Trump’s Latest Plan to Sell Your History Out From Under You

The administration has given a regulatory green light to miners, oil drillers, and Trump himself.

Last week, in an update about efforts to save the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building—a.k.a. “the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal” —I mentioned in passing the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or ACHP. The ACHP administers an important regulation, known as Section 106, that enforces the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. Back in February the ACHP launched a comprehensive review of Section 106 with the avowed purpose of “streamlining” it, which is to say weakening it.

That review process turns out to be further along than I realized (hat tip to Janay Kingsberry of the Atlantic for filling me in). Now the ACHP, which is under the firm control of President Donald Trump, has produced a draft notice of proposed rulemaking (text here and here) that would make it significantly easier for Trump “to fast-track projects that destroy, or cause irreversible damage to, our historic places, with virtually no public oversight,” according to Sara Bronin, who chaired the ACHP under President Joe Biden. The ACHP is expected to publish the notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of this week.

Given Trump’s demolition of the East Wing; his plans to build a White House ballroom that dwarfs the executive mansion; his efforts to erect an Arc de Trump in the traffic circle leading to Arlington Cemetery, and a National Garden of American Heroes in West Potomac Park; and, given........

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