The top Trump official tasked with reshaping the Smithsonian’s collections into a more conservative presentation argues that, based on her experience and expectations, the institution should place less emphasis on the painful chapters of American history and more on its achievements

Insurance attorney Lindsey Halligan is now Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, as well as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary.

On Wednesday, Fox News host John Roberts told Halligan that “like just about every other country in the world, the United States has got a checkered past.”

He reminded her that “some of the worst episodes in our history were formative experiences that led us to where we are today, and those typically are reflected in museums.”

Halligan replied that from her point of view, “the fact that we had our country, was involved in slavery is awful. No one thinks otherwise.”

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“But what I saw when I was going through the museums personally was an overemphasis on slavery. And I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”

She insisted that Americans “should be able to take our kids, our students, through the Smithsonian, and feel proud when we leave,” and that “we need to keep moving forward.”

“We can’t just keep focusing on the negative. All it does is divide us, and we really need to unite the country and focus on all the positive as we approach America’s 250th birthday.”

A section of a Trump executive order titled “Saving Our Smithsonian” directs Halligan, by name, to seek “to remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution and its properties, “and shall recommend to the President any additional actions necessary to fully effectuate such policies.”

In April, Halligan told The Washington Post that she believes “improper ideology” means “weaponizing history.”

Halligan has a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law, and does not appear to have any education in museum sciences.

When she first moved to Washington, D.C. she “didn’t like everything she saw,” at the Smithsonian, the Post reported.. “Some exhibits, in her view, did not reflect the America she knows and loves.”

“And so I talked to the president about it,” Halligan said, “and suggested an executive order, and he gave me his blessing, and here we are.”

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She told Fox News that “it’s common knowledge that our education system in general has been just indoctrinated with political ideology and various ideological narratives. And the Smithsonian is really a version of education.”

“It could be the foundation of our American education,” she claimed, explaining the as a young child she went to the Smithsonian Museum on a class trip, “and the Smithsonian is really supposed to be a trust instrument.”

“And what’s happened is it’s become more of a platform upon which the curators and leadership at the Smithsonian can push ideological narratives and we really want to help the Smithsonian be the gem,” she said. “Represent our nation, properly and truthfully.”

Critics denounced Halligan’s remarks.

U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) remarked, “400 years of brutal bondage, torture, and murder should be emphasized. The generations of Black Americans who built this nation with their own hands and their own pain should be emphasized. The true history of this country SHOULD BE EMPHASIZED.”

“White American woman who went through the museum said there was an ‘overemphasis on slavery.’ What a thing. To say those words out loud,” wrote former Republican Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Halligan: What I saw going through the museum personally was an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be an overemphasis on how far we’ve come… We should be able to take our kids, our students through the Smithsonian and be proud when we leave… pic.twitter.com/6FWKpHtpgb

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 20, 2025

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Image via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr/Public Domain

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller lashed out at Washington, D.C. residents protesting President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department and his deployment of more than a thousand federal agents — including FBI, DEA, DHS, ATF, and ICE — to patrol the Capital’s streets. In striking remarks, Miller cast the demonstrators as white and the victims of crime as Black. His charges conflict with a new survey just released that shows the vast majority of D.C. residents oppose the Trump administration’s takeover and feel safe in their neighborhoods.

Miller told reporters that the people protesting the Trump administration’s federal takeover of the city’s streets are “elderly white hippies,” “stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” and, “crazy communists” who “have no roots, they have no connections to the city, they have no families they are raising in this city, they have no one that they are sending to school in this city, they have no jobs in this city, they have no connections to this community at all.”

Those people, Miller alleged, are “the ones who’ve been advocating for the one percent: the criminals, the killers, the rapists, the drug dealers.”

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Whereas, Miller claimed, “residents who lived in Washington, D.C. their entire lives, their parents lived here, their grandparents lived here, and they have lived for generations in intolerable conditions of crime and decay.”

“There are hundreds of residents of this city who are shot in street violence every single year, making [it] one the most violent cities on planet Earth,” he claimed, which is not supported by evidence.

“And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C are Black,” Miller alleged, inaccurately. About 43 percent of D.C.’s residents are Black.

“This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens, for generations,” he claimed. “And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department to support the National Guard and our federal law enforcement officers.”

“So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.,” Miller said.

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A damning Washington Post poll released Wednesday, however, found 79 percent of D.C. residents oppose Trump’s decision to take over the Metropolitan Police, and to deploy National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents onto D.C. city streets.

“On Monday, Trump said Washington had been ‘the most unsafe place anywhere,’ but 78 percent of residents say they feel very or somewhat safe in their neighborhoods,” the Post reported.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Stephen Miller (@StephenM): “We are not going to let the Communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capitol…most of the citizens who live in Washington, DC are Black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens for generations and… pic.twitter.com/TRAcVILrpA

— CSPAN (@cspan) August 20, 2025

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Having completed adorning the walls of the Oval Office in gold, President Donald Trump is moving to another redecorating project: his signature wall on the southern border. The President has ordered Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to paint the 1,300 mile border wall black — not because he likes the color, but because, he insists, as he did during his first term, that it will make the metal bars too hot for undocumented immigrants to climb.

Five years ago, the cost of the project was put at $500 million to $2 billion. Today’s prices would likely make it more expensive, but based on past results and expert opinion, the outcome will likely be the same: it won’t work.

In May 2020, as the COVID pandemic ramped up and states were coming out of lockdown, President Trump ordered his “beautiful” border wall to be painted black.

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“The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it,” The Washington Post reported in early May 2020. “They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.”

The President was unrelenting.

“Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months. During a border wall meeting at the White House last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, the president told senior adviser Jared Kushner and aides to move forward with the paint job and to seek out cost estimates, according to four administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.”

The Post reported that estimates ranged from $500 million for two coats of a black acrylic paint to $2 billion for a “premium” powder coating.

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None of which, experts said, would do the job.

The black paint — $500 million or $2 billion — “won’t make much of a difference,” materials engineer Rick Duncan told the Post. “There’s no technical reason to paint it to make it hotter.”

Fast forward to this week.

Secretary Noem told reporters in New Mexico that the wall will be painted black, by order of the President.

“She went on to explain,” The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday, “that the change was being made ‘specifically at the request of the president,’ because ‘when something is painted black, it gets even warmer, making it even harder for people to climb.'”

Some areas that were painted before apparently did not stand the test of time.

Less than two years after the May 2020 decision to paint Trump’s wall black, The Washington Post reported that in March 2022 it had “observed several locations west of Sasabe, Ariz., where the wall’s black paint is already peeling off, less than 18 months after it was applied.”

Noem on Tuesday told reporters, “a nation without borders is no nation at all, and we’re so thankful that we have a president that understands that it understands that a secure border is important to our country’s future.”

“Now, if you look at the structure that’s behind me, it’s tall, which makes it very, very difficult to climb, almost impossible. It also goes deep into the ground, which would make it very difficult, if not impossible, to dig under, and today, we are also going to be painting it black,” she continued.

“That is specifically at the request of the president who understands that in the hot temperatures down here, when in something is painted black, it gets even warmer, and it will make it even harder for people to climb.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the entire southern border wall will be painted black, so it will get hot in the sun and “make it even harder for people to climb.”

“That is specifically at the request of the president.” https://t.co/fDAt90dmk6 pic.twitter.com/rZZZhZ3SVx

— ABC News (@ABC) August 19, 2025

READ MORE: ‘Erasing History’: Trump Scorched for Blasting Smithsonian Over Slavery

Image via Reuters