Monthly Archives: June 2021

Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech explained Monday exactly how the United States is re-living the violent decade of the 1970s, and revealed the only way out is through the American people.

Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech said Monday the United States is re-living the violent decade of the 1970s as crime sweeps the nations major cities, coinciding with inflation and economic turmoil while terrorism remains a constant feature of American life.

Imagine a country in dire straits, Domenech said as guest host of Fox News Primetime.

Its a country, Domenech added, convulsed by riots, pitting police against protestors, ordinary citizens against activists gripped nearly obsessed with issues of race and ethnicity that just exited a long and grinding war as a loser where a divisive Republican president is succeeded by a genial Democrat who promised healing but proves too inept to lead.

University campuses, Domenech noted, remain gripped by fanatical ideologues, while young people remain hesitant to form families amid the turbulence of the era.

While U.S. institutions of the 1970s were strong, today the nation stands far weaker to weather the same challenges today than it did a half-century ago.

Fifty years after the dark passage of the 70s, we are repeating these errors and descent of that sad decade in a more grand and emphatic fashion, Domenech said Though the critique is the same, this time its different, because the country is different When we look to the 2020s, we see the foundations rotted and the seeds are dead.

He left viewers underscoring the need for renewing a dynamic that made the United States a nation and has repeatedly stood her by in dark times: Our nation still has hope if the people make a stand.

Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech June 1 Monologue Fox News Primetime by The Federalist on Scribd

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Ben Domenech: A Nation In Dire Straits Is Re-Living The 1970s - The Federalist

Seventy years ago, conflict on the Korean Peninsula raged. The Forgotten War, as it has come to be known, claimed upwards of 4 million lives by some estimates.

Why is the Korean War so rarely discussed in military science or foreign policy circles? We tend to study our successes more often than our failures. This conflict offers both for study, especially the latter.

The Korean War came less than five years after the end of World War II, when America had the most powerful military on earth. Nevertheless, we were embarrassed multiple times on the battlefield.

In Clay Blairs massive tome on the war, he states, The first year of the Korean War was a ghastly ordeal for the United States Army. For various reasons, it was not prepared mentally, physically, or otherwise for war. On the whole, its leadership at the army, corps, division, regiment, and battalion levels was overaged, inexperienced, often incompetent, and not physically capable of coping with the rigorous climate of Korea.

Terrain and weather have immense effects on military operations. Friendly and enemy forces suffer alike, and little can be done to improve ones situation. Korea has hot, wet summers and brutal winters. The terrain in the central part of the country is some of the toughest U.S. soldiers ever fought in, of high peaks with few roads.

The fighting started in the summer. June 1950 was hot, and troops suffered dehydration. As summer turned to winter, U.S. troops were not adequately supplied with winter clothing. They fought up the Korean Peninsula to the Yalu River and the Chinese border in the same clothes they arrived in. Temperatures there dropped to 20 below zero.

After World War II, the American public and soldiers abroad demanded rapid demobilization. Congressmen were hounded to bring the boys home. This brought Americas armed forces from an all-time high of 12 million in uniform down to 1.5 million, below even our current all-volunteer force.

The troops left were therefore barely enough to respond to any Soviet aggression while also occupying Germany and Japan. The military was gutted. In Korea, we committed into combat most likely the least trained and least-equipped army in our history.

When the Korean hostilities began, the average regimental commander, a full-bird colonel position, was close to ten years older than the recommended age. George C Marshall stressed in WWII that the average age be no more than 45 years old. This is not ageism. Marshall knew that ground warfare is no walk in the park. If you physically cannot keep up, you will fail.

When the North Korean Peoples Army (NKPA) launched their offensive on 25 June, the South Korean Army was caught unprepared and subsequently went into full rout. Despite several Pentagon studies showing it was disadvantageous to fight on the Korean Peninsula and that doing so would commit forces to a strategically irrelevant region, President Truman felt it was imperative to fight Communists there.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Far East Commands commander in chief, believed the real fight was with Red China. MacArthur was both brilliant and irrational in his last war at 70 years old. His insubordination resulted in his firing by President Truman.

