President Donald Trump has unveiled a series of extravagant proposals to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary in 2026, including a 250-foot triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial, $1 coins bearing his own face, and a Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House. The plans have drawn criticism from architectural experts and heritage bodies, who view them as self-aggrandising and out of step with the nation’s forward-looking bicentennial celebrations in 1976.
Trump’s proposed “Independence Arch,” modelled on Rome’s Arch of Titus, would be built just across from the Lincoln Memorial on the Potomac River. The president has chosen the largest of three scales, at 250 feet tall, claiming “250 for 250” – a foot for every year of US independence. He boasted at a White House Christmas reception that it would surpass Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, which stands at 164 feet. Critics warn the arch could distort the relationship between existing historic monuments.
Other proposals include minting $1 coins with Trump’s image, which would violate an 1866 law prohibiting living persons from appearing on US currency, and staging a star-studded Ultimate Fighting Championship event in a temporary arena on the White House’s south lawn. The president has also moved to shutter and redevelop the Kennedy Center, a modernist landmark by Edward Durell Stone, prompting boycotts by performers and opposition from heritage group Docomomo, which called the centre “a celebrated work of modern architecture.”
Trump’s plans reflect a backward-looking, self-promotional approach, in stark contrast to the 1976 bicentennial, which embraced modernity and technological progress. The American architecture critic Kate Wagner has described the arch’s gilded iteration as “regional car dealership rococo.” Historically, triumphal arches have been favoured by despots; Hitler’s planned arch for Berlin would have dwarfed Trump’s at 328 feet.
