My child is trans (and has asked me to write about this). One of the histories U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to purge is his: a history, a society, with a space for a trans boy to live openly, to feel included and respected for who he is. Transgender people have always been part of our history and always will be; the question is how much repression and silencing they’ll face.
At the end of March, Trump released yet another executive order (EO), this one aimed at purging national cultural institutions of “improper ideology.” Essentially, the EO is an assault on public memory and public history as preserved in federal sites. The order is especially concerned with exhibits or presentations that explore the power of racism in American history.
The EO mandates restoring any exhibits or statues that came down during the Biden presidency (presumably thinking of Confederate statues, though historian Kevin Levin points out most of those are state monuments), teaching that race is a biological reality (it isn’t), orders the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum to exclude trans women, and targets the National Museum of African American History and Culture for its teaching about race and racism. The only historical narrative permitted must reveal “consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and [our] unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”
This order follows a similar pattern to others, including the “1776 Commission” established late in 2020, disbanded by President Joe Biden, and reformed early in 2025. An earlier memo, published on just the ninth day of Trump’s second term, opened with the assertion, “Parents trust America’s schools to … instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation.” Like the more recent document, it focused on erasing the history of racism from the story we tell about American history, while also blaming schools for forcing transgender identity on students.
These are not intellectually serious documents, though the consequences may indeed be serious. An email response from Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch vowed to continue the work shaped by “the best scholarship, free of partisanship, to help the American public better understand our nation’s history, challenges, and triumphs,” but carefully did not contradict the executive order in so many words. Museums are already losing their most important exhibits, displays memorializing the achievements of anyone who wasn’t a white man are being taken down or painted over, and schools are being robbed of funding—which is all taking place within the context of a federal government stripped for parts.