To stem the NKPA tide, the undertrained and underequipped U.S. Army 24th Infantry Division was committed to battle. Its piecemeal defense resulted in the division essentially becoming a speed bump for the NKPA. Despite his bravery in personal combat as his unit collapsed, even the division commander, William F. Dean, became a prisoner of war for the next three years.

Our first units on the ground were armed with obsolete bazookas firing 2.36-inch rockets, thanks to Truman administration budget cuts. These rockets failed to stop North Korean T-34 tanks. Numerous units were overrun by armored forces until the updated 3.5-inch bazooka could be rushed into the theater from the United States.

As the U.S.-trained Republic of Korea (ROK) military continued to collapse, the American Eighth Army, now consisting of the 25th Infantry Division and First Cavalry Division with the shattered 24th Infantry Division, shrank into a perimeter in the southeastern corner of the peninsula around the port of Pusan.

Reinforced by tank battalions that had to use M26 Pershing tanks pulled down from display pedestals at Fort Knox, the ROK and U.S. forces held the line. The NKPA, lacking sufficient air or naval power, had vastly extended supply lines while our forces had increasingly shorter ones.

The Joint Chiefs continued to believe Korea was merely a Soviet feint to suck American resources in while they planned an invasion of Japan or Europe, so they hesitated to commit more forces to Korea. Despite misgivings from most of the U.S. leadership, they provided more forces. The Second Infantry Division, Fifth Regimental Combat Team, and United Nations forces began to arrive in Pusan.

In September 1950, MacArthur went forward with his ambitious plan to outflank the NKPA by conducting an amphibious landing at Inchon using the X Corps, consisting of the Seventh Infantry Division along with the First Marine Division and ROK forces. There was tremendous disagreement between leadership over the pros and cons, but MacArthurs dominating presence prevailed and the landing was conducted with incredible success.

Seoul was recaptured a few days later. After several tough battles, Eighth Army was able to break out from the Pusan perimeter and most of South Korea was retaken from fleeing NKPA units. But the goal of trapping all NKPA forces was not achieved.

The Truman administration then decided to cross the 38th parallel and pursue the NKPA deep into North Korean territory. As U.S. and ROK forces rapidly moved north, supply lines stretched and the front became wider and rapidly more mountainous. Poorly trained units were not in close contact and were increasingly stuck to the few existing roads.

Intelligence failures were common in the Korean War. Far East Command regularly disregarded lower-level intelligence reports. There was a prevailing idea throughout the national security establishment that Red China would not commit forces to the Korean conflict. There was a continual racist denigration of their fighting prowess and abilities. MacArthur was confident that strategic bombers would smash any Chinese Communist Forces (CCF).

Chinese troops began to show up as POWs and readily divulged their unit designations and movement plans. U.S. frontline units became increasingly uneasy. Intelligence reports believed maybe 34,000 CCF were in North Korea. In reality, 300,000 had crossed the Yalu River on foot, under cover of darkness, and were preparing for an all-out assault on UN positions.

Over the next few months, several massive CCF offensives pushed UN forces back down the peninsula past Seoul once more. The CCF relied on enormous human-wave night attacks that would simply overwhelm poorly dug-in ROK and UN units.

The U.S. Army was primarily road-bound in Korea, which allowed units to be bypassed and surrounded by CCF forces on foot. When they attempted to break back to friendly lines, they had to run a gauntlet of roadblocks. Unbelievable numbers of American vehicles, heavy equipment, and artillery pieces were abandoned on roadways as units attempted to flee ambushes. The thought of American troops fleeing battle and throwing down their arms seems impossible, but happened numerous times and was dubbed bug-out fever.

Under the leadership of Mathew Ridgeway, Eighth Army refocused on proper defensive tactics, which allowed massively outnumbered units to hold off much larger CCF concentrations. At Chipyong-ni, the 23rd Infantry Regiment, along with a French battalion, held off Chinese forces at least five times their strength while surrounded. Artillery units shot unbelievable amounts of ammunition. Even then, the infantrymen on the ground were often in hand-to-hand night fighting.

