The top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee is accusing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum of — at the very least — coming “pretty damn close” to perjuring himself before Congress when testifying this week about President Donald Trump’s proposed memorial arch.
On Wednesday, under questioning from Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Burgum said that while there has been a “discussion” about the arch project, so far there is “no final agency action around building something” at the site.
There is “not a proposal,” Burgum said.
However, Huffman — who visited the proposed site for the structure Thursday for a press conference — told MS NOW that things have unquestionably progressed beyond the “discussion” stage.
The proposed location for the 250-foot arch is a traffic circle between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
MS NOW on Thursday observed two fenced-off, curtain-covered areas in the circle, with workers operating equipment inside one of the fences.
“You would have to be a fool not to understand what’s going on behind these little curtains,” Huffman told MS NOW.
“This is not a discussion,” Huffman said. “They’re breaking ground in furtherance of this ‘Arch de Trump’ monument that the president is stubbornly pushing ahead — without congressional approval, without following the law, without a public notice.”
“This is the East Wing ballroom all over again,” he said.
In a letter sent to Burgum on Thursday, Huffman offered the secretary “the opportunity to revise or clarify your statements,” noting that it is “a federal crime to make false statements to Congress.”
In a statement to MS NOW, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said that “site surveys, such as geotechnical work, have started in Memorial Circle which is statutorily required.”
The spokesperson said those surveys are “standard practice to test the grounds and soil” and “required before providing a final proposal.”
The spokesperson also defended Burgum, saying the secretary was “100% accurate in his testimony in front of Congress. We cannot speak to the lack of compliance understanding by Members of Congress.”
Trump first started publicly toying with the idea of an arch in 2025, even displaying models in the Oval Office. The proposed structure has grown in size, from 76 feet initially to now 250 feet.
Recommended
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the White House planned to begin work at the Memorial Circle site by using an unrelated contract for engineering services at the White House, which is located across the river. The move, the Post notes, could allow the administration to “bypass a potentially lengthy public bidding process.”
In response to that report, Huffman said, “It just shows that they are bending, breaking, ignoring all the rules.”
A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior dismissed the story.
The arch is the latest of several projects Trump is pursuing to remodel Washington, D.C., including renovating and renaming the Kennedy Center, repainting the floor of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue and knocking down the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom.
Huffman called the undertakings the president’s “vanity projects,” which, he said, only demonstrate that Trump is obsessed with “trying to immortalize himself” and is “so disconnected with the realities that Americans are struggling with right now.”
During a press conference Thursday at the proposed arch site with Huffman, Gary Langston, who spent 29 years in the Army, also objected to the project.
Langston’s parents are both buried at the Arlington National Cemetery — his father served in Vietnam — and Langston visits the cemetery 15 to 16 times per year.
He argued that any monument that goes in the Memorial Circle should be “unifying.”
It should not, he said, “be obstructing that view of very hallowed grounds at Arlington.”
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.