You know what the Republicans are reminding me of with these kinds of decisions taken everywhere across the USA in the large and the small?
The Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution did extreme damage to thousands upon thousands of years of Chinese culture, very nearly resulting in its loss for all practical purposes. Only the actions of scholars literally risking their lives to conceal works targeted for destruction allowed China to still have its intellectual past, but unfortunately a lot of famed works of physical art and culture were obliterated by the red book waving whack jobs.
Kind of like what's happening to the USA's natural beauty and what little history it has.