When is it an outrage for a president to fire the members of an architecture-review board, and when does it represent “progress”?
Hint: a Democratic congresswoman dropped an F-bomb over the former, while the Democrat-controlled D.C. government — which actually requested the firings — praised the latter.
“You’re Fired!”
On Tuesday, the Washington Post ran an exclusive story informing readers that President Donald Trump had “fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts [CFA], an independent federal agency that had expected to review some of [his] construction projects, including his planned triumphal arch and White House ballroom.”
According to the paper:
The commission, which was established by Congress more than a century ago and traditionally includes a mix of architects and urban planners, is charged with providing advice to the president, Congress and local government officials on design matters related to construction projects in the capital region…. White House officials have traditionally sought the agency’s approval.
Bruce Becker, one of the CFA members fired Tuesday, told the Post, “Were it not for today’s terminations, CFA would look forward to a full review of the plans for the new structure that will replace the East Wing.”
Of course, the CFA may still review the plans, only it will now consist of people who share Trump’s vision. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper, “We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies.”
In July, Trump also terminated several members of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), another agency that reviews White House construction projects. Unlike the CFA, which is merely advisory, the NCPC possesses the power to pull the plug on projects.
Leftists Lash Out
All this was too much for the Post’s overwhelmingly liberal readers, who unleashed their vitriol in the article’s comment section. They wrote of “Trump’s dictatorship,” repeatedly referenced Adolf Hitler, and wished for Trump’s death via natural or unnatural means.
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), meanwhile, took to social media to rant about the firings.
“Are you f—ing kidding me?” she asked.
Trump “has now fired the gatekeepers,” she said. “We gotta fight back. This is the people’s house. It is not his home.”
President’s Precedent
Besides the fact that presidents have altered the White House many times in the past — Harry Truman even added a balcony over the CFA’s objections — the notion that Trump is the only chief executive to replace members of these agencies is patently false. He is, however, only the second president to do so.
The first was Joe Biden.
Shortly after assuming office in 2021, Biden fired or demanded resignations from members of the CFA, the NCPC, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation who had been appointed by Trump to replace those who had resigned or reached the ends of their terms.
Biden did so at the behest of D.C. Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio, who sent a letter to the then-president’s personnel director “asking for a review of Trump’s last-minute appointments” to these boards, the Post reported at the time.
According to the Daily Caller:
The firings and forced resignations included CFA’s Jewish chairman Justin Shubow, an architectural critic who is president of the National Civic Art Society; Perry Guillot, a landscape architect whose work was featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Architectural Digest and who received an architectural award from the Institute for Classical Art and Architecture; Chas Fagan, an artist and sculptor who painted 45 presidential portraits on commission from C-SPAN and the White House Historical Association; Steven Spandle, an architect with extensive experience in historic preservation; and Rodney Mims Cook Jr., founder and president of the National Monuments Foundation.
Triumph Over Diversity
What was so wrong with these people (besides the fact that Trump had picked them)?
“With these appointments,” wrote Falcicchio, “the CFA now consists entirely of white, male Trump appointees” who will “make our Nation’s Capital a mausoleum of neoclassical architecture.”
Furthermore, he declared:
For the sake of Washington, D.C.’s residents and visitors, the NCPC and CFA need members committed to meeting the myriad challenges and opportunities of today. The buildings and landscapes of Washington, D.C. must address the urgent needs for sustainability, resilience, and housing. They must also embrace our diversity and advance equity as a remedy to the legacy of discrimination that shapes our surroundings to this day.
Although Falcicchio’s office “applaud[ed] the Biden administration for their decisive action” in firing Trump’s appointees, according to the Post, they were “pushing for more.”
“Art and architecture experts” criticized Biden for “politicizing” the commissions, the Post observed when, in the next-to-last paragraph of its Tuesday article, it finally got around to reminding readers of the incident.
Fired CFA chairman Shubow “warned that Biden’s actions would set a bad precedent,” noted the Daily Caller.
“Biden has proven that he is treating commissioners, who are statutorily intended to act independently of the president, as mere political appointees to be removed at will,” Shubow told the Architect’s Newspaper in 2022. “By violating the law and precedent going back over 100 years, Biden has opened the floodgates.”
Trump, therefore, has simply floated through those floodgates, undoing what he views as the damage Biden did by replacing his appointees four years ago. Those angry at him for doing so are directing their ire at the wrong man.