The Communist Chinese leadership was more than happy to throw wave upon wave of their countrymen into the attack to ultimately be shattered by concentrated artillery fire, air attack, and overlapping fields of machinegun fire. From April to July 1951, 7.6 million rounds of artillery ammunition were used by UN forces to halt the Chinese offensives.

Our own troops, however, did not have the stomach to keep killing peasants for no reason, in what they dubbed the yo-yo war. The American public had a 30 percent approval rating of the war, and Trumans chances at another term were quickly evaporating as his approval rating sank to 22 percent.

Diplomatic feelers were sent out through the Soviets, and armistice talks began in Kaesong. The talks dragged on for two more years due to both sides unwillingness to compromise and diplomatic blundering. Meanwhile, the armies still had several major clashes along the 38th parallel.

Our current foreign policy puts us at odds with North Korea and China. We fought them to a standstill in the Korean War nearly 70 years ago, and are still in a stalemate on the 38th parallel. An armistice was signed in 1953, but there is no true peace treaty. The closest weve come was in 2018 when North and South Korean leaders Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in signed the Panmunjom Declaration during the Inter-Korean Summit.

This was later reaffirmed during a historic summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. This groundbreaking progress regressed as the Trump White House focused on domestic issues in 2020.

Korea is a thought-provoking conflict that should be studied in intimate detail by the U.S. military and foreign policy experts. Lets learn from our failures. Past actions cannot necessarily predict the future, but why not gain as much knowledge as we can regarding the Chinese and Korean mindset and the nature of the battlefield on the Korean Peninsula?

This Memorial Day, lets remember the Korean War and the 33,739 Americans who died fighting communism. Their sacrifice on the altar of freedom must not be forgotten.

Ellis Domenech is a former psychological operations officer in the U.S. Army with multiple combat deployments to Afghanistan and Africa.

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The United States Began To Fail Abroad 70 Years Ago In The Korean War - The Federalist

Voters overwhelmingly rejected the Biden White Houses definition of bipartisanship, according to results of a new poll from the Morning Consult out Tuesday.

Biden adviser Anita Dunn outlined the new White Houses definition in April when she told the Washington Post the label bipartisanship applies to legislation with broad support outside Washington even in the absence of cross-partisan support on Capitol Hill.

If you looked up bipartisan in the dictionary, I think it would say support from Republicans and Democrats, Dunn told the paper. It doesnt say the Republicans have to be in Congress.

Voters rejected Dunns framing as she tried to spin the behemoth $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package passed one month prior as bipartisan despite no Republican support which forced Vice President Kamala Harris to cast her first tie-breaker vote.

According to a survey of 1,994 registered voters conducted May 18-20, only 10 percent said they agreed with the White House on the meaning of bipartisanship, whereas 9 in 10 said otherwise. Only 13 percent of Democrats even supported the White House definition of the label in the survey with a +/- 2 percent margin of error.

The poll comes as Biden courts Republican lawmakers at the White House this week to hammer out a bipartisan infrastructure plan after the first five months of the new administration have set a new standard for what it means to aggressively pursue a partisan, progressive agenda.

On Wednesday, Biden is slated to meet with West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the leader of a Republican group of senators working to devise a bipartisan bill on infrastructure aiming to bring down the cost of the White Houses initial demand for a $1.7 trillion dollar proposal. Capito introduced a counter-offer at $1 trillion.

In early April, Senate Republicans blasted Bidens plea for bipartisanship on infrastructure as bad-faith lip service after the White House staged a photo-op of lawmakers in the Oval Office. Shortly after the photo was taken, Democrats pulled the trigger on the budget reconciliation process to ram through a nearly $2 trillion dollar proposal in the absence of GOP changes and support.

The Administration roundly dismissed our effort as wholly inadequate in order to justify its go-it-alone strategy, a group of 10 Republican senators wrote. Fewer than 24 hours after our meeting in the Oval Office, the Senate Democratic Leader began the process of triggering reconciliation which precluded Republican participation and allowed for the package to pass without a single Republican vote.

