In Washington, D.C., the Trump administration has moved to break ground on a 250-foot triumphal arch without completing the federal approval process and in the face of active litigation — a decision that places executive ambition in direct tension with the institutional guardrails that have long governed how power is exercised in the nation's capital. The monument, grand in its symbolism and scale, has become something more than an architectural undertaking: it is a live question about whether the courts and regulatory agencies can hold the line when an administration chooses to move before th