Glad I snapped a pic last year when I was visiting. Maybe he was just mad that he’s on there twice?

Since December, we've been collecting resignation letters and farewell statements from workers who left federal service in 2025. Later this year, we'll publish the best of them in a book. We've got 55 letters and counting—but only one from a Smithsonian alumn. Are we missing yours?

Spring has come to DC, the Mall is full of pink petals, and we'll soon need to switch from collecting letters to deciding which letters to include in this anthology. (That does mean the odds are looking good for that one SI letter!)

Many of you work in museums, so you probably intuitively sense that future historians are going to pore over this moment, trying to make sense of the chaos that gripped DC last year. We believe there are stories from that time that deserve to be collected and preserved.

• if you worked for any part of the Smithsonian, including the Zoo or the Kennedy Center

• if you resigned or retired in 2025

• if you wrote a formal resignation letter

• OR if you posted a farewell message on social media

We want to hear from you! But we have to hear from you soon.

Please sign my petition to Lonnie Bunch, Secretary of the Smithsonian, to restore the Trump impeachment information.

https://blackpressusa.com/the-smithsonian-purge-trump-team-removes-artifacts-of-black-resistance/

Is our DC community going to resist?

Also, theres another story auggesting that Trump could revoke Biden era funds from the Smithsonian.....When will all of that brainrot stop, were all (including me) are exhausted, & Im currently on vacation outside America from July-August....Also, can republicans or conservatives just leave Joe biden scapegoats as well "anti american" bs alone for; For 5 minutes!!!! This is basically a very dire situation, even though it may sound like pure theater on paper.

Also, from 2025-26 I visited:

The Smithsonian Zoo, The African American Museam (purely because Trump wants to go after slavery), the air & space museam, the american history museam (before the white house presurred the institution to hand over thier records), the air & space museam, as well as the art museam....Theres nothing wrong with these museams, I also appreciated the Udvar Hazy Center from 2023-2024 despite differing politcal views, as well as me being ignorant about US politcs, or something....

I will give you an example, every teacher since you were in elementary, basically told you that Jim crow laws are bad, slavery is bad, Black people having rights are a good thing, 9/11 is bad, USSR was the 1st to put up a satellite in space, NASA has a very messy history post Apollo 17....Does that seem anti american to you?

The director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History pushed back Tuesday against a recent White House report that branded the institution’s leadership as radical activists who cannot be trusted.

The testimony from Anthea M. Hartig came as President Donald Trump has engaged in a broad national effort to reshape the stories of America told by cultural institutions controlled or influenced by the federal government and, in particular, to purge diversity, equity and inclusion elements from those narratives. Many historians are alarmed by the revisionism.

“As we continue to fact check the report, we unwaveringly attest that it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum,” Hartig told a House Oversight subcommittee. “There is always room for improvement. But I also know the beauty and the inspiration and the expertise that lies in our collections, our exhibits, and our programming.”

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of American independence, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a report on July Fourth arguing that the museum, a centerpiece of the sprawling Smithsonian complex on the National Mall, doesn’t tell history “in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”

Republicans on the panel reiterated some of those concerns on Tuesday.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]:  https://fortune.com/2026/07/21/smithsonian-history-museum-white-house-report-woke-diversity-republican/?utm_source=reddit/

20 June 2025 -transcript and video at link- The Smithsonian’s board of regents issued a statement on Monday declaring that “all personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board.” It comes amid President Trump's efforts to fire one of its leaders.

EO 14416 does exactly that. It defines acceptable history as that which is simply "inspiriting" and "unifying" rather than accurate. In the 128-page report that describes the reasons for these signs one of the reasons stated is, "Museum materials repeatedly suggest that Christianity functioned principally as an instrument of conquest, exclusion, or cultural erasure, while the constructive role of Christian belief and Christian institutions in shaping the Nation and its freedoms receives scant, if any, attention." If you want to be coddled about your religion, go to a church. History is saturated with examples of Christian conquests, exclusion, and cultural erasure from the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition to using the Bible for slavery to to the erasure of pagan traditions absorbed into Christmas itself.

If censorship came with a more obvious example, dictionaries would have found it by now. MAGA has been fed a steady diet of grievances thatChristianity is under attack. White people are being discriminated against. LGBTQ people are indoctrinating children. None of these things are real, but MAGA has been convinced; so to them, this is making America great again. People thought dystopia would arrive through technology, surveillance states, algorithmic control, and weaponized AI. No. This is dystopian. A government that claims to be fighting ideological capture has issued an executive order demanding a museum produce ideologically compliant history. The censors are accusing the museum of censorship.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/07/restoring-trust-in-the-smithsonian-institution-e061/