Kennedy memorials draw millions of visitors to Arlington each year
The White House last week unveiled a new website to showcase President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot memorial arch. The structure is slated to rise in a mass of gold ornamentation and stately gray granite between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy are buried close to the eternal flame that marks John F. Kennedy’s gravesite, a trio of memorials that is a major draw for the millions of people who visit Arlington National Cemetery each year.
Nine Kennedy family members asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday to block the project, saying the 250-foot (76-meter) structure would cast a shadow over their relatives’ gravesites. The relatives filed a motion to intervene in two existing lawsuits seeking to block construction of the arch. The shadow would “fundamentally alter the experience of visiting the gravesites,” the relatives argued.
Chutkan last week prohibited the Trump administration from breaking ground on the structure for 14 days. In their filing, the relatives ask the court to block the project.
The nine family members are children and grandchildren of Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, brothers of the slain President John F. Kennedy. Both men served in the U.S. Senate and are buried close to the eternal flame marking JFK’s gravesite.
Building the arch would be a “permanent denigration” of the gravesites, lawyers for the relatives wrote. They added that the Kennedy offspring “would never again be able to appreciate both sites as they always have before, and as the Kennedy family always intended.”
Veteran Washington lawyer Norm Eisen and the Democracy Defenders Fund represent the relatives.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, “It is unfortunate to see that some members of the Kennedy family have joined the litigation against the Arch as the project is intended to honor our heroes who rest in Arlington Cemetery.” He added, “The judiciary should not be abused to politicize a structure designed to unite our nation.”
According to the Associated Press, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s health and human services secretary, has a fractured relationship with many of his relatives and did not join the lawsuit.
The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he changes the capital. The list includes renovation of one of the capital’s storied public golf courses and a threat to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects could soon face intense scrutiny after Democrats gained control of Congress in the midterm elections.