The four golden lions are already standing watch in the minds of the Commission of Fine Arts. According to a decision unsealed this week, President Donald Trump has secured the final green light for a 250-foot Triumphal Arch to loom over the Potomac. It is, per the Chairman of the Commission, a “very elegant building” that will frame Arlington House and the legacy of Robert E. Lee. Gundersen, an 81-year-old retired Army Special Forces officer, stood near the Arlington Memorial Bridge on Thursday and described the project as “disrespectful.” But the administration is moving forward, with Senator Jim Banks calling it a “monument to American exceptionalism” that will be ready for the nation’s 250th birthday this July.

While the gold leaf is being tallied for the Virginia rotary, the payroll at the Department of Homeland Security has gone dark. According to World History records, 240,000 DHS employees are entering their third week without a paycheck as the government defaults on the people who actually guard the physical border. The administration has instead prioritized $1 billion for a luxury Secret Service infrastructure project at a White House ballroom and this massive monument, while simultaneously proposing a $1 billion golden arch. Architecture historian Reinhold Martin describes the design as “Napoleonic,” featuring an enormous winged Lady Liberty astride the structure and a golden inscription that reads “One Nation Under God.”

Read together, the Triumphal Arch and the empty payroll lockers at Homeland Security define an era where the frame is worth more than the picture. The thread linking these, though stated in no filing this paper has seen, is a government that views border security as a line item to be cut but border monuments as a legacy to be cast in stone. The aesthetic of a billion-dollar arch overlooking a starving security force is the ultimate statement of the New American Grandeur.

“The Triumphal Arch in Memorial Circle is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks,” White House Spokesperson Davis Ingle told TIME. It is a visual reminder of American heroes, according to the administration, even as the living ones in uniform wonder how to pay the mortgage on a Hollow State salary. The project follows a series of neoclassical pivots, including the recent approval of the East Wing Ballroom, which Senator Banks claims will "restore beauty to federal architecture." For those at the bottom of the pay scale, however, the only thing being restored is the 1864 tradition of land auctions following tax defaults.