President Trump's 250-foot memorial arch won preliminary approval Thursday from the National Capital Planning Commission — but the same federal bureaucrats who greenlight every ideological project that crosses their desks are suddenly born-again defenders of a 115-year-old zoning law to stop him.
The stakes are straightforward: if the commission's staff gets their way, Trump's arch gets chopped down to 130 feet and the design gets rewritten to satisfy an establishment that has never accepted his presidency or his legacy. If Trump's appointees prevail, the president gets his monument at full height — and the federal government reclaims authority the bureaucracy has hoarded for decades.
The NCPC voted to advance the project but left the critical question of height unresolved. Under the 1910 Height of Buildings Act, no structure in Washington may exceed 130 feet. Trump's arch would more than double that limit. The commission's career staff proposed a telling
