Trying this again

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Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

House Democrats released a report on Tuesday, timed to coincide with a Republican hearing attacking the Smithsonian network of museums, that called out President Donald Trump’s attempt to mangle the representation of American history at the globally respected institution. The report was released by the Democratic members of the Committee on House Administration, which has oversight of the Smithsonian. Democrats said their report, titled “The White House Campaign to Seize Control of the Smithsonian and Rewrite American History” was meant as a rebuttal to the White House’s report on the issue, which was released two weeks ago. “President Trump is abusing the power of the White House to pressure one of America’s most respected cultural institutions into political obedience,” said New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat on the committee, in a statement. “The Smithsonian was established as an independent institution precisely so no president could dictate how our nation’s story is told. Committee Democrats will continue defending that independence because no president gets to edit the American story,” he continued. The Trump administration’s report was rolled out on social media. It highlighted bigoted complaints that museum exhibits acknowledged the existence of LGBTQ+ life, referenced the influence anti-Black racism has had over American culture, and discussed contradictions between the Founding Fathers’ call for liberty and their enslavement of Black people.

[...] The Democrats noted that Trump’s document alleged that Smithsonian National Museum of American History had “no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era” but then references in the same report “remarkable artifacts like the desk Thomas Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s uniform.” The Republican report also claims that the museum failed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, but the Democrats point out the same report references multiple museum exhibits specifically tied to the nation’s 250th birthday.