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By the time President Donald Trump left office in January, he had appointed all seven members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal design oversight body that has shaped the nation's capital and federal architecture since 1910. All were White men, more or less devoted to what was termed "classical architecture." The group had not been less diverse since 1963, the last time it was all male, and it had been at least a decade since all its members were White.

President Biden has taken the bold step this week of removing four of Trump's appointees, including the commission chairman, Justin Shubow, who is not a practicing architect or trained designer. Shubow was the driving force at the CFA during the Trump years, politicizing the traditionally nonpartisan group, and he was almost certainly the author or instigator of a 2020 executive order, "Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture," which required most federal buildings in the District and many throughout the country to be built in a limited range of traditionalist architectural styles.