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Los Angeles Times
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Trump has big plans for America's next birthday. Historians have questions
WASHINGTON — As Americans mark the Fourth of July holiday this weekend, the Trump administration is planning ahead for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, a moment of reflection for a nation beset by record-low patriotism and divided by heated culture wars over the country's identity. White House officials are actively involved in state and local planning for the semiquincentennial after the president, in one of his first acts in office, established 'Task Force 250' to organize 'a grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion.' The administration has launched a website offering its telling of the nation's founding, and Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' — which he had hoped to pass by this Independence Day — includes a provision allocating $40 million to commission 250 statues for a 'National Garden of American Heroes,' to be built at an undetermined location. Trump has been thinking about the 250th anniversary for years. He invoked the occasion in his first joint session to Congress in 2017, stating it would be 'one of the great milestones in the history of the world.' And in 2023, campaigning for a second term, he proposed a 'Great American State Fair' to take place around the country throughout the year. But that milestone year comes amid fierce debate over Trump's attempts to exert government control over the teaching of American history. In March, Trump signed an executive order aimed at 'restoring truth and sanity to American history,' directing public institutions to limit their presentation of the nation's history without nuance or criticism. 'This is not a return to sanity,' the Organization of American Historians responded at the time. 'Rather, it sanitizes to destroy truth.' On the 'America 250' website created by the White House, the account of the nation's founding is outsourced to Hillsdale College, a far-right institution that was a member of the advisory board for Project 2025. 'A question over this coming year is whether the celebrations around the 250th will be used as yet another cudgel in the culture wars where the goal is to divide rather than unite,' said David Ekbladh, a history professor at Tufts University. 'The view Trump's 'Task Force 250' seems to be laying out is comfortable, but doesn't give us a full view of that historical moment,' Ekbladh said. 'And a full view doesn't reduce things to a story of tragedy or oppression — although there was plenty of both — but can show us the full set of experiences that were the foundations of a dynamic country.' In 1976, when the United States marked its 200th birthday, the festivities were prolific. Federal government letterhead was decorated for over a year to mark the anniversary. State-sponsored celebrations were designed to revive a national sense of patriotism that had been challenged by a stagflating economy, lingering trauma from the political convulsions of the late 1960s and the Vietnam War. A full schedule of events has yet to be made public. But scholars expect echoes of 1976, when government efforts to instill pride in a weary nation met with mixed success. 'In 1976, there were dueling celebrations: official, government-sponsored ones, and 'people's' observances organized by progressive groups,' said Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University. 'I expect something of that kind will occur next year too.' There are significant differences. This time, the nation will celebrate a constitutional system of checks and balances under historic pressure from a president testing the bounds of executive power. 'Two hundred and fifty years of constitutional democracy is well worth honoring,' said Andrew Rudalevige, a history professor at Bowdoin College, 'but this particular anniversary is symbolic in ways that resonate exactly opposite to Trump's vision of governance and history.' Most of the Declaration of Independence, Rudalevige noted, is dedicated to laying out 'how centralized executive authority leads to tyranny, and must be opposed.' And the document's promise of inalienable rights and the pursuit of happiness have been a beacon of hope and inspiration to immigrants since the founding. 'So the next year will mark a hugely important tension between the version of American history that Mr. Trump and his allies want taught — and actual American history,' Rudalevige said. 'We will have a sort of polarized patriotism.' That polarization has already become evident in recent polling. A survey published by Gallup this week found that a historically low number of Americans feel patriotic, with 58% of U.S. adults identifying as 'extremely' or 'very' proud to be an American. That is nine points lower than last year, and the lowest figure registered by Gallup since they began polling on the matter in 2001. Pride among Republicans has stayed relatively consistent, with 92% registering as patriotic. But it has plummeted among Democrats and independents. And pride decreased across parties by age group, with more Democrats in Gen Z — those born between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s — telling Gallup they have 'little' or 'no' pride in being an American than saying they are extremely or very proud. If nothing else, historians said, the anniversary is an opportunity for everyday Americans to reflect on the country they want to live in. 'To be sure, for many people the day is just a day off and maybe a chance to go to a parade and see some fireworks,' said Ekbladh, of Tufts. 'But the day can and should be a moment to think about what the country is.' The must-read: Even some Orange County Republicans question Trump sweeps targeting immigrant workersThe deep dive: How Trump's big budget bill would jump-start his immigration agendaThe L.A. Times Special: Trump was winning with Latinos. Now, his cruelty is derailing him More to come,Michael Wilner—Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
The Hill
16-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Why are we still talking about Biden's presidency?
