Trump flushes woke programs at Smithsonian museums, orders return of leftist-targeted statues



The left's long march through the institutions was a resounding success. Numerous businesses, churches, libraries, law enforcement agencies, schools, and other organizations have for decades served as incubators for radical activists and amplifiers for pernicious ideologies.

Leftist marchers are, however, now being routed.

Conservatives and other normalcy advocates have in recent years undertaken a reconquest, enjoying success with certain academic institutions such as the New College of Florida as well as major businesses including Walmart, Harley-Davidson, and John Deere.

President Donald Trump — who has taken an axe to DEI, critical race theory, and gender ideology in the federal government and in federally funded organizations — continued his D.C.-focused purge of radicalism on Thursday, this time taking aim at the nation's premier museums.

Trump intends to rid the Smithsonian Institution, its 21 museums and 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo of radical leftist programs, policies, and installations.

In an executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," the president noted, "Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth."

'Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination.'

"This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light," continued Trump. "Under this historical revision, our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed."

Trump slammed the Biden administration for advancing this "corrosive ideology" and cited the following as examples of the anti-American propaganda at issue.

  • The Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibit "The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture," which represents that "[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement."
  • The National Museum of African American History and Culture's assertions that the nuclear family, rugged individualism, self-reliance, prioritization of work over play, emphasis on rational linear thinking, punctuality, decisiveness, and a future-oriented outlook are "aspects and assumptions of whiteness and white culture in the United States."
  • The "forthcoming Smithsonian American Women's History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of male athletes participating in women's sports."

The Smithsonian also enraged conservatives in recent years with the National Museum of American History's Hispanic exhibit portraying religion and history through a Marxist lens and the Smithsonian Institution's 2020 "Girlhood" exhibit featuring the racist founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, and a medical transvestite.

Trump directed Vice President JD Vance to work with senior staffers to "remove improper ideology" from the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.

Trump also tasked Vance and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to work with congressional lawmakers to ensure that Congress avoids bankrolling exhibits or programs at the Smithsonian Institution that "degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy."

Cognizant and critical of the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum's initiative to feature male cross-dressers in future exhibits, Trump also insisted that the museum does "not recognize men as women in any respect."

"Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history," said Trump's order.

In addition to flushing leftist radicalism out of the Smithsonian museums, Trump — whose administration has been reverting the names of federal lands and military bases to what they were before Joe Biden took office — set his sights on a restoration of that which the iconoclasts of yesteryear chose to eliminate from the public consciousness.

Radicals both inside and outside government committed to a campaign of destruction and deracination in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020, digging up graves, toppling statues, renaming animals, melting down busts, and knocking out church windows.

Trump directed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to figure out whether public monuments, memorials, statues, or other properties within the Interior Department's jurisdiction were removed or changed during this radical campaign "to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."

The president demanded further the reinstatement of pre-existing monuments that were removed.

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Judge halts toppling of Reconciliation Monument in Arlington National Cemetery



A Trump-nominated federal judge has halted the removal of the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington National Cemetery, which the cemetery indicated Saturday would otherwise take place by week's end. While the iconoclasts have been momentarily restrained, the fate of the historic monument, also called the Confederate Memorial, remains uncertain.

The group Defend Arlington, affiliated with Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed a federal lawsuit last month in the District of Columbia accusing the Army, which oversees the cemetery, of violating regulations in an apparent effort to rush the process and get the monument down by January.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 requires that the Pentagon remove "all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate Sates of America (commonly referred to as the 'Confederacy') or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America from all assets of the Department of Defense."'

The deadline for such removals is Jan. 1, 2024.

The D.C. federal court dismissed the lawsuit last week; however, Defend Arlington attempted once more to preserve the monument, this time in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, reported the Associated Press.

Their lawsuit reportedly stated, "The removal will desecrate, damage, and likely destroy the Memorial longstanding at ANC as a grave marker and impede the Memorial's eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places."

With ostensibly no movement on the legal front, the cemetery announced over the weekend that the removal of the Reconciliation Monument, also called the Confederate Memorial, was in compliance with both the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act and would be completed by no later than Dec. 22.

Additionally, the cemetery claimed that "[d]uring the deconstruction, the area around the Memorial will be protected to ensure no impact to the surrounding landscape and grave markers and to ensure the safety of visitors in and around the vicinity of the deconstruction."

U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston, Jr., threw a wrench in the removal plans, granting Defend Arlington a temporary restraining order on Monday, barring the Pentagon from tearing down the 109-year-old monument.

Alston was reportedly concerned by the possibility that grave sites might be disturbed — a prospect raised by the lawyer for the plaintiffs. Alston also made clear that just as he takes the possibility of such disturbances seriously, he "takes very seriously the representations of officers of the Court."

"Should the representations in this case be untrue or exaggerated the Court may take appropriate sanctions," added Alston.

David McCallister, a spokesman for Save Southern Heritage Florida, indicated the Virginia case is stronger than the case dismissed in D.C. because there is now evidence that the removal underway disturbs grave sites.

Although it won't bring closure, this turn of events may nevertheless bring some hope to those in both parties who have denounced the effort to remove the monument.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and 40 Republicans called on Defense Secretary Austin in a letter last week to suspend all removal activities related to the Reconciliation Monument until Congress finalized the appropriations process for fiscal year 2024.

