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Last Sunday, on December 7, Mydelle Wright, a well-regarded preservationist, filed a declaration before a court, saying that President Donald J. Trump is trying to get around the law to bulldoze four historic federal buildings. The four are the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, named for the first Black Cabinet member, completed in 1968 and on the National Register of Historic Places as a building worthy of preservation for its historical significance or artistic value; the New Deal–era General Services Administration (GSA) Regional Office Building; the 1919 Liberty Loan Building, which is the last of the World War I era “tempos” erected as the city grew to accommodate a changing government; and the 1940 Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, full of priceless murals that date from its start as the home of the Social Security Board, the precursor to the Social Security Administration.
Now retired, Wright spent 20 years working for the GSA, the agency that oversees federal buildings. She said she had heard and believed that the White House was circumventing the GSA and its legal procedures to solicit bids to recommend the four buildings for demolition. By law, GSA has sole authority over this process; nonetheless, she said, “key GSA personnel have only just learned of the White House’s activities.”
White House lawyers told the court that Wright’s declaration was “impermissible and factually inaccurate.” But the buildings are in styles popular in the twentieth century, ones Trump denigrated in an August executive order when he called for public buildings to be built in a style of classical architecture based on that of ancient Athens and Rome.
Wright’s declaration came as part of a lawsuit launched in November by the DC Preservation League and the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners after Trump told Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham he was planning to repaint the grey granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building—a National Historic Landmark built in 1888—white. The proposed change had undergone none of the required expert consultation, public input, or consideration of potential damage.
By suing over potential damage to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building before the president could damage it, the plaintiffs seek to prevent the sort of damage Trump inflicted on the White House when he bulldozed the East Wing in October without any of the required reviews, environmental studies, public input, or congressional approval.
In 1949, Congress chartered the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation to “facilitate public participation in the preservation of sites, buildings, and objects of national significance or interest.” On Friday, December 12, the trust sued to stop Trump from building his proposed 90,000-square-foot addition to the White House. It noted that he had torn down the East Wing without securing any of the legal approvals he needed and that the White House greeted public concerns about the demolition by issuing a press release claiming that “‘unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies’ were ‘manufactur[ing] outrage’ and ‘clutching their pearls’ over President Trump’s ‘visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House.’”
The White House has expressed its opinion that the president does not have to have permits or permission to tear down buildings, only to put them up. But now, without permissions, it appears to have begun construction on the ballroom, despite the fact that the first architect Trump initially picked for the project has stepped aside.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever—not President Trump, not President Joe Biden, and not anyone else,” the lawsuit says. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.”
It turns out that Trump arranged for the dirt from the demolition of the East Wing to be dumped on the East Potomac Golf Links, one of three public golf courses in the Washington, D.C., area Trump is hoping to renovate after pushing aside the nonprofit group that holds a 50-year lease to restore and operate the courses and keep them affordable. All three of the courses—East Potomac, Rock Creek Park Golf, and Langston Golf Course—are on the National Register of Historic Places. Trump says if he takes control of them, D.C. residents will pay a lower fee to use them than golfers from outside the area.
In an interview on Friday with Meridith McGraw of the Wall Street Journal about the economy, Trump took repeated calls from friends and allies, including one from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who, McGraw wrote, “joined by speakerphone to discuss the administration’s plans for Washington, D.C. golf courses.”
Today Trump told reporters that chief of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Vince Haley, has “a policy thing that’s going to be unbelievable happening…. We’re building an arc like the Arc de Triumph,” he said, mixing English and French, “and we’re building it by the Arlington Bridge, the Arlington Cemetery, opposite the Lincoln Memorial. You could say, Jefferson, Washington, everything, ‘cause they’re all right there, and it’s something that is so special. It will be like the one in Paris, but to be honest with you, it blows it away, blows it away in every way.”
In The Guardian last week, Judith Levine noted that Trump is erasing the face of a federal government that served the American people, replacing it with his own.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the looming loss of the Cohen building, with its murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, and Seymour Fogel. On December 10, Timothy Noah, who has been following this story, posted images of those murals in Backbencher. They were designed to showcase the 1935 Social Security Act that established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net.
The Shahn murals show the evils of a world of economic insecurity, showing “endless waiting, men standing and waiting, men sitting and waiting, the man and boy going wearily into the long empty perspective of a railroad track.” He showed the “little girl of the mills” and “breaker boys working in a mine. The crippled boy issuing from the mine symbolizes the perils of child labor…a homeless boy is seen sleeping in the street; another child leans from a tenement window.” He showed “the insecurity of dependents—the aged and infirm woman, the helpless mother with her small child.”