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Voters Overwhelmingly Reject White House Definition Of 'Bipartisanship' - The Federalist

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin appeared on Fox News Monday and said he would stand up to critical race theory if hes elected, reacting to the recent suspension of a teacher for a fiery speech against the transgender movement.

On a day where were celebrating and honoring and remembering the 1.2 million Americans who gave their lives for our freedom, to protect our Constitution, its amazing to me that we see a Loudoun County school board ignore and absolutely trample on Tanner Crosss constitutional rights to express not only his religious beliefs but also his right to free speech, Youngkin said. At a time when they invited such a discussion and now they are trying to cancel him simply for expressing his views that are in the best interest of the children and expressing his faith. Its absolutely shameful.

Elementary school physical education teacher Byron Tanner Cross was placed on administrative leave after rejecting the notion that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa. The Virginia county has been continually pushing critical race theory and paid a woke contracting group more than $420,000 in 2019 for services. In March, a bombshell story broke about how teachers in the county had developed a list of parents who dissented from the dogma in a Facebook group.

What were seeing right here, right now in Loudoun County, is the liberal left waging a cultural war, and the victims are our children, Youngkin said. And whos standing up for them? Not the politicians. But in fact parents and teachers. And whos going to stand up for the parents and teachers right now where the school board isnt and politicians arent either?

And as governor, I will stand for excellence in education. We will not teach critical race theory, and I will stand up for teachers and parents against these kinds of cancel culture initiatives, the candidate continued. And oh, by the way, who is standing up for Tanner Cross? I will tell you, as governor, Ill have his back. Ill stand up for the teachers, Ill stand up for the parents. I actually call on that school board right now in Loudoun County to reinstate Tanner Cross fully because they have absolutely ignored his constitutional rights. His best interest is the children right now. They should reinstate him right now, and as governor, I would call for that.

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Glenn Youngkin: 'We Will Not Teach Critical Race Theory' In VA Schools - The Federalist

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci defended gain-of-function research in 2012 wherein scientists extract viruses from the wild and engineer them to infect humans in order to study potential therapeutics including vaccines as research worth risking a pandemic over.

In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Fauci wrote in a paper reported on by The Australian. Scientists working in this field might say as indeed I have said that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.

The revelation of Faucis 2012 defense of the research comes as new reports emerge, breathing new life into the lab-leak theory among the political establishment that dismissed the origin hypothesis, which was always credible, as a conspiracy theory.

Reporting on previously undisclosed intelligence this month, the Wall Street Journal published a story of three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, preceding the pandemics first outbreak in the Hubei province. The lab, known for its relaxed safety protocols, was reportedly collaborating with the Chinese military and conducting gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses, according to the Trump State Department in a fact sheet not disputed by officials in the Biden administration.

Two years after Faucis defense of the high-stakes research, the U.S. government deemed the work so dangerous it was banned. According to longtime journalist and former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade, however, Fauci circumvented the U.S. moratorium and supported gain-of-function with grant money from the NIAID funneled through EcoHealth Alliance, operated by Dr. Peter Daszak.

From June 2014 to May 2019 EcoHealth Alliance had a grant from NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health, to do gain-of-function research with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wade reported in a lengthy Medium post.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul pressed Fauci on U.S. tax dollars going to the Wuhan lab during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions earlier this month.

Gain-of-function research, as you know, is juicing up naturally occurring animal viruses to infect humans. To arrive at the truth, the U.S. government should admit that the Wuhan Virology Institute was experimenting to enhance the coronaviruss ability to infect humans, Paul said.

Fauci denied that the novel coronavirus was a potential byproduct of funding from the NIAID or its parent organization, the National Institutes of Health.

With all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect, Fauci told Paul. The [National Institutes of Health] has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In later testimony before House lawmakers, Fauci admitted that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a recipient of a $600,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study bat coronaviruses that could infect humans. Fauci has continued to vehemently deny the money went toward gain-of-function research.

