Utopias of Violence
A News Link Round-Up
Here is the latest weekly round-up of links, with updates on the connections between Trump’s reflecting pool debacle, his surrender in Iran, and his flirtations with military dictatorship at home—summed up in Timothy Snyder’s trenchant observation about “Utopias of Violence.” Also included: the secret life of Tulsi Gabbard, the looting of the National Opera, the folly of left-wing Trumpism, and buried in there, some good news—a big bipartisan legislative push for the YIMBYs.
A reminder about this News Link Round-Up format: The main headlines are there to provide context and perhaps a little commentary, the headlines with the links are the original headlines from the articles, and the quotations beneath are extracts from the articles.
Bulldozing the Statue of Liberty
DOJ Declares Trump Has Right to Bulldoze Statue of Liberty
In order to demonstrate Trump’s supposedly far-reaching power to destroy and alter national monuments at whim, the DOJ lawyers claimed that if the president wanted to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty in New York, there would be no one with the standing to challenge him.
“If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors—that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast—nothing can be done?” Judge Patricia Millett asked, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
“I think that’s right, yes,” the government responded.
The Statue of Liberty, like the White House, is managed by the National Park Service. Demolishing it would require legislative approval and rigorous public and regulatory review under the National Historic Preservation Act.
Of all Donald Trump’s little DC hobby projects that have caused scandal this year, the snit over his renovation of the National Mall’s reflecting pool has been the one I’ve cared about the least. But you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh at the snags they’re hitting this week: After months of castigating the “filthy, dirty” pool as a symbol of failed Democratic leadership (“Sleepy Joe doesn’t know what ‘CLEAN’ or proper maintenance is!”), and just days after the White House declared the mission of cleaning it up accomplished, the reflecting pool is once again resolutely algae-green….
[T]he boondoggle is such a striking metaphor for the failures of Trump’s second term that it’s worth taking at least a minute to soak in.
Here is how the president has approached basically all problems since retaking office last year:
