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EFTA00161554 | EFTA00161576 CNN (5/25, Stark, 89.21M) reports that on Monday, the White House instructed four Trumpappointed members to resign from the seven-member Commission of Fine Arts - "an independent federal agency tasked with advising the President, Congress and government agencies on 'matters of design' in the nation's capital." According to the Washington Post (5/25, 10.52M), the Administration "sent letters to architect Steven Spandle, landscape architect Perry Guillot, sculptor Chas Fagan and commission chairman Justin Shubow asking that they resign...or face termination." The Post adds all four have refused to resign. The Hill (5/25, 5.69M) says that President Biden is planning to replace the four Trump appointees with Peter Cook, a principal at HGA Architects whose "work includes the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture," Bill Tsein, a partner at Tod Williams Billie Architects, Justin Garrett Moore, "who is the Inaugural Program Officer for the Humanities in Place Program at the Andrew Mellon Foundation," and Hazel Ruth Edwards, who chairs the Department of Architecture at Howard University's College of Engineering and Architecture. WSJournal: Biden's Purge Of Arts Commission Is Elitist, Partisan. The Wall Street Journal (5/25, Subscription Publication, 8.41M) editorializes that Biden's decision to remove four Trump appointees from the Commission on Fine Arts contradict the image of the President as an everyman and suggest a preoccupation with elite interests. The Journal also says the purge is a partisan move that raises legal questions. Republicans Promise Infrastructure Counteroffer By Thursday. The New York Times (5/25, Cochrane, Tankersley, 20.6M) reports "Senate Republicans who have been negotiating" an infrastructure package "with the White House said on Tuesday that they would produce a counterproposal to [President] Biden's latest $1.7 trillion offer, promising a plan by Thursday that could amount to $1 trillion in public works spending over eight years. But it is unclear whether the two sides can reach common ground, and a group of centrist senators in both parties were quietly discussing a backup option should the talks stall." The Washington Post (5/25, 10.52M) reports the GOP offer "is expected to jettison some of President Biden's proposals that have struggled to attract Republican support, including his plan to couple infrastructure investments with new federal aid targeting elder care and low-income families. Gone, too, are likely to be the president's proposed funds for electric vehicles, [Sen. Mitt] Romney [R-UT] said." The Post adds, "For these lawmakers, any attempt to unwind the 2017 GOP tax cuts is still off the table." Bloomberg (5/25, Wasson, Jacobs, 3.57M) and the Wall Street Journal (5/25, Duehren, Subscription Publication, 8.41M) provide similar coverage of the GOP counteroffer. The AE (5/25, Mascaro, Lemire) says "the administration and the GOP senators remain far apart over the size and scope of the investment needed to reboot the nation's roads, bridges and broadband - but also, as Biden sees it, the child care centers and green energy investments needed for a 21st-century economy. They also can't agree on how to pay for it." Politico (5/25, LeVine, 6.73M) reports that although "neither the White House nor the GOP negotiators are giving up yet, members of both parties privately acknowledge that they're at a stalemate and that the most likely outcome at this point is Democrats will ultimately go it alone on infrastructure." Asked on CNNVi (5/25, 627K) about the status of talks over how to pay for President Biden's infrastructure package, White House Director of Public Engagement Cedric Richmond said, "We think that the corporations in America that benefit from the infrastructure investments we're going to make, we think the top third of the top one percent also should pay their fair share. Because what we can't do is put this on the backs of the middle class that has been working and struggling and breaking their backs to keep this country afloat all these years. ... We're eagerly awaiting a response from the Republicans with a new proposal ... And what the President has said is that his only bottom line is he won't raise taxes on people who make less than $400,000 a year and inaction is not an option on infrastructure because it is crucial to making sure we can compete in the future and that we can win the future." USA Today (5/25, Garrison, Behrmann, Jansen, 12.7M) reports Democrats are "growing restless" over the stalled talks and "questioning how much longer President Joe Biden's bipartisan EFTA00161576
April 23, 2026 at 5:16 AM