Faucis denial is surprising, Wade wrote, given the evidence of experiments with enhancing coronaviruses and the language of the moratorium statute defining gain of function as any research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease. Faucis denial, Wade explained, is likely a technical one based on the definition of gain of function.

Last weekend, Fauci, who has thrown cold water on the lab-leak theory since the start of the pandemic, with corporate media following suit, conceded he is not convinced the novel coronavirus, which has killed nearly 3.5 million people worldwide, was an organic disease.

Faucis potential role in funding the birth of the pandemic while disputing the claims to Congress has led several lawmakers to demand the NIAID directors resignation.

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Fauci In 2012: Gain-Of-Function Research Is Worth Pandemic Riskthefederalist.com - The Federalist

The base's diversity and inclusion executive board praised President Joe Biden for reinstating critical race theory in federal agency trainings.

The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio is using its Diversity and Inclusion Newsletter to push leftist propaganda on its members and the civilians who contract with the base.

Despite the U.S. militarys pledge to be non-partisan, the Wright-Patterson propaganda newsletters first began last year, shortly after the death of George Floyd, and have been consistently delivered into the inboxes of hundreds of people affiliated with the air force base. In the first 2021 quarter edition obtained by The Federalist, the bases diversity and inclusion executive board praised President Joe Biden for reinstating critical race theory in federal agency training.

The recension of Executive Order 13950 brings renewed promise and excitement for the Training subcommittee, the newsletter states. They can now forge ahead with offering training for leaders and the whole PK workforce. Training, lectures, and seminars on workplace culture; racial and gender equality; equity in leadership, and flexibility in the workplace all designed to continue to educate and challenge us!

The Diversity and Inclusion Council also urged more participation from those reading the memo, because diversity is the one thing we all have in common, lets take the time to connect, embrace and celebrate!

The six-page document also featured columns highlighting and lauding the new administrations cabinet picks and other Democrats such as Vice President Kamala Harris, new Georgia Democrat Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and even failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is known for being a Democrat operative focused on pushing progressive talking points, lying about the GOP, and boosting leftist politicians. The bottom sections of the document encouraged readers to lean into local black history with links to multiple diversity and Black History Month resources.

The second and most recent 2021 quarter edition obtained by The Federalist takes the identity rhetoric one step farther by using buzzwords such as equity and brushing off concerns about wokeness to push LGBTQ talking points.

Dont think being an Ally or being woke forces you to give up anything, the eight-page newsletter states. Actually actively participating and advocating for inclusivity is the act of improving everything.

The authors of the newsletter also brought attention to a recent survey showing that the service branch needed to improve its awareness about climate and equity issues in many areas.

This particular edition of the mid-year newsletter hones in on sexual diversity, choosing to use the month of June to promote LGBTQ rights.

What Are Personal Pronouns and Why Do They Matter? one of the column headlines reads. A subsequent column instructs readers on How to use Pronouns in their email signatures to make a great move toward inclusivity.

When a cisgender person (personal and gender identity match with birth sex) specifies their pronouns, it normalizes it. By normalizing it, it allows trans and nonbinary to feel comfortable sharing their own, the newsletter states. Considering to most cisgender people these are just words we use unthinkingly, but a sign of respect and recognition to trans and nonbinary people, it cant hurt to start using them to help validate their inclusion in our workforce.

The next page of the newsletter is devoted entirely to promoting and celebrating Pride Month.

Pride Month is so important because it marks the start of huge change within the LGBTQ community, as well as the wider societal implications, the newsletter states. Although attitudes and injustice remain, we have come a long way since the riots of 1969 and by continuing in this long-standing tradition, we continue to raise awareness, improve the attitudes of society and encourage inclusiveness.

Wright-Patterson did not respond to a request for comment.

The newsletters arent the only partisan, propaganda-like content the Air Force appears to be promoting. Plastered all over multiple U.S. Air Force webpages are videos, opinion editorials, and even resources advancing a leftist definition of diversity. One video claims that race-focused diversity, inclusion, and equity programming are required to make people feel like they are being invited to, attending, and being asked to dance at the party.

