The Holocaust Museum has been quietly changing its content since President Trump returned to office to avoid drawing the administration’s ire. We chatted with reporter Irie Sentner — who first broke the story in Politico — to break down what happened and what it means for D.C.’s cultural institutions.
Okay, So What Did They Change?
The museum preemptively pulled a web page on “Teaching Materials on Nazism and Jim Crow,” and cancelled a one-day civic education workshop called "Fragility of Democracy and the Rise of the Nazis,” citing funding pressures and concerns about the current political climate.
Yes, But Context Matters
The Holocaust Museum is a federal museum whose board is mostly appointed by the president. At the beginning of his second term, President Trump removed about a dozen of President Biden's appointees just months into their five-year terms and replaced them with loyalists.
“That's never happened before. A president has never fired from the board a former president's appointees before their terms were up,” Sentner told us.
- It’s unclear if the directive came from the board itself, but Sentner confirmed it came from ongoing conversations by "museum leadership.”
Inside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (ERIC BARADAT/Getty Images)
Connecting the Dots
The Holocaust Museum's response represents a broader pattern at D.C. cultural institutions.
While Holocaust museum staff was pulling divisive programing, the Kennedy Center was undergoing a very public and thorough takeover by the Trump administration. In that instance, Trump was able to use his newly-appointed board of loyalists to push his priorities, ultimately announcing the institution would be shut down for two years starting in July for reconstruction.
Additionally, last August the White House ordered an extensive review of eight of D.C.’s Smithsonian museums, in which they identified areas that needed revising to “ensure alignment” with the administration’s view of American history ahead of the country’s 250th birthday.
Sentner explained that staff at the Holocaust Museum saw their programming changes as necessary to avoid similar public confrontation and board upheaval What makes the Holocaust Museum's situation significant is that this all happened under the rug, without the Trump administration having to order the changes.
"There's a lot of self-preservation happening,” said Sentner. “Looking at what has happened at the other peer institutions…it's a realist choice to make."
