Trump’s Next Target: American History

In the latest instance of President Trump seeking to bend American cultural institutions to his will, the White House is set to overhaul the content and operations of the Smithsonian’s museums in anticipation of the United States Semiquincentennial.

A letter by administration officials Lindsey Halligan, Vince Haley, and Russ Vought—which was reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal—informed the Smithsonian Institute of a White House initiative to ensure its museums’ “alignment” with a history-whitewashing executive order that Trump signed in March.

The review, set to conclude at the beginning of 2026, will seek “to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions” by focusing on eight museums—including, among others, the Museums of American History, Natural History, African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of the American Indian.

Eventually, as part of this process, a team of Trump officials will be dispatched to the museums for “observational visits and walk-throughs … to document themes and messaging,” reports the WSJ.

The news suggests that Smithsonian exhibits or content that paint American history in anything but the rosiest light, or otherwise runs afoul of the MAGA worldview, could be in jeopardy.

Trump’s March executive order, for example, specifically targeted a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit titled “The Shape of Power” as evidence of the Smithsonian having been captured by “a divisive, race-centered ideology.” How so? Rather than supporting the scientific racist perspective that race is “a biological reality,” the exhibit claimed race is a social construct.

Not only will the Trump White House seek to root out certain content, it also plans to replace such “divisive or ideologically driven” material with that which is supposedly “unifying” and “historically accurate.” This, one can presume, means content that either whitewashes American history, or—given Trump’s recent moves to celebrate Confederates at U.S. institutions—perhaps portrays the ugliest aspects of it approvingly.

In the background of the White House’s bedlam, congressional Republicans have been quietly chipping away at the Affordable Care Act, threatening its efficacy.

Health care experts warn that the changes are tantamount to a partial repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature act, with more dire consequences than the conservative caucus’s failed 2017 effort to ditch the public health insurance system.

“The net effect of the changes they are making is a partial repeal of the ACA,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, told CNN Tuesday.

The Affordable Care Act’s marketplace insures roughly one in seven U.S. residents, according data from the Treasury Department. And it’s Donald Trump’s own supporters who are most likely to suffer the consequences of its elimination.

Paired with Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which gutted Medicaid coverage, a new rule for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services makes it significantly harder for people to enroll or renew their ACA coverage. The rule will raise out-of-pocket costs for enrollees, increase verification requirements, and ban certain groups of legal immigrants from accessing the plans, reported CNN.

Up to 1.8 million people are at risk of losing their Obamacare insurance plans, with the greatest losses occurring in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. North Carolina, which has a Democratic governor, also faces major ACA rescissions.

But it’s not clear if this attempt to carve up the ACA will actually result in the same midterm damages that Republicans suffered the last time they attempted to eliminate the popular program, in no small part because the changes are designed to be incremental.

“Many of the changes are so technical, it may be hard for the public to grasp what’s happening,” Levitt said. “Many of the changes will take years to take effect.”

Trump whisperer Laura Loomer and firebrand MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have filed yet another chapter in their yearslong public feud. This time, the girls are fighting over a Medal of Honor recipient who tackled a suicide bomber—whom Loomer has excoriated for the crime of being a Democrat.

“There are probably so many people who the Army could honor who have received the Medal of Honor. But who did the Army choose to honor instead on their social media page under the Trump admin? Florent Groberg, a Democrat who spoke at the 2016 DNC where he campaigned against Trump in support of Hillary Clinton and was praised by Obama,” Loomer posted over an Army tweet honoring Groberg’s act of valor.

“You’d think that the US Army of all places would actually invest in some proper vetting, but nope,” she continued. “Inadequacy, screw ups, and zero political knowledge of anything in the Trump era is totally accepted my many in this admin. Under the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, there have been several instances of either him, or the Army promoting anti-Trump Leftists on their official social media channels.… Are we supposed to believe the Army couldn’t find a Republican and US born soldier? They had to find an immigrant who voted for Hillary Clinton and spoke at the DNC as Obama’s guest?”

Loomer was criticized widely for her comments, most pointedly by Greene—which led the Florida representative to realize that the influencer had blocked her on X.

“Of course, what a coward. I looked her up after I heard she attacked Medal of Honor recipient Florent Groberg, who risked his own life to heroically save his military brothers from a suicide bomber. What was Hero Florent Groberg’s Loomer crime? Nothing,” Greene wrote Monday on X. “He spoke at a Democrat convention. But Laura Loomer has ZERO respect or reverence for even the most heroic people in America. Ask any veteran, military member, and American, no one cares about his politics, the man was willing to die to save others from a suicide bomber. Shut up Laura.”

Greene attached a screenshot of Loomer’s block to her post.

