Sacking the Smithsonian to Sooth Supremacists

America First Really Does Mean Black People Last

April D. Ryan* at Black Press USA has revealed that Trump officials are dismantling and removing exhibits from the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

(*You might remember Ms. Ryan from the first Trump administration, when she was told to ‘sit down’ in the middle of a press conference.)

They are removing Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s lunch counter exhibit, where four Black college students were “brutally attacked after sitting at the whites-only counter Feb. 1, 1960. When denied service, the students refused to leave. Their defiance ignited a wave of lunch counter sit-ins across the South and became a major flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement.”

While the racism behind this move to erase history is obvious (the museum is huge and this is a popular exhibit), it’s also reflected in the pettiness behind other actions.

The museum is returning books borrowed from Dr. Amos Brown, long-standing civil rights leader and pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco—also known as the home church of former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The letter notifies Dr. Brown that the museum is returning a Bible and George W. Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880, one of the first books on racism in the U.S.

“Those two books and the summary of my civil rights activism and my picture right there next to Medgar Evers, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth in the desegregation of civil rights exhibit… That book [History of the Negro Race in America] inspired me before there were even African studies published. In my home, in that 3rd Street Baptist Church, we studied that book. The Bible—that’s my father’s Bible and the Bible I used in the Civil Rights Movement. When we went on demonstrations, we always had the Bible.”

The dismantling of exhibits at the museum is being directed by Lindsey Halligan, an attorney formerly with Trump’s legal team, following one of Trump’s executive orders that named her as “Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary.”

Via the Washington Post:

• In the executive order that features Halligan, three D.C. museums are specifically mentioned: First, a reference to an infographic about “white culture” on the African American Museum’s website that was removed in 2020, after Donald Trump Jr. criticized it in a social media post.

• The second is the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, whose opening is years down the road — yet the order claims it will celebrate “male athletes participating in women’s sports.” False, according to Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas.

• The third museum is the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which Halligan visited this winter as she was getting to know D.C. An exhibit titled “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture” is specified in the executive order as an example of improper ideology.

The scope of her mission was largely defined by a Nov. 25 Wall Street Journal opinion piece co-written by the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, a Project 2025 contributors and Armen Tooloee, chief of staff for Christopher Rufo, known for making MAGA racism respectable in conservative circles.

The Smithsonian receives about 60% of its funding from congressional appropriations and federal grants. That money is used to cover operations, infrastructure, and collection maintenance. The exhibits themselves are usually funded by private donations and are not under the purview of the executive branch.

Nonetheless, the order promises to punish the museums if changes don’t occur. Prohibited are “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”

I toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture last year. It is so big that I really could have used several days to take in everything. The exhibits were comprehensive, and I really liked the multi-sensorial approach used in the Jazz display.

What the Trump administration is doing is a crime against our national heritage and culture. By seeking to excise those elements that either run contrary to nationalist mythology or make white people uncomfortable, they are ensuring that future generations will be enabled to make the same mistakes and injustices that have undermined democracy from the start.

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I’ve got to include a note about Dear Leader’s tariff scheme… The lies are multiplying as the consequences near (we should feel it mid-May), and the captains of industry are delusional for not seeing the damage to the world’s economy stemming from the bouncing ball of Trump’s tariffs.

I get it that the Chinese government is not friends with the US government, but the propaganda harvest they are reaping at the expense of this country is a sight to behold. The main assault is coming from private citizens, at least partially freed from the constraints of censorship, who are simply overwhelming social media with AI generated memes and mini videos mocking the US administration.

Via the New York Times:

• Mr. Trump is mocked for expecting a call from Mr. Xi, who’s ghosting him, to make a trade deal. In a widely shared A.I.-generated image, a character that looks like Mr. Trump lies on a pink bed in a pastel-colored children’s bedroom. With his face resting on his hands, he stares at a smartphone. Behind him on the wall is a large portrait of Mr. Xi, smiling.

• “Hahahaha, who’s going to call after a breakup?” commented a Weibo user with an internet address in the northwestern province of Gansu. “Trump, do you think you’re filming a soap opera?”

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If you haven’t heard, Trump's getting the cold shoulder from the Russians after offering them a “peace deal” that is essentially the status quo. Civilian populations in Ukraine were heavily bombed and the president sent one of his ALL CAPS messages telling Putin to knock it off. Russia responded by again targeting civilians in heavy bombing.

Are we great yet? Is America First? Does the Trump administration have 208 lawsuits pending against it?

Law students organize to give Trump-caving firms a recruitment problem by Adam Klasfeld at All Rise News (look closely and San Diego activists might see a familiar name)

• The document started out a resource to help fellow Georgetown Law students make informed decisions about potential future employers.

• Mari Latibashvili, one of the student organizers, said in a phone interview: “We didn't know how big this was going to get. It was just giving the students the opportunity to see what the firms that they were considering were doing and to show them alternatives.”

• But it grew into something much larger.

• Forbes first picked up on a trend of students turning down the possibility of six-figure salaries from the likes of Skadden Arps, Paul Weiss, Milbank, and Willkie, Farr and Gallagher, which all entered into settlements providing the Trump administration with tens of millions of dollars in pro bono legal services. One Georgetown first-year law student (1L) interviewed for the story reportedly skipped a Skadden interview

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Prepare to face the murder chickens by Mark Sumner at UnchartedBlue

• In the average James Bond film, the supervillain plotting to take over the world has a scheme that will inevitably involve the death of some percentage of the population before he ascends the throne. Maybe it’s a nuclear bomb, maybe it’s a killer satellite, maybe it’s a killer satellite with a nuclear bomb. There have been a lot of killer satellites in these movies.

• But Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr. are scheming to kill us all with a much more grounded plot: murder chickens. They’re backing that up with germ warfare delivered through milk and vegetables. And if that doesn’t get you, there’s always bird flu waiting in the wings (yes, pun intended).

• On Thursday, the Agriculture Department announced it was rolling back plans to test for salmonella contamination in raw poultry. This follows an earlier announcement that tests on frozen poultry products were being suspended for at least six months. Or, as a Trump spokesman might say, free unlimited bacteria is now included with every purchase!

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How the Trump Administration Flipped on Kilmar Abrego Garcia by Nick Miroff at The Atlantic

• Attorneys at DHS had other concerns. They were aware that, six years ago, a judge had granted Abrego Garcia protected status over fears that he could be targeted for violence should he be returned to El Salvador. That protection was still in effect and had been violated by the March 15 deportation. They wanted to know if U.S. diplomats could ask the Salvadoran government to keep him separated from Barrio 18 gang members who had threatened him in the past and might harm him.

• But as criticism of the administration over its mishandling of the case spread, White House officials took over the response and began striking a far more strident tone in their public statements. They swiftly turned an admission of bureaucratic error into a political opportunity—a chance to flex executive authority and test the judicial branch’s ability to restrain presidential power. Abrego Garcia’s deportation became far more than just the case of one man; it developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people—citizens or not—to foreign prisons without due process. All the while, Abrego Garcia has remained in detention in El Salvador, unable to communicate with his lawyers or his family.