The Backlash Over Historic Preservation Is Being Compared to the One That Created the Law

Congress and a federal agency are threatening to weaken the country's historic preservation law, NPR reports, and critics describe the backlash as just as fiery as the one that led to the law's creation 60 years ago.

That comparison is doing the work. The law did not arrive as a quiet administrative idea; it came out of an argument loud enough to force it into existence. The current fight is over loosening it, and the objection is being framed in the same register as the original one — heat, not procedure. Which tends to mean the argument is less about any single building than about who decides what is worth keeping.