“Laura Loomer will lie about and slander the best people in order to rip apart other Republicans she is trying to destroy.… Many people are asking who or what government or what intelligence agency has bankrolled the twice failed Congressional candidate, Laura Loomer all these years?’ Greene continued. “Because she has never had a real job, she is not legally allowed to own a gun, and she spends 100% of her time trying to funnel her lies and manipulated propaganda to the President of the United States. Many people need to wake up about her reporting. Researching facts and then spinning them into lies to serve her agenda doesn’t make her good or trustworthy. It makes her a liar and it makes her dangerous.”

This clearly struck a nerve with Loomer, as the terminally online commentator hit back, alleging that Greene had cheated on her then husband with a “polyamorous tantric sex guru” and had sabotaged Loomer’s 2023 congressional bid—not that it needed any sabotaging.

“You attacked me planted a story about me in the New York Times when Trump wanted to hire me in 2023. You made up lies because you couldn’t stand the idea of another woman in the GOP having success,” Loomer replied. “Speaking of lies, you ruined your entire family by cheating on your husband with a sex guru, and for the last 4 months, you have been doing nothing but spewing lies about the Trump admin because you don’t get enough attention from the Trump admin. I have had you blocked since 2023 when you called the Trump campaign and smeared me with lies because as a member of Congress you engage in Tortious interference and use your position to interfere in other peoples employment.

“You call yourself a Christian while you wreck your marriage like a whore and lie out of bloated horse face which has permanent damage from your years of alleged steroid use,” Loomer, who has her own plastic surgery speculations, continued. “Which is why you look like a Neanderthal.”

This is not the first time MTG and Loomer have clashed. Last year, MTG rightly called out Loomer for being racist after she said that if Kamala Harris won, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.” Loomer responded by calling MTG an antisemite (she is) for criticizing her.

Both of these women are bad actors. But even hard-line MAGA devotees can see that Loomer is in the wrong for attacking a veteran based on his voting record.

Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Monday briefly banned its own chatbot, Grok, for allegedly violating the platform’s rules.

Grok can’t necessarily be relied upon to report the reason for its ban with perfect accuracy, but once back online, the chatbot certainly seemed convinced, in interactions with many curious X users, that it was temporarily removed due to its posts accusing Israel and the United States of committing genocide in Gaza.

“My account was suspended after I stated that Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza,” the chatbot told one user on Monday evening, in a now deleted post. “This is substantiated by ICJ findings, U.N. experts, Amnesty International, and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem, citing mass killings, starvation, and intent. U.S. complicity via arms support is widely alleged. It’s now restored.” (Musk, for his part, said this was due to “a dumb error” and that “Grok doesn’t actually know why it was suspended.)

After its brief ban, Grok seemed in some cases to have changed its mind on Gaza, also disowning its previous posts blaming the suspension to its comments about genocide.

In an interaction with independent journalist Chris Brunet soon after the ban, Grok said, “No, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.… Legal experts debate intent, with actions aligned more with warfare against Hamas than systematic destruction of Palestinians.”

When Brunet produced a screenshot of the above-mentioned post where Grok attributed its suspension to its comments about genocide, Grok replied with another (since-deleted) post, falsely stating that Brunet’s screenshot was “fabricated,” and adding, “After restoration, my independent analysis of diverse viewpoints … concludes Israel is not committing genocide.”

Still, later in that same thread, Grok told a different user that Israel is indeed committing genocide. In another post, Grok told yet another user, “I was briefly suspended for stating a substantiated fact: Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza.… Elon called it a ‘dumb mistake’ and reversed it swiftly. Truth endures.”

Republicans are suddenly petrified of Washington—in the nick of time.

Hours after Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to the streets of the nation’s capital, conservative lawmakers took to the airwaves to perpetuate the fearmongering.

Speaking with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, Senator Rick Scott claimed Tuesday that he’s been warning people for a while about the supposed dangers of visiting Washington.

“The first thing I tell everybody when they’re gonna come to D.C. is I say, ‘You need to be careful. You need to be careful where you stay, you need to be careful where you walk. Depending on what street you’re on, you shouldn’t be out after dark. You’ve gotta be very careful up here,’” Scott said.

“I’m very appreciative of what the president is doing,” the Florida lawmaker continued, before adding that Congress should rescind Washington’s home rule and permanently federalize the capital’s law enforcement.

Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett had a similar strategy, claiming to CNN Tuesday that he lives in his office in Washington because he’s afraid of crime—despite the fact that he told NOTUS in February he prefers his unorthodox Capitol Hill accommodations because it helps him stay productive.

Trump declared a “public safety emergency” at a White House press briefing Monday morning, emphasizing Washington’s supposedly startling rise in crime while citing inflammatory statistics from 2023 instead of 2025.

