Trump is going to eff up the entire beautiful country with his crap.

From HCR - here are some choice excerpts, but read the whole thing to be truly outraged:

Washington Post yesterday, more than two dozen experts have sued to stop the plan, saying paint could irreversibly damage the stone and would be a “taxpayers’ nightmare” as the building would have to be repaired and repainted regularly.

But on Monday, deputy assistant to the president Heather Martin filed a declaration saying the White House Office of Administration was beginning preparations for the paint job. As Kennicott points out, the administration is using the case to give the president the ability to “erase the nation’s physical culture, its man-made, natural and cultural wonders.”

...

Kennicott also calls out the administration’s proposed major rule change in the National Historical Preservation Act (NHPA). Trump installed a loyalist as vice chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. On Friday, July 17, the chair proposed dramatic revisions to Section 106 of the NHPA. This is the section of the 60-year-old law that requires federal agencies to “take into account” what their actions will do to historic properties and places. This is the requirement that gives the public, as well as local, state, and tribal governments, a voice in the changes to historic and cultural sites.

...

Yesterday the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, packed with 21 Trump appointees on a 24-member board, voted to move the revisions to Section 106 forward. Rachel Treisman of NPR noted that the National Register of Historic Places lists more than 100,000 properties with more than 1.8 million sites, structures, objects, and districts, all of which will lose protections if the new rule takes effect. Werkheiser told Treisman: “What it means is that the federal government, in its own discretion, can decide whether—if ever—to tell an American community that it’s about to do a major project that could harm or destroy a historic resource. The public will be completely cut out of any conversation around the future of places that matter to them in this country.”

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The administration wants to open a ten-mile buffer zone barring mineral, oil, and gas extraction around Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, to development. The area “is a vibrant place of prayer, pilgrimage and core to the identity of many Southwest tribes, whose connection to this land stretches back thousands of years,” Representative Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat from New Mexico, told reporters on Wednesday. Deb Haaland, who served as Biden’s secretary of the interior and is a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo, notes that Chaco Canyon has been recognized by the UNESCO World Heritage Center as a site of universal importance and that the buffer land holds more than 4,700 known archeological sites.

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They noted that “under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), you are legally required to ensure that you consider how your actions will affect historic properties, which also requires consulting with each relevant Tribal government. These steps must be taken before pursuing your proposed action.”

The revisions to Section 106 would remove that requirement.

Substack: July 25, 2026 - by Heather Cox Richardson