Donald Trump has never been shy about what he wants his next monument to be.
Bigger, shinier and more talked about than anything else in Washington.
Now a family whose legacy shaped the nation long before Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center wants to stop his Washington project before it ever rises.
Nine members of the Kennedy family have dealt Trump a humiliating blow, asking a federal judge to shut down another one of his Washington projects.
The fight over his 250-foot “Triumphal Arch” has dragged on for months, through lawsuits, protests and a parade of increasingly gaudy renderings.
In a court filing dated Nov. 10, the Kennedy family says Trump’s arch threatens the resting place of three of the most famous men in American politics.
The group includes seven of Robert F. Kennedy’s children. Rory, Maxwell Taylor, Christopher, Kerry and Courtney Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Joseph P. Kennedy II.
They’re joined by his grandson, former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, and Ted Kennedy’s son, Edward M. Kennedy Jr. CBS News reports they’re seeking to join an existing lawsuit brought by Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
Trump first pitched the arch in October 2025 as a salute to America’s 250th birthday.
The project is slated for Memorial Circle, the roundabout at the foot of Arlington Memorial Bridge. The site sits across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial and steps from Arlington National Cemetery.
That cemetery is where President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy are buried. The filing says the arch would stand more than twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial, about the height of a 25-story office building.
It would also sit directly on a sightline designed nearly a century ago to symbolize a nation reunited after the Civil War. Architect Jack Warnecke deliberately placed JFK’s grave along that same line.
The family argues Congress never authorized the project, as federal law requires. They also claim agencies pushed it through while ignoring their own findings of harm.
A planning commission stacked with Trump allies approved the plans Nov. 5, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan froze construction for 14 days, finding the project likely illegal.
Trump hasn’t budged.
At a Nov. 2 event, he pitched the arch as a military asset and promised it would be “the most beautiful arch in the world.”
The White House has said it expects to be fully vindicated in court.
But the Kennedy family’s case isn’t only about statutes and sightlines. Further in the 27-page filing sits a detail that turns a legal brief into a gut punch.
Citing a forensic shadow study, the Kennedys say the arch’s shadow would hit hardest in the early morning, before Arlington’s gates open. That’s exactly when family members quietly slip in to visit the graves in private.
In other words, the quiet early-morning visits they’ve kept for themselves at those headstones would happen beneath Trump’s monument.
Ethel Kennedy, who died in 2024, is buried beside her husband, along with other family members at the site.
The complaint also recalls that JFK once stood on the very spot where he now rests, looked out toward Washington and said, “I could stay here forever.”
The family says it personally paid $632,364 for the grave area and was assured the Eternal Flame would always be visible from the bridge.
“Vanity should never stand in the way of valor,” Kerry Kennedy said in a statement posted to X.
Her siblings Rory and Max added that the arch would “cast a shadow over our democratic principles.”
Online, plenty of people sided with the family.
“No shadow of Trump’s Arch on the eternal flame of JFK,” one Threads user wrote. Another argued, “Some places should be about honoring our past, not celebrating political figures.”
“I sure hope they win!! Enough of all this gold!” a third chimed in. On X, one person noted, “Bout time they showed [up].”
Others urged the family to bring the same fire to Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center. One person wondered, “Why haven’t they sued over the Kennedy Center?”
That fight is already personal. Kerry Kennedy ripped into Trump’s overhaul of the arts center in October, while cousin Maria Shriver tore into his ultimatum in September.
Notably absent from the lawsuit is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kerry’s brother and a member of Trump’s Cabinet.
The shadow concerns aren’t new, either. An earlier analysis found the arch would darken more than 75,000 Arlington graves over a year.
And when Trump announced in September that it would double as a hub for snipers and drones, the family says that plan never went before a single review board.
The administration’s most recent submitted plan for the arch omits any mention of drones and a sniper nest.
With Chutkan’s pause ticking down, the Kennedys are betting a courtroom will protect what Trump’s own approval process wouldn’t … the right to grieve in the light.