The Air Force is not the only U.S. military branch that has come under fire for becoming identity-obsessed and pushing political agendas. Just last month, the U.S. Army released a new recruiting ad featuring a female corporal who joined the Army after being raised by two moms and growing up advocating for the LGBTQ agenda.

A couple of weeks later, a U.S. Space Force special unit commander was fired after he discussed the infiltration of Marxist ideology into the U.S. military on a podcast. In the recording, Lt Col. Matthew Lohmeier is heard expressing his concerns that the U.S. military enacts policies that appeal to leftists over other ideologies or parties. He specifically noted that race-driven curricula and other far-left campaigns in the military are hurting opportunities for unity.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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US Air-Force Base In Ohio Pushing Leftist Propaganda As 'Diversity' - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist contributors Libby Emmons and Helen Raleigh join Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to break down the Friends reunion and how it reflects a shift in American culture and entertainment.

It was at first like watching someone elses high school reunion, and that was really uncomfortable and weird and it started off, were just like, I dont know, but as they moved into it and just fell into a natural rapport, that was the interesting part for me, Emmons explained.

Thats what I liked about it, Jashinsky said. Theres a documentary value, I think, to reuniting six people on camera and in the space like theyre literally in the physical space thats so familiar in our pop-cultural imagination.

Entertainment and TV shows are almost entirely different mediums now than when Friends first aired.

America has this huge power to create something funand long-lastingand now were losing that culture of powerand thats thats really sad becausethe wokeness takes the fun out of our entertainment, Raleigh said.

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What The 'Friends' Reunion Says About America's Cultural Evolution - The Federalist

Classical architecture is not a partisan issue.

President Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party, was an enthusiastic champion of the Greek Revivalism thankfully still visible in both the capital and his Monticello home. When he designed the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he took great care in the landscaping and architecture, knowing their likely effects on generations of young minds.

Fifty years later, President Abraham Lincoln insisted that construction of the Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol continue despite the bloody and costly war taking place sometimes just 50 miles from the seat of government. Public beauty in civic buildings, he believed, was crucial to the future of the Union.

Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew inspiration from the great Republican of the Civil War, championing the classical and moving ahead with Washington construction as he sought to prepare the country for the world war he saw descending on our fragile peace.

Democrat Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan played an interesting role in Washingtons architectural history, both helping to craft the 1962 General Guidelines that undid more than 50 years of ordered-classical government buildings, then later criticizing the modernism that took its place.

Twentieth Century America, he lamented in 1970, has seen a steady, persistent decline in the visual and emotional power of its public buildings, and this has been accompanied by a not less persistent decline in the authority of its public order.

The preference for the classical is not simply confined to politicians but is immensely popular with the public that lives among these buildings and sees them in either their daily business or on trips to their cities. A survey conducted by The Harris Poll and commissioned by the classicist National Civic Art Society found that, when presented with a picture of a modernist courthouse and a classical one, members of the public preferred the classical design by nearly 3:1, regardless of age, sex, or race.

But in academia and among elite art and architecture circles, the preferences of the American people and its leaders past and present are passe at best, and fascist at worst. On Monday, President Joe Biden broke with a century of precedent by demanding the resignations of four members of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, including Chas Fagan, Steven Spandle, Perry Guillot, and Commission Chairman Justin Shubow. His reason? He doesnt like the classic aesthetic.

The counsels office, Bloomberg reports, advised that President Joe Biden has the authority to remove the commissioners, whose staunch support for classical architecture does not align with his values.

Fagan is a renowned sculptor and painter whose statue of former President Ronald Reagan stands in the Capitol Rotunda, whose statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks stands in the National Cathedral, and whose paintings include the Vaticans official portrait of St. Mother Theresa and first lady Barbara Bushs official portrait.

Shubow serves as the president of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit organization that fights for classicism in public works, and is at the forefront of the battle to rebuild Manhattans destroyed Penn Station. Guillots works include the new White House Rose Garden and Childrens Garden, and Spandles work includes the White Houses beautiful new Tennis Pavilion.

The four men come from different backgrounds and disciplines, but all appear to have been targeted for removal to create a more diverse and less classically oriented commission, despite Guillot not considering himself a classicist and Shubow being the first Jewish chairman in the history of the commission.

