Historic preservation supporters organizing to oppose Trump changes 70%
By Bob Loevy94%
8/2/2026, 6:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Loss Aversion, and Pessimism Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 28.5% saturation with 172 hits. Analysis detected 1,274 faulty-reasoning hits from 603 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 57% and a BS Rank of 70% (7,855 of 26,004 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 69.80% of the article peer group.
Historic preservation organizations in Colorado Springs, the remainder of Colorado and across the nation are organizing to resist a recent effort to relax and weaken historic preservation laws in the United States.
In Washington, D.C., the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) has adopted a plan that will greatly reduce the power of the federal government to alter in character or remove National Register Historic Districts and National Register Historic Places.
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has been loaded with President Donald Trump’s allies and has moved to relax a 60-year-old historic preservation law that requires federally financed projects to go through a rigorous consideration process before they can change or remove U.S. designated historic sites.
El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs, has over 90 National Register Historic Districts and National Register Historic Places.
The National Register Historic Districts in the county include the Old North End National Register Historic District and the North Weber-Wahsatch National Register Historic District.
The National Register of Historic Places includes, among many others, the former El Paso County Courthouse (now the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum), Colorado Springs City Hall, the former Santa Fe railroad station and the Cliff House Hotel in Manitou Springs.
The type of projects that could harm historic sites in the U.S. are new highways and new irrigation canals, for example.
The requirement that federal projects respect historic districts and historic places is in Section 106.
The changes proposed by Trump supporters on the Advisory Council call for turning requirements into voluntary procedures.
Thus, legal language requiring these projects to “avoid, minimize or mitigate” project effects has been removed.
The proposed changes would greatly reduce the role of state governments and local communities in opposing federal projects that could potentially harm historic sites.
Local opportunities for input on the importance of historic preservation to local interests will be greatly weakened.
The changes by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation that will weaken historic preservation will be subject to a 30-day comment period.
During that time, those who oppose the changes can make their opinions known.
Residents of National Register Historic Districts and owners and custodians of National Register Historic Places are encouraged to take advantage of the 30-day comment period and make their voices heard in opposition to the changes.
That process is already underway among historic preservation interests in El Paso County and Colorado.
The Trump forces are said to be making these major changes in the historic preservation process because national historic preservation laws are making it difficult for Trump to build his desired “Triumphal Arch” in Washington.
Trump’s supporters argue that the present historic preservation rules are unnecessarily “slowing down” and making it difficult for the proposed arch and other Trump projects in the capital city.
At the same time that the Trump associates change the historic preservation rules in the nation’s capital, they have to make the same changes for the country at large.
It all fits with the Trump administration’s general tendency to do away with longtime protections for such values as historic preservation and sharply change the way these issues are handled in the United States.
And most of the Trump-inspired changes have a general tendency to reduce regulation and simultaneously protection of things that are highly valued by many Americans.
Also losing protections under the proposed new Trump rules will be Colorado state historic sites such as Bent’s Old Fort on the Eastern Plains of Colorado.
News columnist Bob Loevy is a retired professor of political science at Colorado College who writes about Colorado and national politics.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.