U.S. Commission of Fine Arts
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration wants to permanently fence off a park near the White House that has long served as a gathering place for protesters. Some worry it will soon become even harder to make their voices heard.
Lafayette Park is a seven-acre plot filled with green lawns, shaded walkways and five historic statues, the most prominent of which shows President Andrew Jackson on a rearing horse. The park is directly north of the White House — the closest a pedestrian can get to the landmark — making it a popular spot for tourists to take photos and protesters to rally.
On Tuesday morning, under the scorching sun, a small group of protesters gathered just outside the park with microphones and posters to rally against the administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after two deadly shootings in less than a week. Across the street, closest to the White House, several other activists stood alone and in pairs holding various signs: against war, against hate, against Trump.
“The White House is the spot that everybody likes to stop at,” said Donna Powell, 67. “It’s very iconic in the sense that this is where the president lives … So we make sure to stop here and protest. We feel it’s very important.”
Powell comes to the area several times a week with her husband and a selection of the nearly 80 handmade posters they have at home. That day’s sampling included a cutout of President Trump, smiling and holding a sign reading “I’m stealing from YOU!”
A steady stream of people stopped to take photos — both of and with the cutout — on their way to peer at the White House, through layers of temporary chain-link fencing that have closed the park since January. Before this year, Powell said, they could stand much closer to the White House (which is already surrounded by a 13-foot steel fence).
The National Park Service said in January that much of Lafayette Park would be blocked through May for landscaping and other repairs ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations. But as of mid-July, as workers mowed the lawns, fences continued to keep pedestrians off them.
“Unless your calendar is way out of date, July 4th is gone, and this is still sealed off,” said Marty I tPearl, 83, who says he’s brought his “Hate Won’t Make America Great” sign to this area some 1,200 times over the past eight years. “And now the new talk is, this will be permanent.”
After months of speculation, the Trump administration submitted a 79-page proposal to the Commission of Fine Arts — one of two federal bodies tasked with reviewing such projects — last week, ahead of its monthly meeting on Thursday.
The United States Secret Service and the Executive Office of the President, in concert with the Department of the Interior, say they want to install permanent 8-to-9-foot fencing around Lafayette Park that can be closed during “heightened conditions.” They also propose repaving the walkways in granite out of concern that loose bricks could pose tripping hazards and be used as projectiles during protests.
“Installing a comprehensive yet flexible fencing strategy for varying security risks, along with increasing paver thickness and base course depth, will improve the park’s security and stability while maintaining a historically compatible appearance,” the proposal reads.
It says it anticipates “phased implementation beginning in 2027, sequenced according to funding availability.” President Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that he had already “made a multimillion contribution” to beautification efforts in the park.
The White House did not directly respond to NPR’s questions about how much the project will cost, who will pay for it and concerns about accessibility, responding instead with a statement.
“There are always discussions ongoing about how to make the White House Complex as safe as possible,” it said. “However, nothing is confirmed at this time.”
Powell said permanent fencing wouldn’t stop her from bringing her signs to the area, though she called it “mind-boggling that [Trump] is so fearful of peaceful protesters that he feels like he has to put up multiple layers of fencing so that we can’t get in there.”
Pearl said it might, paradoxically, make it easier to convey his message, since more fencing would have the practical effect of funneling tourists into an even smaller area. But he’s upset about the symbolism of the White House — which is funded by taxpayers — being further closed off from the public it is supposed to serve.
“What this fencing represents, to me, is the worst of what the new attitude toward politics represents. And that is imperialism, fascism, dictatorship,” Pearl said. “Because what dictators do is isolate themselves from the people they rule. That is not, for me, the way democracies can possibly work.”
The park has a rich history of protests, well before the tumult of 2020
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Lafayette Park has been the site of protests for over a century, since suffragists launched the first-ever White House picket in 1917.
Nadine Seiler, a Maryland-based activist, described the park as “ground zero for protests.”
“Women’s suffrage, civil rights, anything that you could think of,” she told NPR on Tuesday from the park, where she was attending the anti-ICE protest and also holding a banner referencing D.C.’s reflecting pool. “People come here thinking that the president of the United States could help them with their … problems. So it represents freedom.”
Demonstrations have targeted a wide range of causes, from anti-lynching protests in the 1940s to gay rights rallies in the 1960s. At one particularly massive anti-Vietnam War protest in 1967, President Johnson and his family could hear the chants from inside the White House: “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
Other protests were quieter, like the White House Peace Vigil, an anti-nuclear weapons encampment that had been staffed (most recently by volunteers) in that spot since 1981 in what is considered one of the longest continuous acts of political protest in U.S. history. Trump ordered its dismantling last year.
Trump’s actions have “already eroded the people coming out and using the White House, Lafayette Park as a place of protest,” said Seiler, who said she has been coming to the area regularly since 2018.
In June 2020, police used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear peaceful protesters from the park during Black Lives Matter demonstrations, shortly before Trump walked to a nearby church to pose for photos, holding a Bible.
A Department of the Interior inspector general report later found that police did not clear protesters for the photo op, though the Justice Department separately reached a settlement in four civil cases over law enforcement’s response.
The incident was not soon forgotten. Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed a two-block pedestrian section of the nearby street “Black Lives Matter Plaza,” though she had it removed last year under the threat of federal funding cuts.
Heavy fencing surrounded Lafayette Park from June 2020 through May 2021. During that time, people covered it in their own signs, photos and letters — artifacts Seiler is now paying to store until, she hopes, a museum will acquire them.
“His attempt to shut us down actually gave us more coverage, because people came from different parts of the country to visit the fence with all the messaging,” she said.
She said people tried to do the same thing with the fencing this year, “but every time we put something, they would come immediately and take it down.”
Seiler blinked back tears when talking about what the act of protest means to her, as someone who moved to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago.
“I bought into everything American: American exceptionalism, the separation of powers and all that stuff. And to come and see it fall, like that, in months, it is just very, very frustrating and very disappointing,” she said. “We the people have to stand up and say, ‘This is not right.'”
There are also process concerns, as Trump tries to reshape D.C.
The administration’s report calls Lafayette Park a “vital venue for First Amendment activity.” And it acknowledges that permanent fencing would have downsides for viewers: “limits viewing area” and “emphasizes closed feeling of the park.”
But it says temporary barriers are both aesthetically unappealing and cumbersome, taking up to 72 hours to install and dismantle.
“The current reliance on temporary barriers, such as bike rack fencing, anti climb barricades, and modular panels, provides short term control but imposes recurring setup, staffing, and operational burdens that degrade visitor experience and are not sustainable as a primary long-term strategy,” the proposal reads.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s non-voting delegate in the House, introduced a bill last week that would prohibit permanent fencing at Lafayette Park, noting its storied history of public demonstrations.
“We shouldn’t widen the distance between citizens and government by placing additional intimidating barriers between public servants and the people they serve, especially when such barriers are unnecessary,” Norton wrote.
The bill is not likely to gain traction in the Republican-controlled House. But there are still hurdles to clear before the proposal can become a reality.
Federal projects in certain parts of D.C. need to be reviewed and approved by the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, which are both led by Trump appointees. They are in various stages of advancing other proposals, like a controversial arch near Arlington National Cemetery and a new White House visitor screening center.
The National Historic Preservation Act also requires such projects to go through a process called Section 106 review, in which federal agencies work with consulting stakeholders (like historic preservation groups) to consider and mitigate negative effects on historic areas.
That process typically starts before agencies submit proposals to the commissions, though not in the case of the fencing (or the arch, which was already approved by one commission).
Charles Birnbaum, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, said his nonprofit was recognized as a Section 106 consulting party about the fencing in April, but has not been invited to any meetings about it. In fact, he said, he had not heard anything about it until the administration published its proposal on Friday.
“If they were earnest about truly engaging the consulting parties, that would have started already, especially since they have us all at the ready,” said Birnbaum, whose group is involved in lawsuits over the reflecting pool and other administration construction projects.
The White House told NPR that “any projects that are pursued will go through the necessary review process.”
Birnbaum says the collaborative review process has worked well so far for the White House visitors center, with the administration making some changes — like moving the proposed structure above ground — based on feedback. That revised proposal will also be presented to the Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday.
Thursday’s meeting is the first chance for the commission to weigh in on the aesthetics of the permanent fencing proposal. The meeting is also a venue for members of the public — including representatives of historic preservation and architectural groups — to offer three to five minutes of feedback.
“At the end of the day, it is the people’s park,” Birnbaum said. “It is symbolically the place where we gather, and have for generations. And putting up fencing changes the way all of that is perceived.”
