Trump's Next Construction Project Threatens Arlington Cemetery

The government is taking a Reddit user to court, Democrats witnessed horrors during a surprise visit to an ICE facility, and a judge has ordered the release of information about Renee Good's killer

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump wants to build a golden arch that would permanently obstruct Arlington Cemetery. The federal government is using a grand jury to unmask a Reddit user for posting about an ICE protest. Democratic lawmakers made a surprise visit to an ICE detention facility, and what they saw was chilling. And a judge has ordered the federal government to finally turn over information on the ICE agent who shot Renee Good.

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Now. Let’s go.

Arc de Trump: The President Is Building a Monument to Himself With Your Money

The president of the United States would like a giant golden arch built in his honor, and he would like you to pay for it.

Trump has proposed an “Independence Arch” that would stand 250 feet tall, taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and taller than the Lincoln Memorial. The proposed location sits directly between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, which in the words of one architectural historian, would make Arlington House “just look like a dollhouse.”

When a reporter asked Trump who the arch was for, he replied: “Me. It’s going to be beautiful.”

The proposed structure would be 165 feet wide, with a 25-foot pedestal and a 60-foot gilt bronze Lady Liberty sculpture on top. Smaller versions were considered. Trump passed on them. According to people familiar with the planning, he is “dead-set on building this huge arch.”

There is also the small matter of the flight path. The proposed site sits along the flight corridor used by planes approaching Reagan National Airport, and the Federal Aviation Administration referred questions about the arch’s safety to the White House, which did not respond.

The same airport, you will recall, was the site of a mid-air collision last year that killed 67 people.

Trump has admitted for the first time that taxpayer dollars will fund the project, asking for $2 million for the arch itself and $13 million in matching grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The French built theirs after winning a war. We’re building ours in an airport.

The Government Is Using a Grand Jury to Find Out Who on Reddit Hates ICE

Someone posted on Reddit that they didn’t like ICE. The federal government has been trying to find out who for two months. They just escalated to a grand jury.

Reddit has been ordered to appear before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., as part of an effort to unmask anonymous online critics of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. According to a subpoena, Reddit has until April 14 to provide a wide range of personal data on one of its users.

The user initially targeted had posted about a peaceful protest. That’s it. A leaked DHS intelligence bulletin showed federal agents built a behavioral profile of the user by cataloguing their unrelated posts about the Houston Texans, movies, and Stephen King novels, despite admitting there was “no specific reporting of planned violence.”

ICE tried to get the user’s identity through a regular administrative summons. A federal court said no. So now they’ve escalated to a grand jury, which carries considerably more legal weight and considerably less public scrutiny.

Reddit put it simply: they don’t share user data with the government, “especially not on users exercising their rights to criticize the government.” The last bastion of free speech is the same website where a man asked strangers if he was wrong for having his coworker arrested for stealing his chair, and the answer was no.

Congress Showed Up Unannounced to an ICE Facility. What They Found Was Chilling.

The Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center in Mesa is a short-term holding facility. It has a posted capacity of 157 people. It has no beds. It has no showers. People are supposed to be there for no more than 12 hours while they wait to be loaded onto a plane.

So far in 2026, the average daily population has been 274 detainees, and the average length of stay has tripled compared to last year. One individual was there for 18 days.

Three Democratic members of Congress showed up without warning this week. They found rooms posted with a capacity of 24 people holding at least 40 each, with detainees lying on concrete with only one toilet available.

When they walked in, people inside rushed to the doors of the holding cells asking for help.

When Minnesota lawmakers visited a similar facility in their state, it was empty. The same thing happened to lawmakers in California. ICE requires members of Congress to fill out forms and give advance notice before visits.

When they know you’re coming, the problem disappears. When you show up unannounced, you find 274 people lying on concrete with one toilet and no beds.

The Federal Government Is Tanking Its Own Case to Protect Renee Good’s Killer

Three months after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, the federal government has still not charged him, still not named him in any official capacity, and has spent considerable energy making sure his personnel file stays out of public view.

That just got harder.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are now being forced to turn over records including Ross’s personnel file to a magistrate judge, who will review them and determine which should be released to the public. Prosecutors have until May 1 to comply.

The order didn’t come from a wrongful death suit, a congressional investigation, or the Justice Department, which declined to pursue charges. It came from a defense motion in a separate criminal case involving a different man Ross had confronted months earlier. The man was convicted of dragging Ross with his car after Ross broke his window and fired a Taser at him.

Attorneys familiar with the ruling believe the federal government may respond not by complying, but by dropping its own criminal prosecution entirely rather than allow the public to see what is in Ross’s file.

No one has been charged for Renee Good’s killing. The file remains sealed. The agent remains employed. The magistrate judge remains, apparently, the only person in the federal government interested in finding out what happened.

A Note From AlterNet America

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