Clyde stressed that the memorial is exempt from the removal requirement because it "does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy and that it commemorates reconciliation and nation unity." Additionally, "the Naming Commission's authority explicitly prohibits the desecration of grave sites."

Former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) indicated in an August Wall Street journal op-ed that the statue's toppling would signify the desire of a "deteriorating society ... to erase the generosity of its past, in favor of bitterness and misunderstanding conjured by those who do not understand the history they seem bent on destroying."

The Reconciliation Monument was approved in 1906 by Secretary of War William Taft; commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1910; designed by Jewish former Confederate soldier Moses Jacob Ezekiel; and unveiled in Section 16 of the cemetery by President Woodrow Wilson on June 4, 1914.

A hearing concerning the removal has been scheduled in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for Wednesday.

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'The start of a new era': Iconoclasts rewarded with an Indian statue after tearing down statue of Christian missionary



The iconoclasts who unlawfully torched and toppled the Sacramento statue of a historic Spanish missionary in 2020 were rewarded Tuesday with a substitute evidently palatable to those antipathetic to the region's Christian heritage.

Where the statue of Junípero Serra once stood now stands the likeness of Miwok elder William J. Franklin, an Indian elder known in some circles for preserving traditional dances.

Jesus Tarango, the chair of the Wilton Rancheria tribe in Sacramento County, said, "Today's unveiling signifies the start of a new era here in California at our state Capitol — one where we stop uplifting a false narrative and start honoring the original stewards of this land," reported the Associated Press.

Despite Tarango's insinuation that the truth has prevailed, the initiative to replace the Serro statue appears to have been largely premised on blood libels and falsehoods.

What's the background?

Junípero Serra was the first Catholic saint canonized on American soil. A statue was erected in his honor near the California Capitol in Sacramento in 1965, commemorating his work not only as a Christian missionary who had a hand in establishing California's 21 Spanish missions, including the nine built during his lifetime, but also as an advocate for Indian rights.

Despite Serra's track record for standing up to the Spanish military on behalf of native peoples and defending Indian property rights, leftists and other revisionists have long characterized Serra as a villain, taking issue in particular with his evangelical efforts.

Democrats fully embraced this antipathy toward Serra, accusing the missionary of overseeing "enslavement of both adults and children, mutilation, genocide, and assault on women" in a piece of legislation that Gov. Gavin Newsom ratified on Sept. 24, 2021.

Omitting any mention of a possible spiritual context for Serra's work or his proposed native bill of rights, AB 338 alleged that the missionary, responsible for bringing Christianity to multitudes of Indians, had a leading role in the "devastation" of native communities in the state.

The legislation, which Newsom claimed served to underscore the state's "values of inclusion and equity," deleted the legal requirement that the Serra statue be maintained.

Evidently tired of the smears against Serra, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco noted in a September 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed, "None of that is true."

"While there is much to criticize from this period, no serious historian has ever made such outrageous claims about Serra or the mission system, the network of 21 communities that Franciscans established along the California coast to evangelize native people. The lawmakers behind the bill drew their ideas from a single tendentious book written by journalist Elias Castillo," wrote the prelates.

"Serra was a complex character, but he defended indigenous people's humanity, decried the abuse of indigenous women, and argued against imposing the death penalty on natives who had burned down a mission and murdered one of his friends," they continued. "How we choose to remember the past shapes the people we hope to be in the future. We can think of no better symbol for this multiethnic state committed to human dignity and equality than to place two statues at the California Capitol — one celebrating the living heritage of California’s indigenous peoples, another reflecting the faith and leadership of their defender St. Junípero Serra."

The archbishops evidently failed to convert the revisionists.

Toppling history

During the 2020 BLM riots, radicals inflicted billions of dollars of damage across the country. During the destructive campaign, hundreds of statues and historical monuments were toppled, including Serra's statue in Sacramento's Capitol Park.

KXTV-TV reported at the time that hundreds of demonstrators had swarmed the statue, spray-painted it, attempted to set it on fire, then used heavy-duty tow straps to pull it down.

Bishop Jaime Soto, the head of the Diocese of Sacramento, said in response, "The group's actions may have been meant to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California's past, but this act of vandalism does little to build the future."

"The strenuous labor of overcoming the plague of racism should not be toppled by nocturnal looting. Dialogue should not abdicate to vandalism," added Soto.

A statue with the iconoclasts' blessing

State lawmakers, tribal leaders, and activists celebrated the unveiling of the eight-foot bronze statue of Miwok leader William Franklin Tuesday in the park where Serra's likeness once stood.

KXTV indicated that Franklin strived during his lifetime to revive traditional Miwok and Nisenan songs and dances. In addition to being a member of the California Native American Heritage Commission, he also worked to establish the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.

At the groundbreaking ceremony last year, his grandson Louie Brown said, "He's going to be happy that he's out here in the park amongst the trees because he was an outside type of guy."

"Finally, the California Indian people will have a monument here on the Capitol grounds for all those visiting to know that we are still here," said Assemblyman James Ramos, the Democratic lawmaker behind AB 338. "We're here because of the resiliency of our elders and ancestors."

Chris Gallardo, a Wilton Rancheria government relations staffer linked to the statue initiative, said, "What this statue is replacing, the pain and suffering under Serra, it's a huge blessing," reported the Sacramento Bee.

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