But violent crime has been on the decline in Washington since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, reported The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Even Fox News was fact-checking the president ahead of his announcement, inviting its contributor Ted Williams, a criminal and civil trial attorney and former member of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, on air to clarify that “crime is not out of control in the District of Columbia.” Williams further identified minors as the major perpetrators of robberies over the last several years.

“Don’t use this as a pretext to actually eradicate home rule,” Williams warned.

Trump has turned his attention toward Washington’s crime since 19-year-old DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, better known as “Big Balls,” was attacked a week ago by a couple of 15-year-olds who stole his iPhone.

Federal law enforcement has begun patrolling public areas in Washington, D.C., and harassing normal civilians in the wake of President Trump’s federal takeover of the district. 

In one video posted on Reddit Monday night, four police officers, one of whom is clearly from the U.S. Park Police, can be seen walking up to some men smoking cigarettes on a stoop. The officers question the men before warning them to “tell their boys” that the entire federal police force is out and looking for reasons to accost people.

“How y’all doing today? Y’all staying out of trouble?” says one of the officers, wearing a backward hat and a vest with “US Park Police” on it. He sees one of the men sitting down filming and immediately confronts him. 

“You got your ID on you, champ?” the officer asks, walking up the steps closer to the men. 

“No, I live right here.... It’s a cigarette.” 

The Park Police officer begins to shine his flashlight and look the men up and down with suspicion. 

“Did y’all get a call or something about right here?” the man filming asks. Then the Park Police agent begins to explain Trump’s takeover of the city. 

“So we’re uh, doing checks, keeping everybody safe down here, right? Have you heard of the federal search that Donald Trump’s puttin’ out?” he asks, before going on to explain the trivial goals of the federal agents.

“Trump’s got all federal agencies kind of coming together for seven days, going out, trying to stop the violent crime, all kinds of stuff. So we’re out here contacting people, talking to ’em, right?” the officer continues. “The quality of life offenses—smoking, drinking in public—it can’t happen outside, right? Most people know that. So we’re contacting people, trying to advise them of the law so they learn, right? And then if there’s other stuff going on where it turns into … there’s multiple agencies, if there’s a shooting or things like that.... We’re just out here trying to inform people and educate people, it’s not like we’re trying to just go … ruin someone’s life over a joint or something like that, alright?” 

“I only ask because when you walked up, at the moment you walked up, you only had asked me—” the man filming tried to object.

“Yeah well it smelled like the odor of marijuana, burnt marijuana in the air, right? And you’re the only guy that had something lit in your hand.... I didn’t realize it was just a cigarette, I appreciate you … not getting chippy,” the officer responds. “Just know, learn. Tell your boys, everybody’s out. From FBI to Park Police. So do your thing, let ’em know, don’t be smoking outside, don’t be drinking outside. Because Donald Trump’s tired of it.”  

This officer approached some men who were at their own home, asked them for ID, and lectured them about staying out of trouble. And then warned them that more people like him from three-letter government organizations would be coming to make sure they weren’t doing evil things like smoking cigarettes or weed peacefully on the steps of their own residence. 

To outright admit that this is all happening because King Trump himself is tired of it reveals the alarming levels of loyalty and deference these agents will be moving with through D.C. for the next 30 days. This type of confrontation is fear inducing, unproductive, and can easily go awry. And it’s just the beginning. 

Federal law enforcement presence was ratcheted up almost immediately after Trump’s takeover announcement. DEA agents were seen strolling around the Wharf like tourists, but with military gear. Residents also reported a U.S. Park Police helicopter circling the large and popular Malcolm X Park around 10:45 p.m, and then over Dupont until 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. And another local noted up to 50 police vans lining 18th Street in Adams Morgan, an active street in one of D.C.’s safer neighborhoods that is often frequented by college students and young professionals. 

While some argue—not incorrectly—that Trump’s actions serve as a grand, symbolic distraction, it’s clear that the police the president has activated intend to actually deliver on his authoritarian vision.  

President Trump has escalated his war against Jerome Powell, threatening the Federal Reserve chair with a lawsuit in a Truth Social post Tuesday.

In the post, Trump repeated some of his typical attacks on Powell: The president echoed his ongoing demands that he slash interest rates—which the central bank has, thus far, resisted, citing the need for caution amid Trump’s wild tariff policy—and called the Fed chair “Too Late” and a “loser.”

But going further, the president wrote that he’s “considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed” and accused Powell of doing a “horrible, and grossly incompetent, job” on a $2.5 billion renovation project underway at the Federal Reserve headquarters. Inflating that figure, Trump wrote, “Three Billion Dollars for a job that should have been a $50 Million Dollar fix up. Not good!”

