TRUMP IS RIGHT TO TAKE ON THE SMITHSONIAN:
Bursting such bubbles has become a favorite hobby of Republicans in recent years. In May 2023, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill allowing parents in Florida to challenge the accessibility of books in school libraries on the grounds of sexual content. Critics cried fascism, but the move had a payoff. Highly sympathetic scenes emerged of parents being thrown out of school-board meetings for reading aloud obscenities from books available to their young children.
And who can forget the 2023 scenes of Ivy League presidents called before the House refusing to condemn anti-Semitism? Their use of academic creole alienated viewers and forced the resignation of multiple university presidents.
Trump’s feud with the Smithsonian is not impulsive. It is a well-planned offensive, designed to undermine an institution that he sees as disloyal to America – or to the administration – and beholden to the political and academic left. Democrats make a mistake by focusing on the rhetoric of the attack instead of addressing the real question: who curates the curators?
And:
The last time Republicans were this mad at the Smithsonian Institution was in 1991. Then as now, America’s national museum system was gearing up to celebrate a major date: in that case, the quincentenary of the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. Senators threatened spending cuts, accusing Smithsonian officials of having a “political agenda” with their representations of race and immigration in exhibitions. Thirty-four years later, on the eve of the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, Republicans are saying the same things.
I’m not sure if 1991 was “the last time Republicans were this mad at the Smithsonian.” Ever since the debacle of their uber-PC Enola Gay exhibition in 1994, their airbrushing of Clarence Thomas out of black history in 2016, and their 2020 chart on “Aspects & Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture in the United States,” it’s been clear that somebody needs to save the Smithsonian from their worst impulses.
