#smithsonian-museums — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #smithsonian-museums, aggregated by home.social.
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Democratic senators urge Smithsonian to resist White House attempts to ‘bully the institution’ : NPR
Four Democratic senators urge Smithsonian to resist White House attempts to ‘bully the institution’
Updated September 5, 2025, 3:32 PM ET
Members of the U.S. Park Police guard an entrance to the 9th Street tunnel in front of the Smithsonian Castle on Aug. 13, 2025, in Washington, D.C., after the Trump administration initiated a federal takeover of D.C. police and deployed the National Guard in the city.
Alex Wong / Getty ImagesIn a letter sent Friday to the Smithsonian Institution’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and three other Democratic senators urged Bunch to resist any attempts by the White House to “bully the institution to go against its mission and values.”
The letter from the four Senate Democrats comes weeks after President Trump called the Smithsonian and museums “all over the Country essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’” On Truth Social, he said that the Smithsonian presents a narrative of the country’s history that is about “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
The White House also released an unsigned memo last month specifically criticizing 22 exhibitions, live programs and other materials at the Smithsonian, titled, “President Trump Is Right About The Smithsonian.” NPR has reported that some of the exhibitions were temporary and are no longer on view.
The coauthors of Friday’s letter are three senators with ties to the institution: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., both current members of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents; and Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley, D-Ore., the ranking member of an appropriations subcommittee which holds jurisdiction over the Smithsonian’s federal funding. The letter was provided to NPR by Padilla’s office.
Visitors browse an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History on Aug. 28, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong / Getty ImagesWithin the letter, the senators asserted that oversight of the Smithsonian rests with Congress from its founding, not the White House.
“As you know,” the senators wrote in part, “the Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure, and it is also a public-private partnership managed as an independent federal trust. It is not an executive agency over which the President can exert unilateral control over its historical, scientific or artistic content. The Institution was created by Congress to care for the bequest of James Smithson and to found ‘an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.’ In recent years, it has been funded with a relatively even split of private donations to support its programming, and federal appropriations provided by Congress to support its core operations including the maintenance of the facilities, further underscoring its unique status.”
The letter continued: “Congress assigned the trust responsibility for this gift of private property to the United States and its ongoing mission to the Smithsonian Board of Regents, not to the executive branch.”
In a written statement sent to NPR on Friday afternoon, Lindsey Halligan, a White House official tasked with reviewing the Smithsonian, said: “The Smithsonian is not an autonomous institution, as 70% of its funding comes from taxpayers. While we acknowledge the Smithsonian’s recognition of its own programmatic failures and is moving toward critical introspection, it cannot credibly audit itself. By definition, an ‘audit’ must be neutral and objective. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less, which is why the White House will ensure the audit is conducted impartially. This is non-negotiable.”
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Democratic senators urge Smithsonian to resist White House attempts to ‘bully the institution’ : NPR
#2025 #America #bullying #Democrats #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #Opinion #Politics #Resist #Resistance #Science #Senators #SmithsonianInstitution #SmithsonianMuseums #SupportSmithsonian #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WhiteHouse
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Smithsonian secretary reaffirms institution’s ‘independence’ in response to White House’s demand for review – ABC News
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch IIISmithsonian secretary reaffirms institution’s ‘independence’ in response to White House’s demand for review
Sec. Lonnie Bunch said that the institution’s “independence is paramount.”
By Elizabeth Thomas and Deena Zaru, September 5, 2025, 12:31 PM
White House wants Smithsonian exhibits to fit Trump’s view of history: Official
The White House plans to conduct a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian Institution’s museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III asserted the Smithsonian Institution’s control over its programming and content this week in a letter addressed to the White House after the Trump administration demanded a review of the institution’s exhibits, a Smithsonian official confirmed to ABC News.
The White House announced last month that it plans to conduct a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian’s museum exhibitions, materials and operations to ensure they align with President Donald Trump’s view of American history.
In the Sept. 3 letter, Bunch responded to Trump’s demand that his administration review the Smithsonian’s exhibitions, materials and operations. It also said that the Smithsonian, which is the world’s largest museum complex, will remain control over programming and content and that it will do its own review of exhibits, material and operations, the official told ABC News.
Following its internal review, Bunch said he will brief the White House on its findings, but the Smithsonian will not be sending a formal report to the White House, the Smithsonian official added. The museum’s review of exhibits is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
The exterior of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2025. Annabelle Gordon / Reuters, FILE.Asked about the Smithsonian’s internal review and whether the White House will insist on being involved, a White House official told ABC News that the Smithsonian “cannot credibly audit itself.”
“The Smithsonian is not an autonomous institution, as 70% of its funding comes from taxpayers. While we acknowledge the Smithsonian’s recognition of its own programmatic failures and is moving toward critical introspection, it cannot credibly audit itself,” White House official Lindsey Halligan said. “By definition, an ‘audit’ must be neutral and objective. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less, which is why the White House will ensure the audit is conducted impartially. This is non-negotiable.”
ABC News reached out to the Smithsonian but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
Bunch, who met with Trump at the White House on Aug. 28 over lunch, referenced the Smithsonian’s response to the White House and his conversations with Trump during the lunch in a Sept. 3 letter to the institution’s employees, which was obtained by ABC News.
In the letter, Bunch told Smithsonian employees that he communicated to the president during their Aug. 28 meeting that the Smithsonian’s “independence is paramount.” He also told employees that the Institution remains committed to telling the “American story” and “will always be, a place that welcomes all Americans and the world.”
