In 1791, George Washington commissioned the French-born architect and engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant to design the layout of the new nation’s capital city. The architect and designer created a Baroque-inspired plan featuring grand diagonal avenues, wide streets, and designated public spaces for our Capitol Building and Executive Mansion (as it was then called) with sweeping vistas and radial avenues superimposed over a grid as inspired by a European urban design. The layout was intended to reflect the simplicity, dignity, and majesty of the American people.

Below is the list of actions Trump has taken and intends to take to put his name and imprint on Washington, D.C., all without the approval of Congress, the National Park Service, the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. Most of his actions are forbidden by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), the primary U.S. federal law governing the protection of historic resources.

• Trump fired the long-standing chair and board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, put his own people on the Center’s Board and himself as chair, and compelled the board to add his name to the storied institution and building established as an act of Congress in 1964 as a memorial of the assassinated 35^th President of the United States.

• Trump announced plans to build a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery that would be the largest triumphal arch in the world, would overshadow the Lincoln Memorial and disrupt the sight-line between the Capitol Building and Arlington National Cemetery (presumably with his name on it – The “Trump Arch”).

• Trump proposed a “National Garden of American Heroes” that would be located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Tidal Basin, that he intends to fill with hastily made statues of celebrities of his choosing near monuments dedicated to Presidents Jefferson and FDR and Dr. Martin Luther King (presumably with his name on it – The “Trump Garden of American Heroes”).

• Trump has begun the process of ripping the beige Tennessee flagstone pavers out of the West Colonnade of the White House that connects the Oval Office and West Wing to the Executive Residence without approval of any of the groups and commissions noted above. He wants to replace them with black granite that will contrast with the gold decorations and gold-framed portraits in the “Presidential Walk of Fame” that he installed along the walk and ostentatiously everywhere in the Oval Office.

• Trump demolished, without approval from the commissions and organizations above, the White House East Wing to construct his 90,000 square-foot ballroom in its place that would overshadow the White House Residence, disrupt the series of ellipses on the White House property, and interrupt the sight lines between the White House and Capitol Building (presumably with his name on it – the “Trump Ballroom”).

• In Trump’s first term, he paved over the Rose Garden and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden at the White House that were designed and installed by the former first lady with the approval of the necessary commissions.

• Trump compelled the State Department to add his name to the “United States Institute for Peace (USIP)” that has operated since it was established in 1984 by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan (with his name on it – “The Trump Institute for Peace”).

In the late 1980s I lived and worked in Washington, D.C. and loved the city, the Smithsonian Museums, the Memorials, and the impression given by the wide streets and vistas. Last month in a quick visit to D.C., I was stunned to see hanging above the entrance of the once independent Justice Department, but now an agency committed to revenge against Trump’s critics, that a 30-40 foot high photograph of a scowling Donald Trump leered down malignantly upon all passersby like Orwell’s Big Brother, emblematic of what the Trump Administration is.

My hope is simple, that come January 2027 and two years later with a new president and a continuing Democratic majority in Congress, accompanied by independent, sober and unencumbered Republican congressional representatives, that everything above will be torn down and returned to what official Washington, D.C. was in the pre-Trump era.