On June 4, President Trump issued a memorandum directing the White House Counsel and the Attorney General to investigate former President Biden and his aides to see if they 'abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.' 'This conspiracy,' the order says, 'marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history.' Democratic politics invites citizens and political leaders to leave the past alone, except in extreme cases like genocide or apartheid. It requires victorious parties not to try to rewrite it to suit the fancies and fantasies of the moment. However, Trump seems unable to resist casting his eye backward to denigrate and impugn his predecessor. His memorandum called 'Reviewing Certain Executive Actions' is just the latest example. The president's Joe Biden-focused memorandum comes from the same place as his election-denialism. He wants to discredit everything Biden touched and sweep the last four years into the dustbin of history. Readers of literature may recognize this impulse. George Orwell's classic novel, 1984, offers a startling and imaginative rendition. In that book, Orwell describes a political party bent on securing its power and dominating the society that it ruled. The party creates a Ministry of Truth and charges it to change narratives of the past to suit the whims of the Leader. It seeks, to quote from the book, to create a world where 'nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.' Eerie. Recall the moment in February when Trump passed out 'TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING' hats to members of the press, and his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, intoned the administration's mantra, 'Always say yes to the president.' Another literary classic, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, conjured another fictive regime intent on revising the past to suit its purposes. In its version of history, 'The party,' one of Koestler's characters says, 'was always right, even when it was wrong.' Later, he says, 'The liquidation of the past is the precondition for the acceptance of the future.' This seems an apt description of Trump's worldview. As the Organization of American Historians explains, the Trump Administration proposes 'to rewrite history.' That impulse animates last week's presidential memorandum. There, the president asserts that 'For years, President Biden suffered from serious cognitive decline. … Biden's cognitive issues and apparent mental decline during his presidency were even 'worse' in private, and those closest to him 'tried to hide it' from the public.' 'Notwithstanding these well-documented issues,' the memorandum continues, 'the White House issued over 1,200 Presidential documents, appointed 235 judges to the federal bench, and issued more pardons and commutations than any administration in United States history. Although the authority to take these executive actions, along with many others,' it continues, 'is constitutionally committed to the President, there are serious doubts as to the decision-making process and even the degree of Biden's awareness of these actions being taken in his name.' Note the impersonal construction: 'There are serious doubts.' It is left unspecified who is experiencing or entertaining those doubts. It might help, however, to recall Lutnick's admonition to his colleagues in the administration: 'Always say yes to the president.' Driving home its point, the president's memorandum offers this insinuation: 'If his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity … that would constitute an unconstitutional wielding of the power of the presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden's name.' As I noted in March, when Trump first raised a question about the Biden Administration's use of an autopen, there is nothing to this. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued a 2005 opinion that presidents can validly sign bills by directing subordinates to 'affix the President's signature to it.' That should settle the matter. Biden's judicial appointments, grants of clemency, and other official acts are not going anywhere. But that is not the point of Trump's fixation on Biden and his directive. It is instead another sign of a president hoping to dismantle the legacy that his predecessor left behind, or, if he can't do that, to use his power to tarnish it. The comedian Jon Stewart was on to something last August when he said of Trump's obsession with all things Biden, 'It's all he knows. He misses (Biden) so much … He would give everything for just one more moment with 'crooked Joe.'' Whatever the psychological roots of Trump's Biden fixation are, it does this country a great disservice. It stokes grievance, resentment, and division. It invites the kind of corrosive cynicism and disrespect that makes it hard for partisans to take a breath and agree on a shared version of history. Trump is entitled to conjure conspiracy theories about Biden and his advisors, but Americans would be well advised not to join him. Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Who controls the present controls the past': What Orwell's ‘1984' explains about the twisting of history to control the public
When people use the term 'Orwellian,' it's not a good sign. It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power. It's a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past. In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America's official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, 'reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.' Such ambitions are deeply Orwellian. Here's how. Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a 'historical impulse,' or 'the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.' But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail. During World War II, the Nazis broadcast reports on German radio describing nonexistent air raids over Britain. Orwell knew about those reports and wrote: 'Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purposes of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn't they?' The answer, Orwell wrote, was, 'If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls, they didn't happen. So with innumerable other events of the past ten or twenty years. … In no case do you get one answer which is universally accepted because it is true: in each case you get a number of totally incompatible answers, one of which is finally adopted as the result of a physical struggle. History is written by the winners.' As Orwell wrote in '1984,' his final, dystopian novel, 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' Power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to create their own historical narrative. It also allowed those in power to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out. The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith's job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in '1984.' The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South. Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is. The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or 'thought crime,' is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present. But it also controls the past. As the party's protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down 'memory holes,' where they are 'wiped … out of existence and out of memory.' At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole. The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell's Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past. The Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation's official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes. Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to 'gay' and LGBTQ+ content on government websites. Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life of Harriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom. The administration also directed the removal of content concerning the Tuskegee Airmen, the group of African American pilots who flew missions in World War II. In these cases, public outcry led to the restoration of the deleted content, but other less high-profile deletions have been allowed to stand. Over the past several months, many of Trump's opponents have bemoaned the fecklessness of the Democratic Party in mounting an effective opposition to the president's agenda. Critics on the right and even some on the left denounced as little more than a stunt New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker's marathon 25-hour speech on the U.S. Senate floor detailing the constitutional abuses of Trump's first few months. But while words are no substitute for action, in the face of a regime that is intent on stifling voices of dissent, from media outlets to law firms, to university campuses, through a combination of formal censorship and informal coercion and bullying, the act of speaking out matters. Booker's protest will be written into the Congressional Record and remain a part of the nation's contested history. So too will the meticulous recounting of the administration's constitutional abuses in publications such as The Atlantic and The New York Times. The existence of such a record allows the potential for a critical historical narrative to be written in the future. But the administration is also looking ahead. Current proponents of the 'anti-woke' agenda at both the federal and state level are focused on reshaping educational curricula in a way that will make it inconceivable for future generations to question their historical claims. Orwell's '1984' ends with an appendix on the history of 'Newspeak,' Oceania's official language, which, while it had not yet superseded 'Oldspeak' or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect. According to the appendix, 'The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.' Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: 'The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as 'This dog is free from lice' or 'This field is free from weeds.' … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.' The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future. If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change. It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it. As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Laura Beers, American University Read more: Nationalism is not patriotism: 3 insights from Orwell about Trump and the 2024 election Putin's brazen manipulation of language is a perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak Orwell's ideas remain relevant 75 years after 'Animal Farm' was published Laura Beers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