Asked about the Smithsonian’s internal review and whether the White House will insist on being involved, a White House official told ABC News that the Smithsonian “cannot credibly audit itself.”
“The Smithsonian is not an autonomous institution, as 70% of its funding comes from taxpayers. While we acknowledge the Smithsonian’s recognition of its own programmatic failures and is moving toward critical introspection, it cannot credibly audit itself,” White House official Lindsey Halligan said. “By definition, an ‘audit’ must be neutral and objective. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less, which is why the White House will ensure the audit is conducted impartially. This is non-negotiable.”
ABC News reached out to the Smithsonian but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
Bunch, who met with Trump at the White House on Aug. 28 over lunch, referenced the Smithsonian’s response to the White House and his conversations with Trump during the lunch in a Sept. 3 letter to the institution’s employees, which was obtained by ABC News.
In the letter, Bunch told Smithsonian employees that he communicated to the president during their Aug. 28 meeting that the Smithsonian’s “independence is paramount.” He also told employees that the Institution remains committed to telling the “American story” and “will always be, a place that welcomes all Americans and the world.”
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Smithsonian secretary reaffirms institution’s ‘independence’ in response to White House’s demand for review – ABC News
#2025 #ABCNews #America #Books #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #SecretaryLonnieBunch #SmithsonianInstitution #SmithsonianMuseums #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WashingtonDC #WhiteHouse
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August 20, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
August 20, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson Aug 20, 2025President Donald J. Trump created a firestorm yesterday when he said that the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, located mostly in Washington, D.C., focuses too much on “how bad slavery was.” But his objection to recognizing the horrors of human enslavement is not simply white supremacy. It is the logical outcome of the political ideology that created MAGA. It is the same ideology that leads him and his loyalists to try to rig the nation’s voting system to create a one-party state.
That ideology took shape in the years immediately after the Civil War, when Black men and poor white men in the South voted for leaders who promised to rebuild their shattered region, provide schools and hospitals (as well as desperately needed prosthetics for veterans), and develop the economy with railroads to provide an equal opportunity for all men to work hard and rise.
Former Confederates, committed to the idea of both their racial superiority and their right to control the government, loathed the idea of Black men voting. But their opposition to Black voting on racial grounds ran headlong into the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which, after it was ratified in 1870, gave the U.S. government the power to make sure that no state denied any man the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” When white former Confederates nonetheless tried to force their Black neighbors from the polls, Congress in 1870 created the Department of Justice, which began to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan members who had been terrorizing the South.
With racial discrimination now a federal offense, elite white southerners changed their approach. They insisted that they objected to Black voting not on racial grounds, but because Black men were voting for programs that redistributed wealth from hardworking white people to Black people, since hospitals and roads would cost tax dollars and white people were the only ones with taxable property in the Reconstruction South. Poor Black voters were instituting, one popular magazine wrote, “Socialism in South Carolina.”
In contrast to what they insisted was the federal government’s turn toward socialism, former Confederates celebrated the American cowboys who were moving cattle from Texas to railheads first in Missouri and then northward across the plains, mythologizing them as true Americans. Although the American West depended on the federal government more than any other region of the country, southern Democrats claimed the cowboy wanted nothing but for the government to leave him alone so he could earn prosperity through his own hard work with other men in a land where they dominated Indigenous Americans, Mexicans, and women.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: August 20, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #RemovingRacismHistory #Resistance #Science #SmithsonianMuseums #Substack #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates
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Civil Discourse – Investigating the Police – Joyce Vanc
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Investigating the Police
Joyce Vance, Aug 20, 2025In a move that is as performative as sending battleships to fight a cartel, the Trump Justice Department is investigating whether the D.C. Police Department manipulated data to make crime rates appear lower. This move, confirmed by “two senior law enforcement officials,” comes on the heels of Donald Trump falsely claiming there was a crime epidemic in the nation’s capital to justify his attempted takeover of law enforcement. Yet earlier this year, Trump’s favorite failed U.S. Attorney nominee, Ed Martin, had celebrated the favorable numbers.
Trump needed to save face. Hence the investigation. Trump, by the way, took to social media to post about the probe: “D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety. This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!” he wrote on Truth Social. Predictably, he’s tying this to his decision to send federal law enforcement officers and the D.C. National Guard onto the city’s streets.
When asked what the post meant, Trump responded, “They are giving us phony crime stats.”
The origin of the federal investigation, overseen by new U.S. Attorney and former Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro, appears to be an investigation conducted by the Metropolitan Police Department itself. Back in May, they suspended a commander as they began looking into allegations, which he denied, that he altered crime data.
NBC reported that “This investigation, however, is expected to go much further, looking at other police and city officials for possible wrongdoing.” That’s odd for a number of reasons. First off, it’s unlikely that the D.C. police would be aggressively investigating if there were a high-level conspiracy inside the Department. The commander under investigation would almost certainly have raised those allegations himself to protect his position. Even if there is any truth to this, it’s unclear what the charges—let alone federal charges—would be. It would more likely be an administrative matter. There’s nothing unusual about the numbers coming out of the District. They mirror the nationwide drop in crime during the Biden administration. In fact, D.C. slightly underperforms that curve.
Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Trump is trying to justify his unpopular strongman tactic in D.C. This is a familiar refrain we’ve heard from him before—calling for a phony investigation to give him room to maneuver.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Investigating the Police
#2025 #America #AntiWoke #DC #DonaldTrump #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #SmithsonianMuseums #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WashingtonDC