TracingWoodgrains
@tracewoodgrains
Gutting museums and libraries to save .004% of the federal budget does not seem like a good way to achieve government efficiency.

Remember, the American Library System was set up with generous donations from Andrew Carnegie – one of the richest people in America at the time.

Now, we have this unelected amoral person snatching funding from Museums and Libraries, just like he snatched funding from the poor around the world.
Nobody elected him.

Trump targets ‘improper ideology’ at Smithsonian museums in new executive order
The order states that Vice President JD Vance will be in charge of efforts to prohibit federal funding for Smithsonian programs that are not in line with the administration’s goals.
March 27, 2025, 8:43 PM CDT
By Nnamdi Egwuonwu

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday taking aim at the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers.

Trump directed Vice President JD Vance to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American” ideology from programs at the Smithsonian Institution, which receives federal funding.

“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” the order reads. “This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

In the order, Trump accuses the Biden administration of advancing “corrosive ideology” at the museums, singling out certain entities, like the National Museum of African American History and Culture that he said perpetuated “divisive” and “race-centered” ideas.

Representatives for the Smithsonian Institution did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday night.

Vance, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, will also be tasked with working with congressional leaders to appoint board members who are “committed to advancing the celebration of America’s extraordinary heritage and progress.”

Trump’s order further directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to restore federal parks and monuments that have been “improperly removed or changed” in the last five years to perpetuate “a false revision of history or improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.”

The order is in line with Trump’s rationale for reverting the name of Alaska’s Mount Denali to Mount McKinley, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s explanation for reversing a Biden administration decision to rename military bases honoring Confederate leaders.

The order comes as the Trump administration presses forward in its war on diversity, equity and inclusion, a widely used label applied to efforts to improve workplace culture and create more opportunities for disadvantaged groups.

Trump order launches Smithsonian and its visitors into confusion, dismay
Current and former members of the institution’s board of regents condemned the edict, while visitors said the Trump administration was trying to edit U.S. history.

March 28, 2025 at 7:51 p.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order to eliminate what he considers “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution cast the world’s largest museum, education and research complex into a state of confusion Friday, just as streams of tourists poured into Washington, drawn by idyllic spring weather and the appearance of the city’s famed cherry blossoms.

Trump’s edict, issued late Thursday, marks his second recent attempt to mold America’s cultural life, following his decision last month to purge the Kennedy Center board of his predecessor’s appointees and install himself as chairman.

Both acts, unprecedented in American history, have drawn heated condemnation from Democrats, including some current and former members of the Smithsonian Board of Regents. Outside some of the country’s most beloved attractions on Friday — places such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture — there was an air of bewilderment tinged with anger.

“The Smithsonian has been preserving and sharing the American story for over 175 years, and I’ll continue to support the independence of this critical institution,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), who sits on the Smithsonian board, said in a statement emailed Friday to The Washington Post. “President Trump’s attempts to rewrite history are a weak, pathetic effort to distract from his disastrous plans to cut Medicaid and use tariffs to raise costs for middle class Americans.”

This testimonial here:

Clint Smith
‪@clintsmithiii.bsky.social‬

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A few years ago I visited the National Museum of African American History & Culture with my grandparents. When we stepped out of the building my grandmother kept repeating the words “I lived it. I lived it. I lived it.”

She’s still here. That history is still in her bones. You can never erase that.
March 28, 2025 at 10:43 AM

Clint Smith
‪@clintsmithiii.bsky.social‬

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My grandfather was born in 1930s Mississippi, my grandmother in 1930s Florida. They, like millions of other Black Americans, remember living in an era of racial apartheid in the American South. It is a history that the NMAAHC captures with rigor, with honesty, with humanity. It is essential.
March 28, 2025 at 10:51 AM

Clint Smith
‪@clintsmithiii.bsky.social‬

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Ruth Bonner, the woman who helped open the NMAAHC in 2016, was the *daughter* of a man born into slavery.

My grandfather’s grandfather was enslaved.

One of the most essential functions of the museum, is that it shows us how the history we’ve been told was long ago was actually not long ago at all.
March 28, 2025 at 10:58 AM
https://bsky.app/profile/clintsmithiii.bsky.social/post/3llh6mqamis2j

Symone D. Sanders Townsend
@SymoneDSanders
I love the Smithsonian. Last year, one of the museums invited me to host something for them taking place this year (it was not the NMAAHC). Tuesday of this week, I got a call from the museum uninviting me to host because they “got cold feet” and frankly were concerned about their funding.

By Thursday, the President put a target on the back of the whole Smithsonian Institution. They were right to be concerned, but compliance in advance will not save us.
https://apple.news/AuzzBXPPkRmaeROoYmngLaA
9:25 AM · Mar 28, 2025
https://x.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1905627248276701578

Found this comment at BJ:

Rusty

March 29, 2025 at 7:15 am

Heather Cox Richardson hit on the roots of this yesterday, the right wants a conservative cultural revolution where they seized back control of things such as arts institutions. They want to take control of universities, cultural institutions, any locus of power. So that is the reason to take down big law firms and bend them to their will too. We will be seeing a lot more of this during this administration. I don’t think any of us have fully absorbed the scope of this project and its ambitions. Nothing short of a conservative revolution brought about by the exercise of authoritarian power.

Thus far, the review of Nimitz Library’s holdings has identified 900 books that may run afoul of the defense secretary’s verbal order. According to a second defense official, they include “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Einstein on Race and Racism,” and a biography on Jackie Robinson.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/us/politics/naval-academy-diversity-affirmative-action.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7k4.GG7i.ncajAViSR0aT&smid=url-share

Entire staff at federal agency that funds libraries and museums put on leave
March 31, 20254:36 PM ET

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has placed its entire staff on administrative leave.

The IMLS is a relatively small federal agency, with around 70 employees, that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United States.

This month, President Trump named Keith E. Sonderling — the deputy secretary of labor — the new acting director of IMLS. This followed Trump’s previous executive order shrinking seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

According to a statement from AFGE Local 3403, which represents IMLS workers, the agency’s staff was notified by email about being placed on paid administrative leave for up to 90 days, after a “brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership.” Employees had to turn in government property, and email accounts were disabled.