BY EILEEN BORIS AND KRISTIN AHLBERG

In an interview with journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Donald Trump claimed to be a great man, on par with world-shattering figures like Mao, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, and Genghis Khan—or so a “presidential historian” told him. That this presidential historian was the caddy for golfing star Gary Player only underscores the disdain for expertise, standards, and facts that the second Trump administration has brought to researching, preserving, and narrating the nation’s past.

Censorship, erasure, and falsehoods have characterized the Trumpian stewardship of America’s story—dismantling interpretive panels with references to slavery at the Philadelphia President’s House, eliminating exhibits at national parks that highlight working women and climate change, demanding new labels at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and tampering with the architectural footprint of the White House itself. Now the History, Archives, and Records Preservation Project, an initiative of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), has documented the overweening scope of this attack on American history by a presidential administration that substitutes its own ideology for scholarly method. The attack does not stop with relabeling and eliminating historical truths it deems less than “patriotic;” additionally, this administration has set about disappearing the very building blocks of historical research and writing.

The Federal Assault on History: A Record of Executive Actions, a briefing report issued in June, offers a comprehensive review of efforts under Trump II. It argues “that the United States is confronting a systemic campaign to control the production and public presentation of history and historical practices.” It records the executive orders, agency directives, staff layoffs, and funding cuts that undermine historians’ craft and reshape historical meaning to conform to Trumpian ideological requisites. Though courts rejected the elimination of previously awarded National Endowment for the Humanities grants, the administration has resorted to more durable actions. It has disbanded federal advisory boards and tampered with evaluative panels while proposing new rules to tighten oversight of federal grants, essentially replacing peer review with political or ideological criteria.

One particularly troubling example was the 2025 abrupt termination of the members of the US Department of State Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation (HAC). The 1991 Foreign Affairs Authorization Act charged the HAC with advising the department’s Office of the Historian on all aspects of preparation and production of the Foreign Relations of the United States, and by statute, the HAC is to operate on a permanent basis with members selected by scholarly professional societies. Because this arbitrary dismissal meant cancellation of remaining quarterly meetings for 2025, the committee could not perform its statutory duties. Nor could the members advise on the Department of State’s declassification efforts and records management practices—an example of how Trump administration actions delay availability of documents for historical analysis.

The Department of Government Efficiency’s slashing of personnel inaugurated an ongoing uptick in resignations and retirements. The National Archives and Records Administration now reports 15 percent fewer full-time equivalent staff, resulting in lessening archival management throughout the government. Lack of recordkeeping will curtail documentation of the making of federal policies and programs—and their outcomes. It isn’t surprising that Trump’s revenge tour–dominated second administration has actively undermined the preservation of government records, given his refusal to hand over materials from his first term to the national archives.

Moreover, the administration has politicized previously nonpartisan positions, such as the Archivist of the United States. Without a permanent archivist, the National Historical Publications Records Commission has no chair to organize its semiannual meetings that determine which grants will be made to projects throughout the nation that preserve vital records, including those of the Founding Fathers, Indigenous languages, and oppositional figures like Marcus Garvey.

Behind these moves lies the troubling promotion of what the White House calls “patriotic history.” While debates over revisionist history have spilled into public discourse during the last half-century, the current White House–led push moves forward the project of a wider backlash against civil rights that emerged through attacks on gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Two executive orders stand out in this regard. “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” (EO 14253) fabricates a tale about the hijacking of American history through “divisive race-centered ideologies” and “gender ideology” while downplaying “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness.” This executive order called for a review of historical interpretation at all federal cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian, national parks, and monuments. In response, the OAH countered that rather than returning sanity, the order would eliminate the unsavory aspects of the past, like slavery, segregation, and discrimination, along with “suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”

“Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” (EO 14190) would censure what students learn, stamping out “radical, anti-American ideologies” that teach about racism, sexism, or discrimination by withholding funding. Particularly targeted would be any lessons that promote definitions of gender beyond two sexes or advocate “discriminatory equity ideology.” Celebration of heroes, more often white, straight, wealthy, Christian, and male, would shape not only Trump’s proposed sculpture garden but K-12 curriculum.

The Trump attack on history would hollow out the institutions and recordkeeping that enable historical research while undermining existing scholarship. Censorship and elimination of staff and programs in governmental agencies are in keeping with assaults on academic freedom and governmental transparency. Trump’s version of the past flattens the men who signed the Declaration of Independence into cardboard figures. His version represents only a small part of the nation as the whole, excluding the majority from the very idea of community.

Historians are pushing back. We have gone to court to expose this great untelling and challenged its ideological origins through ongoing reportage and other forms of advocacy such as testimonies, forums, and legal suits. We continue to document the assault: conducting oral histories of fired federal workers, recording endangered museum and park exhibits, and maintaining statistical and other materials until the time comes when restoration and renewal become possible.

Eileen Boris, distinguished professor emerita at the University of California Santa Barbara, is the president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA). Contact: eboris@ucsb.edu. Kristin L. Ahlberg served as a federal historian from 2003 to 2024.