Democrats preparing to take control of Congress say they will try to halt or shrink what they call President Trump's "vanity projects" in Washington, but legal experts told NPR that only two tools are likely to work: funding restrictions and oversight.
Trump has already overseen the felling of hundreds of trees at East Potomac Park and the demolition of the White House East Wing for a ballroom, which he called "the safest place in Washington" when he showed it to reporters the day after the midterms, NPR reported. Most of the projects, from a planned triumphal arch to work at the Kennedy Center, are now in court. Critics accuse the administration of skirting federal laws and rushing work before the end of his term. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told NPR that "no other president has done more to beautify our Nation's interior than President Trump," citing park cleanups, the Reflecting Pool and the White House helipad and ballroom, and said Democrats "should work with President Trump to make our nation's capital beautiful again."
Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat who is in line to lead the House Natural Resources Committee, told NPR the administration has "played this game of Catch Me If You Can, where they roll ahead with the bulldozers and the tree cutters … and they wait for courts to shut them down." He said there is "no way that we could look away while these sacred, iconic places are being permanently changed in ways that violate the law." Earlier this week he sent letters ordering dozens of administration officials and private companies to preserve records for a future investigation.
A Dec. 11 funding fight, and the limits of legislation
Some Democrats have already introduced bills to protect the Kennedy Center from demolition and to prohibit an arch at Memorial Circle. Trump has promised to "veto everything," and Democrats will not have a large enough majority to override him on their own, NPR reported. "Legislation in principle is the cleanest way of doing it, but it's also not achievable," said David Super, who teaches administrative and constitutional law at Georgetown. "So what they're likely to do is cut off funds."
Trump has neither sought nor received congressional authorization for projects such as the arch and the ballroom; he maintains he does not need it. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, who will be the top Democrat on the House committee that funds the Interior Department, disagrees: "Certainly Congress should have been involved, because we have the power of the purse." Super said some beautification work has been funded at least in part by diverted national park entrance fees, and that Congress could cap how much of that money can be used in the Washington area.
Congress must pass a short-term funding bill by Dec. 11 to avoid a shutdown. Huffman has proposed language that would bar federal funds for East Potomac golf-course renovations, limiting them to repairs of the park's crumbling seawall. Pingree said she will join him in trying to get that into next month's bill, though she does not know whether the president would sign it. "People want the president to stop cutting down the trees on the golf course … and they want to make sure that no shovel goes into the ground on building the arch," she said. A Kennedy family lawsuit over the arch is covered in a separate story.
Huffman said Democrats will not "throw all of our efforts at stopping the gilding of every statue," but will focus on larger, faster-moving projects. Pingree said that after Jan. 1, "we will use every tool in our toolbox."