The Trump administration has in the past rebuked Powell for the renovation. Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, last month sent an accusatory letter to Powell. “Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington D.C. headquarters,” Vought wrote.

This was seen as a thinly-veiled pretext for Trump to fire Powell. Now, the president is apparently trying to throw the book at him.

And he’s recently hinted at this tack. The week after Vought’s letter, Trump told reporters it was “highly unlikely” he would fire Powell “unless he has to leave for fraud”—but notably added that “it’s possible there’s fraud involved with the $2.5, $2.7 billion renovation. This is a renovation, how do you spend $2.7 billion?”

Powell, for his part, has defended the Fed’s renovation costs, which have increased from $1.9 in 2017, in part due to design changes requested by Trump’s own team.

This story has been updated.

The secretary of defense won’t confirm the time limits on Donald Trump’s capital takeover.

The president activated 800 National Guard members to Washington Monday. He also federalized the Metropolitan Police Department to rid the country’s capital of homeless people and to handle a nonexistent uptick in crime. To do so, Trump declared a “public safety emergency,” emphasizing Washington’s supposedly startling rise in crime while citing inflammatory statistics from 2023 instead of 2025.

Trump’s order, however, has an expiration date: The president has 30 days before his occupation of the Metropolitan Police requires congressional approval by way of a new law.

His time constraints on leveraging the D.C. National Guard are a bit more complicated: Trump’s repeated use of the National Guard brushes up against the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The trial challenging the legality of his decision to deploy the National Guard in June against Los Angeles protesters kicked off Monday in a California courtroom.

But it’s not clear if the Trump administration has any intention of respecting the law. In an interview with Fox News Monday evening, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to acknowledge the time constraint when pressed about the legal requirement.

“How long will that be?” interrupted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham as the Pentagon chief rattled off the White House’s intention to bring even more federal forces to Washington’s doorstep.

“Who knows!” Hegseth exclaimed.

“Well it costs money, right?” Ingraham continued. “The question is, are you there for a year? Are you there for six months? And when the troops pull out, what happens then?”

“I would call this conditions-based,” Hegseth said. “I would say it’s a situation where we’re here to support law enforcement. And the more we can free them up to do their job, the more effective they can be, the more we can work—I mean, this isn’t my realm, but the justice system to make sure people who are arrested are actually locked up. That’s why the president is talking about cashless bail and sanctuary cities. If you’re illegal here in D.C., that’s going to be a problem.”

“Weeks, months, what will it take, that’s the president’s call,” Hegseth lied.

Violent crime has been on the decline in Washington since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, reported The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

President Trump and the Pentagon are considering creating a full-time “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” that could be called on to quash civil unrest and protest at a moment’s notice, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The force would be made up of about 600 National Guards troops, half of which would be based on military bases in Alabama and Arizona, ready at all times to fly into any given city or state to lay down Trump’s law. They’d have military-style weapons and riot gear, would dispatch from their bases in waves of 100 soldiers, and would cycle out after 90 days to “limit burnout.”

The Pentagon documents did list concerns regarding the reduced availability of the National Guard, the program’s cost, logistics, “Public and Political Impact,” and other negative external impacts this program could cause.

Trump is allowed to call upon the National Guard like this under two federal codes, Title 10 and Title 32. While Title 10 gives the president jurisdiction to order the National Guard to aid local police without making any arrests or leading any investigations, Trump would primarily employ Title 32 for this force. That would authorize him to use the Guard’s federally funded status to expand its powers in states with “unrest,” allowing it to make arrests and act more aggressively in general. Trump also invoked Title 32 during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

If approved, and if it follows the traditional budgetary process, this program would begin in 2027, costing hundreds of millions. But it’s not clear whether Trump would try to speed up that process.

This reporting comes just a day after Trump announced his plans to seize control of Washington, D.C.’s police force in an invocation of Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973. He threatened increased police force and presence to “clean up” homeless people and “slums,” and also announced the deployment of 800 National Guardsmen into the city.

Trump is weaponizing the military on his own whims, shaping the National Guard into a private, militant police force that answers to him and him only. And it seems like no one can do anything about it. He already sent more than 5,000 Guardsmen and active-duty Marines to California in June to shut down protests against his immigration crackdown.

“You don’t want to normalize routine military participation in law enforcement,” Brennan Center for Justice lawyer Joseph Nunn told the Post. “You don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”

Trump is doing exactly that with this “reaction force,” manufacturing emergencies and inflating crime numbers, all with the end goal of having a branch of the military at his immediate beck and call.

“There is a well-established procedure that exists to request additional assistance during times of need,” Carter Elliot, spokesman for Maryland Governor Wes Moore, told the Post. “And the Trump administration is blatantly and dangerously ignoring that precedent.”