and just be overwhelmed by the shadow of this vanity project to Trump,” — Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, whose parents are buried at Arlington, called it “a sacrilege
- “Perhaps the concern is not so much the presence of shade as what it means for a monument celebrating triumph to impose its shadow on a landscape commemorating sacrifice,” — Columbia University’s Karla Rothstein