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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that excavation will begin on what the administration calls the Great Triumphal Arch within the next two weeks. The 250-foot monument is planned for construction at Memorial Circle, towering over its neighbors, the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Burgum called the construction project the end of “a very long wait.” 125 years, to be exact. But he still lacked the patience to wait for basic permission. The National Capital Planning Commission controls what gets built on federal land in Washington. After a meeting yesterday, it has yet to approve the arch. And it isn’t scheduled to meet again until October. So the administration found its window: build now, and let the commission catch up to the hole in the ground later. The arch also needs an exception to the city’s 130-foot building height limit, because it’s nearly twice that. The Commission of Fine Arts signed off on the design in May, but only after recommending a smaller version within the limits. Trump refused. Why 250 feet? The President has given two answers. One is supposedly symbolic: the height marks a foot for every year of American independence. The other seems far more likely, given how he actually thinks. "Slightly larger than Paris?” For the record, the Arc de Triomphe is 164 feet. His monument is 250. That’s not slightly larger. That’s the whole point. For Trump, bigger is always better, especially when it reflects his monumental ego. Nobody else could surpass him by that measure. Let’s take a step back and look at the broader pattern. The ballroom went up while the Supreme Court was still deciding whether it was legal. Lake Ontario got renamed by executive order. Now his arch is getting dug into the ground before any vote of approval. The strategy is always the same: pour the concrete first, argue about the permits later. What does Congress do about this? Nothing. Meanwhile, our monuments and our nation's capital get destroyed.