Shahn illustrated the alleviation of that insecurity through government action. He showed “the building of homes…[and] tremendous public works, furnishing employment and benefitting all of society…youths of a slum area engaged in healthy sport in handball courts…the Harvest— threshing and fruit-gathering, obvious symbols of security, suggesting also security as it applies to the farm family.”
Now the government is focusing not on protecting everyday Americans, but on protecting those in the “Epstein class.” On Friday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released 89 of the more than 95,000 photos it received from the Epstein estate. Those include images of right-wing Trump media ally Steve Bannon in a relaxed selfie with Epstein, Bannon talking with Epstein across a desk that has a framed photo of what appears to be an unconscious woman, Trump surrounded by young women, and a picture of “Trump condoms,” priced at $4.50. They feature the president’s face as an older man and bear the caption “I’m HUUUUGE!”
These images are not part of the FBI Epstein investigation files, which by law must be released in full no later than December 19. Yesterday, Aaron Blake of CNN reported on a Reuters-Ipsos poll which found that only 18% of Americans think it’s “somewhat” or “very” likely that Trump didn’t know about Epstein’s behavior with children. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans say they think he knew, compared to 34% who think he didn’t.
Yesterday, Meryl Kornfield, Hannah Natanson, and Lisa Rein of the Washington Post reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is cutting up to 35,000 healthcare positions by the end of the year. Most of those positions are currently unfilled and include doctors, nurses, and support staff. Already this year, the VA has lost almost 30,000 employees from buyout offers and attrition. The reporters say the cuts will reduce the number of VA healthcare employees to about 372,000, down 10% from last year. The administration is trying to steer veterans to the private healthcare system.
On Thursday the House passed a measure to overturn Trump’s elimination of union rights at federal agencies. A bipartisan group of members forced the vote past House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) with a discharge petition, but it is unlikely to pass the Senate, where Republicans oppose it. Trump said ending union rights was necessary to protect national security.
Last week, Sharon Lerner of ProPublica reported that the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is nearly doubling the amount of formaldehyde it considers safe to breathe. Formaldehyde is used in products from building materials and leather goods to craft supplies. It causes cancer, miscarriage, asthma, and other health issues by altering DNA. Lobbyists for the chemical industry have been working to water down government regulation of it for years. The method of assessment behind the proposed new rule for formaldehyde could change government regulation of other carcinogens, as well.
While the government under Trump and MAGA Republicans is backing away from measures that benefit everyday Americans, it is finding the energy to chase Maryland man Kilmar Ábrego Garcia. Ábrego Garcia is from El Salvador, a country he fled in 2011 at age 16 after the Barrio 18 gang threatened his life. In 2019, a judge denied him asylum but granted him protection from removal out of concern for his safety, allowing him to live and work in the U.S. In March, despite the protection from removal, the administration arrested Ábrego Garcia and sent him to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT terrorist prison, where he was beaten and tortured.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to bring him back to the U.S. It appealed; the Supreme Court unanimously ordered it to “facilitate” Ábrego Garcia’s return. The administration claimed that “facilitate” only required it to let him into the country if he arrived; it did not require the government to seek his release.
It brought him back in June, after Tennessee indicted him for transporting immigrants, landing him in prison in that state. While he was in prison, the government tried to remove Ábrego Garcia to several other countries but claimed falsely that Costa Rica, where he asked to go and which had offered to receive him, refused to take him. Instead of sending him to Costa Rica, they continued to imprison him while proposing to send him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia, countries where he faced harm or the threat of removal to El Salvador and which didn’t want to take him.
In August, Ábrego Garcia was released on bail and went back to Maryland, where officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him when he checked in with them. In October, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw found there was a “realistic likelihood” that the Department of Justice had sought immigrant-trafficking charges against Ábrego Garcia as punishment for challenging his removal to El Salvador.
On Thursday, Judge Xinis said ICE could not hold Ábrego Garcia because there was no final deportation order for him, noting that the judge had not ordered one in 2019. Ábrego Garcia was released at the end of the day, but the administration ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore field office at 8:00 the next morning. The Department of Justice had gone to an immigration judge—immigration judges work for the Department of Justice; they are not independent—who issued an order to correct a “scrivener’s error” in the original 2019 order protecting Ábrego Garcia from deportation to say there was a deportation order all along. This appeared to be a precursor to arresting him again.
On Friday, Judge Xinis granted the request of Ábrego Garcia’s lawyers to bar the government from arresting him again until she hears from both parties.
On Friday, Ábrego Garcia checked in at the ICE field office in Baltimore, where he told supporters: “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws, and I believe that this injustice will come to its end. Keep fighting. Do not give up. I wish all of you love and justice. Keep going.”
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/05/washington-tempo-buildings-save/
