The Battle Over Museums Is a Struggle for Truth

In case it wasn’t obvious yet, the war on “wokeness” and DEI isn’t just about trans athletes and Black actresses in Disney movies — it’s a much deeper battle to define who belongs in America.

In his recent executive order targeting museums, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, Trump took direct aim at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and other federally supported institutions. He accused them of being “divisive” for showcasing Black, Indigenous, Latino, queer, and trans histories.

Exhibits have been canceled. Websites scrubbed. Funding threatened. The goal? To force museums to conform to a sanitized, white nationalist version of American history.

But why museums? Why now? And what’s the long game?

It’s not just censorship for controversy’s sake. It’s a cultural strategy with very old roots.

Whoever Controls History, Controls the Future

Trump’s executive order appoints Vice President JD Vance to lead the purge of what the administration calls “anti-American ideology” from Smithsonian museums.

The order will slash funding for any program that “divides Americans by race” — which basically includes all exhibits on slavery, segregation, Indigenous genocide, and LGBTQ history.

It also singles out the National Museum of African American History and Culture for past materials that explored the concept of “white culture,” and bans the Women’s History Museum from recognizing trans women at all.

This isn’t just erasure — it’s targeted punishment in the name of anti-woke. And it’s happening in sync with other Trump admin efforts to target minority groups:

• Dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services

• Cutting off grants to the National Endowment for the Humanities

• Restoring Confederate monuments removed after George Floyd’s murder

• Remove all DEI roles from federal agencies

Twenty-one states are suing to block the dismantling of cultural agencies, calling it “illegal several times over.” But in the meantime, institutions are scrambling to survive.

You Can’t Fix America by Ignoring Its Failures

America is a deeply flawed nation, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from our past and build a more equitable future.

Entrepreneur and donor Dawn V. Carr, who helped fund the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said she felt seen in its exhibits — especially walking through the symbolic “Door of No Return,” honoring enslaved Africans.

Now, under Trump’s order, that space could be altered or disappear entirely.

Censorship Isn’t About Accuracy — It’s About Control

Historians have called Trump’s executive actions against museums a historic moment — and not in a good way.

Dr. Leah Glaser, a professor of history and public history at Central Connecticut State University, said she’s spent decades helping museums tell nuanced, fact-based stories — and Trump’s order feels like a gut punch.

Historians like Jennifer Tucker, a professor of history at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, point out that it isn’t just content that’s being targeted — it’s critical thinking.

This Ain’t New: This Fascist Tactic Has Happened Before

Rewriting history has been a go-to strategy throughout American and colonial European history. This isn't the first time power has tried to rewrite the past, and it likely won’t be the last:

• In Nazi Germany, Hitler’s Ministry of Propaganda censored museums and art to elevate Aryan supremacy and erase Jewish presence.

• In the 1990s, the Smithsonian canceled a WWII exhibit about the Enola Gay after political pressure from conservatives who wanted to avoid complicating the legacy of America’s atomic bombings.

And now, under Trump, the same fascist script is being recycled under the DEI and anti-woke movement.

What Happens When Museums Are Forced to Lie?

Unlike boycotts organized by mobs of angry neckbeards against brands like Target and Bud Light for “going woke,” the censorship happening to The Smithsonian and other American museums comes from the highest seat of power in America.

Now, censorship isn’t just a matter of finding new customers, it’s a threat to the existence of these museums that sustain themselves through federal funding.

Even as funding dries up and political pressure grows, institutions like the Smithsonian are pledging to remain “steadfast in their mission” to educate all Americans.

But the Smithsonian is a massive institution with great name recognition — what happens when smaller, lesser-known museums dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous or Black history completely shut down?

We Don’t Need to “Restore” History. We Need to Tell It Honestly.

Trump’s attack on museums isn’t about celebrating American success — it’s about controlling the future by whitewashing marginalized oppression.

If naming racism, genocide, or inequality is now “divisive,” then teaching history itself becomes a dangerous minefield of “wokeness.”

Can we not talk about WW2 anymore? Should we lie about how America was founded? Do we simply pretend slavery didn’t exist?

This is all by design. When the truth is inconvenient for the far-right, it receives the “woke” label and gets discarded. But if museums are censored, whose history, success, pain, and struggle gets remembered? And who gets erased?

This is more than the erasure of American culture. It’s about power — and the fight to redefine American history by whitewashing the crimes of white supremacy, erasing the struggles of people of color, and fabricating a narrative of total white innocence.

Stories On My Radar

US Government Has Revoked More Than 600 Student Visas, Data Shows

The U.S. government has revoked over 600 student visas from international students and graduates for since March 2025. The reasons range from participation in pro-Palestinian activism to minor offenses traffic violations.

The Trump administration’s “Catch and Revoke” program, which uses AI to scan social media for alleged ties to Hamas or “destabilizing” speech, has led to abrupt cancellations with little transparency. Notable cases include Felipe Zapata Velázquez, deported after a traffic citation, and Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, detained for activism critical of Israel.

Check out the full article here on The Guardian.

Republicans’ Social Security Attacks Disproportionately Harm Retirees of Color

The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE are making sweeping changes to Social Security, including ending phone identity verification, closing field offices, and slashing jobs.

Critics argue that these changes disproportionately target retirees of color and senior citizens in rural communities. Over 70 million Social Security recipients will be affected all because of Elon Musk’s unverified claims of “fraud.” Retirees of color, who rely more heavily on Social Security as their primary source of income due, risk catastrophic outcomes like hunger or eviction whenever their benefits are disrupted.

Check out the full article on Mother Jones.

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Meet Ashtin Berry, a hospitality activist I first encountered on Instagram this past year during America’s collective awakening about Palestine, Gaza, and the Israeli occupation. While connecting with fellow pro-Palestinians on social media, I came across Ashtin’s exceptional writing and I was immediately hooked by how well-versed she was in international politics, solidarity with people of the global south, and communicating difficult to express emotions about everything from community organizing to decolonization.

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Definitely give Ashtin a follow on Instagram and learn something new today!

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