News Wrap: Arts commission approves design of Trump's 250-foot arch
PBS News Hour - Segments
PBS NewsHour
4.1 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | In the day's other headlines, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts approved the design for President Trump's proposed 250-foot arch in the nation's capital. |
| 0:09.4 | The panel is now made up entirely of President Trump's appointed allies, and today's action moves the arch one step closer to being a reality. |
| 0:17.8 | Preliminary surveys and testing of the site started last week, though a group |
| 0:22.0 | of veterans and a historian have sued the Trump administration to block construction. Speaking |
| 0:27.1 | to reporters today, President Trump said he plans to move forward with or without the support |
| 0:31.7 | of Congress. |
| 0:32.6 | We just got approval from fine arts. That's fantastic. |
| 0:34.6 | Right. You need Congress to sign off on it. No, we don't. No, no. We're doing it. It's, uh, the land is owned by secretary, by the |
| 0:42.3 | Interior Department. We don't need anything from Congress. |
| 0:46.3 | The proposed site of the Arch Memorial Circle is located between the Lincoln Memorial |
| 0:51.3 | and Arlington National Cemetery. It is managed by the National Park Service, a bureau within the Interior Department, as Mr. Trump says, |
| 0:59.5 | but that land is also considered protected land under federal law that says any monuments built there require congressional authorization. |
| 1:08.0 | President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are escalating their rhetoric toward Cuba, |
| 1:12.9 | reviving warnings about possible U.S. intervention. It comes a day after the administration |
| 1:17.9 | announced criminal charges against former leader Raul Castro. During that Oval Office event, |
| 1:23.7 | Mr. Trump said while previous administrations have considered action, he'll be, in his |
| 1:28.5 | words, the one that does it. And on his way to a NATO summit in Sweden, Secretary Rubio, |
| 1:34.8 | told reporters he has little expectation of reaching any agreement with Cuba. |
| 1:39.6 | The president's preference is always a negotiated agreement that's peaceful. That's always our preference. That remains our preference with Cuba. I'm just being honest with you, you know, the likelihood of that happening, given who we're dealing with right now is not high. But if they have a change of heart, you know, we're here. And in the meantime, we'll keep doing what we need to do. Cuba's foreign minister quickly accused Rubio of, quote, lying once again to provoke military aggression. |
| 2:04.0 | Separately today, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a U.S. owned port business in Cuba, |
| 2:09.2 | whose property was confiscated by Fidel Castro's government back in 1960. |
| 2:13.8 | The ruling opens the door for similar claims from other American companies and individuals. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 11 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PBS NewsHour, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PBS NewsHour and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