Their replacements include urban planner and Howard University architecture professor Hazel Ruth Edwards, Andrew Mellon Foundation program officer Justin Garrett Moore, architect Billie Tsien, whose firm is responsible for the Obama Presidential Library design, and Peter D. Cook, whose designs include the Smithsonians sandcrawler-esque National Museum of African American History and a pavilion seemingly inspired by the Star Trek badge.

The purge, The Washington Post reports, followed a complaint from the deputy mayor of D.C., who told the Biden White House that because of the commissions power to approve the citys development, its members could impede Washingtons progress toward racial and economic equity, climate change and affordable housing.

All four replacement commissioners are modernists, none identify as white males, and three Ruth Edwards, Garrett Moore and Tsien are outspoken allies of the administrations focus on race (and racism) in everything and above all else.Biden, the Posts chosen search-engine headline reads, removes four white men from Commission of Fine Arts.

Since the end of World War II, modernists from the elite academies have made steady progress in the United States and across the West. In the 1930s, when architect John Russell Pope was tasked with designing both the West Wing of the Smithsonians National Gallery and the Jefferson Memorial across Washingtons Tidal Basin, he saw more opportunity for beauty in reinterpreting the ancient than in embracing the novel, choosing to draw heavy inspiration for both the memorial and the center of the museum from the world-renowned Roman Pantheon.

Both [the West Building and the memorial] were conceived as temples, the Society of Architecture Historians write: one dedicated to a man of true republican principles and one a sanctuary to house refined and valuable artworks.

The West Building today regarded as one of the capitals most beautiful was, however, heaped with scorn from the elite critics of its day. When it was dedicated in 1941, Joseph Hudnut, the extremely influential dean of the Harvard School of Architecture, called the museum a pink marble whorehouse, predicting that surely the time cannot be far distant when we shall understand how inadequate is the death-mask of an ancient culture to express the soul of America.

Roosevelt, hardly an outsider to elite circles, disagreed, saying at the buildings dedication:

Seventy-eight years ago, in the third year of the war between the states, men and women gathered here in the capital of a divided nation, here in Washington, to see the dome above the Capitol completed and to see the bronze Goddess of Liberty set upon the top. It had been an expensive and laborious business, diverting money and labor from the prosecution of the war, and certain critics for there were critics in 1863 certain critics found much to criticize. There were new marble pillars in the Senate wing of the Capitol; there was a bronze door for the central portal and other such expenditures and embellishments. But the president of the United States, whose name was Lincoln, when he heard those criticisms, answered: If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign that we intend this Union shall go on.

Although today Hudnut is all but forgotten, his influence lives on through the works of the foreign Bauhaus architects he brought to Harvard, whose work in styles such as Brutalism scar landscapes from Atlantato Washington to Minnesota. Hudnut saw their European cement, it seems, as more suited to express the soul of America.

When the East Wing of the National Gallery was built in the 1960s and 70s (after the General Guidelines for federal architecture has been revamped) modernist I. M. Pei, whose firm was later sued over allegations of shoddy design over the falling-windows mess at Bostons John Hancock Tower, was chosen for the project. Completed in 1978, its novel design required an $85 million fix to prevent the giant, faceless slabs of suspended concrete on the exterior walls from crashing down.

The East Wing is, former Washington Post architecture critic Benjamin Forgey told The New York Times, is an example of why we need contemporary thought in architecture. Its what makes contemplating and experiencing cities enjoyable.

While not a partisan issue, beautiful architecture is important to the American people and is a subject on which our preferences are clear. Having lost the argument, however, certain allies of the modernist elites in the Biden White House have taken it upon themselves to push an unprecedented coup on the Commission on Fine Arts.

Its a naked power grab, nothing more and nothing else. And while it bodes poorly for the near future of American civic architecture, it is a move made from weakness: Just as their works fail to uplift or inspire, their grasping will fail to persuade.

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Why The Biden White House Declared War On Beauty In Architecture - The Federalist