Federal bureaucrats are overwhelmingly Democrats or progressives, and can sometimes push left-wing policies that create political headaches for even a Democratic administration, because of how unpopular those policies are. A Democratic administration may privately sympathize with those policies, but not want the political backlash that comes from implementing them.
The Biden administration was informed of the National Park Service’s proposal to remove the William Penn statue from Philadelphia’s Welcome Park, but it didn’t come up with the idea, and when there was a public backlash against the removal, it was swiftly dropped. No President who wants to run to be reelected would seek to be associated with such an unpopular idea in a swing state like Pennsylvania. An October 13, 2023 letter shows that a National Park Service interim superintendent had already proposed doing that to Native American tribes, months before the idea of removing Penn’s statue was disclosed to the public in January 2024. That letter is reproduced in large part below.
William Penn was the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania. In January 2024, the National Park Service publicly announced plans to remove a statue of William Penn from a park in Philadelphia located on the site of Penn’s house. Records released last year indicated that President Biden had nothing to do with this plan, contrary to what some suggested, and that it was a decision by the Park Service itself. The plan to remove Penn’s statue was deeply unpopular: It triggered a “torrent of criticism” and as a result, “the National Park Service withdrew” its plan to remove Penn’s statue on January 8, reported the Associated Press. The Park Service claimed that the plan “was released ‘prematurely’ and hadn’t undergone a complete internal review.” But records that were released last year undercut that claim by the Park Service, showing that the idea was long in the works and had undergone extensive internal review.
Below are relevant portions of an October 13, 2023 letter proposing the removal of William Penn’s statue, sent to the Oneida Indian Nation, from Alexcy Romero, the Interim Superintendent of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. On page 3 of the letter, Superintendent Romero notes that the National Park Service reached the decision to get rid of the William Penn statue after conferring with Indian tribes, saying “It is because [of] Haudenosaunee’s delegation’s interest in this site that we changed our approach to this site and our project,” to include “Removal of the statue of William Penn in its entirety and removal of the Slate House Roof model.” On page 2 of the letter, Romero states, “As originally proposed, the intent was to retain the overall form of the park, while correcting damaged surfaces and making visually compatible improvements to circulation, plantings, irrigation, lighting, seating, etc.” But after the “discussion history” with members of the tribes, the NPS came up with a “proposed ‘Reimagined Welcome Park'” “to expand its interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and the park and to develop a place for your nation and others to gather in Philadelphia.” On page 3 of the letter, Romero explains that “As currently proposed the project will include the following:…*Removal of the statue of William Penn in its entirety and removal of the Slate House Roof model.”
On page 1 of Romero’s letter:
On page 2:
On pages 3-4:
The above letter was released on January 30 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Bader Family Foundation v. U.S. Department of the Interior. Some filings in that lawsuit can be found at this link. Prior releases of records were made last year in response to that lawsuit, such as at this link and this link.
As noted earlier, removing the William Penn statue was extremely unpopular and created political problems for the Biden administration. A senior Pennsylvania Republican Congressman “accused President Joe Biden in a statement of trying to ‘cancel’ William Penn,” calling it “another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of wokeism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history’” reported the Associated Press. A few left-wing academics falsely depicted Penn as an architect of “white supremacy”. La Salle University professor Maureen O’Connell claimed that “white supremacy … started in” Philadelphia with “William Penn’s Holy Experiment.” That’s not true. “William Penn was actually an outspoken advocate for the rights of Native Americans — so much so, in fact, that his name was invoked by Native leaders for generations to come. Penn’s treaty with the Lenape led to 75 years of peace within the colony,” noted Nate Hochman. “Penn went to great lengths to ensure that natives were paid and treated fairly, forged real friendships with many local tribes, and established tribunals to protect their rights,” he observed.
The internal “Briefing Statement” for the plan to remove the statue shows that it was carefully planned by the National Park Service, and the subject of extensive deliberations, and the culmination of years of planning. “The proposed design has been in development for four years with informal collaboration with park neighbors, the City, and tribal nations. Formal tribal consultation was initiated on October 13, 2023″, it says. See pages 347-349 of these emails.
Local, not national, NPS officials developed the plan that would have removed Penn’s statue. Indeed, the National Park Service’s Deputy Director of Operations, Frank Lands, expressed surprise at the plan to remove the William Penn statue, in an email to the regional NPS director in Philadelphia, Gay Vietzke, “Hi Gay, I thought you mentioned during our tour that the Penn statue would remain?” That email is at this link.
Conversely, people perceived the decision to overturn the plan to remove William Penn’s statue as being made in Washington, DC, not Philadelphia. Andrew McDougall was asked, “Who in DC ordered the park to remain as is,” in an email found at this link.
It is not too surprising that National Park Service employees would propose doing something unpopular and “woke” like this. Federal employees tend to be quite progressive. (See, e.g., Alexander D. Bolton, John M. de Figueiredo, & David E. Lewis, Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 22932, at pg. 3, 24 (discussing exodus of high-ranking State Department civil servants and career diplomats after Democrats lost the 2016 election); Andrew Buncombe, US State Department’s entire senior management team quits as Secretary Rex Tillerson takes up post, The Independent, January 26, 2017 (senior career civil servants resigned rather than work for conservative president)).
State Department employee Walter Kendall Myers, who was later convicted of spying for Communist Cuba, would go on angry rants denouncing conservatives to career State Department employees, who would respond by giving him rousing applause. Kendall was a staunch leftist, but that did not make him stick out like a sore thumb in the State Department, where many other State Department employees shared his deep hostility to conservatism. He and his wife were “true believers” in the Cuban communist system. He wrote in his diary, “I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit”, and referred to Fidel Castro as “one of the great political leaders of our time.”
