Some Trump Administration initiatives that severely harm our understanding of the country’s past than Executive Order 14253 From March 27, promising “returned federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to keep public monuments.”
The order is in charge of the Secretary of Interior to clean all national park service sites that “improperly define the American past or charged with beauty, splendidity of fields and other natural parts.” Service Service Staff Also instructed to destroy gift shops In books that can be regarded as critical by any American. In a similar root, the Smithsonian Institution ordered to remove “incorrect ideology” from its properties so that they can identify “American greatness.”
For the record:
2:45 pm July 15, 2025An early version of this article incorrectly knows the executive command pointing to national parks to change the signage. This is Executive Order 14253, not 14023.
Unwilling to rely on Park personnel to execute the Patriotism command, the Trump administration sends visitors to the park to report an insufficient indicated account of American History. On June 9, the acting national park service director Jessica Bowron appointed regional directors to “post publicly created in a country’s history park.. MANILA To know anything in the order, although he signed it on May 20.) How to respond to Trump administration if a visitor uses a mandatory QR codes to file a complaint?
And that’s just the beginning. Trump Administration also makes clear Want to remove entire sites that are not “National Parks, in the usual understanding of the ordinary.” That means targets lacking the splendor of Yosemite and Grand Teton: Persters of the towns, places and memorials, which many honor women and minorities. Generally lacking soaring redwoods or massive gorges, these sites – many in urban areas where president Trump’s revisionist Has not caught on – would seem to described places in California such a National Monument, Manzanar National Historic Site and Rosie Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond.
Trump and his Ahiityical Myrmidon – he mimus that the civil war ends in 1869 – often showing an abyionmal ignorance of basic American history. In their view, such a federal (and possibly state) sites should only show a simple view of our complex 249-year history, one that deals with the contributions and struggles with hundreds of millions of Americans.
Even before we see how many park service types in the park service any signage or lecture “inappropriate to appear in the American past or live” – and who will say what constitutes disparagement? – should be replaced by rhetoric highlighting the “magnitude of the American people’s achievements and advances.” Needless to say, the many sites that tell the stories of civil rights and anti-slavery struggles, the civil war, the role of immigrants, the battles for labor rights and the rights of women and lgbtq + people are going to have the challenging time ensuring they in no way offend those willing to Acknowledge only uninterrupted “Greatness” of the American Story. Sometimes our greatness is shown in our progress toward a more perfect unity – and that story does not say not to mention imperfections.
One does not have to have a PhD in history to appreciate the deadly threat presented in these efforts to replace historical scholarship-watving. The historians have an obligation to challenge the myth, to know the natives, to express those who do not fully participate in the first American period because of their race, ethnicity, gender or perspective. So our government protects the sites including Ellis Island (added by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Statue of Liberty National Monuments), Birmingham Civil Almings National Monuments and Stonewall National Monuments (President Obama identified). Orwelian orders of Orwelian trying to withdraw a half-century scholarship revealing a more complicated and simplified history than simplified version of students’ generations.
Fortunately, professional historians have not been reduced as many university leaders, law firms and other shamefully leading Trump and Intellewual attacks. A March statement From more than 40 historical societies condemned recent efforts to “Purge words, phrases, and content that some officials deem suspect on ideological grounds (and) to distort, manipulate, and erase significant parts of the historical record.”
National Parks often rated as one of the most famous parts of the American government. Even their rangers or exhibits are not afraid of dedication to a sanitizing and distortion version of the country’s past. While stated by historians, “we cannot deny what happened or invented things that didn’t happen.” Americans should use QR codes to send a clear message that rejects the efforts of manipulating our history to suit an extremist ideological and political agenda.
John Lawrence is a visiting professor at the University of California Center and a former committee committee director at home of natural resources.
