Over the summer break and last semester, the Trump administration has continued to fire multiple attempts to attack free speech. This has included things like sending the National Guard to Los Angeles to attack protesters, shutting down companies like PBS for, in his eyes, spewing information that does not align with his political views, now he has set his eyes on the Smithsonian, which is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex.
Back in March, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. The executive order was very direct in targeting the Smithsonian. He believed the Smithsonian had been taken over by the woke ideologies and started to become more race-centered, believing they are promoting narratives that make America look bad.
On August 12, the White House sent a letter to the Smithsonian, the subject being “internal review of Smithsonian exhibitions and materials.” The letter mentions how the White House is preparing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding. They said, “It is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress and enduring values that define the American story.”
They mention how they intend to analyze everything that the Smithsonian is doing, including websites, social media material, as well as the museum’s collections and how they’re using said collections, their future planning for the museums exhibitions, and they also mention narrative standards, “the development of consistent, rational guidelines that reflect the Smithsonian’s original mission.”
When reading this letter sent by the White House. It seems very passive-aggressive and disingenuous; the fact is that they don’t care about spreading the truth, they only care about museums fitting their narrative and idea of American history.
In their eyes, when you include the negative about American history, you are anti-American, but the truth is that you cannot tell American history or any history without telling the negative.
If you ignore the bad parts of history, you’re not learning from past mistakes. It’s obvious that the Trump administration does not care. Their mission is to erase all diversity in America. What’s funny about this is that during Trump’s last term, he visited the black history museum, which is a part of the Smithsonian. He spoke about how important the museum was.
According to a recent article from the New York Times, he said, “this tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its ugly forms.” he said it was an honor to be the second sitting president to visit the museum.
It’s clear that Donald Trump is only saying what people want to hear at that moment; he does not care about people of color in this country, nor does he care about the poor people of this country.
The only thing he cares about is the rich and powerful. The administration intends to have the process of what they want implemented within the next 120 days and during this whole mess they actually started to take steps in correcting things that fit with the administration’s ideologies.
According to Chloe Veltman of the NPR newsletter, the Smithsonian has started to “remove references to Trump’s first term impeachment from an exhibit following a review, and later updated the exhibit with an edited version.” They also released a statement saying, “We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress and our government board of Regents.”
It hurts to see what is happening under this administration, the number of people and companies who are turning their backs on this country’s people because they are afraid of an attack by the president.
These actions by the current administration show how afraid they are of the truth, with us only being nine months into this term, I’m scared to see the future of this country.
