Protesters attend a vigil for a man who was killed in a shooting involving ICE, July 13, 2026, in Biddeford, Maine.
(Ryan Murphy/Getty Images) It’s been another bad week for Donald Trump, from the Strait of Hormuz to the streets where ICE killed more people to the planned Senate hearings on Todd Blanche. Harold Meyerson comments.
Also: Trump believes that teaching history is really important — which is why, on July 4, he launched a 162-page attack on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Comments from Yale historian Beverly Gage. His new book is This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through American History.
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Jon Wiener: From The Nation magazine, here is Start Making Sense. My name is Jon Wiener. Later in the hour: Trump says teaching history is really important. Historian Beverly Gage will explain. But first: Harold Meyerson is talking politics this week. It’s coming – in a minute.
[BREAK]
First, today’s political update. For that. we turn to Harold Meyerson, of course, he is editor of The American perspective. Harold, welcome back.
Harold Meyerson: It’s always good to be here, Jon.
JW: Trump’s vaunted ceasefire with Iran collapsed on Monday – I think we should probably start there. He ordered the reestablishment of the naval blockade. It is an act of war. In the meantime, he has not proposed any new strategies to cope. Oil prices jumped and stocks fell on the news. And of course, Republicans are worried about what impact this will have on their declining chances in this fall’s midterm elections. The House and Senate passed resolutions under the War Powers Act that direct Trump to end the war or seek approval from lawmakers to continue it. Of course, he ignored these resolutions. He explained why he returned to war with Iran. “These people are crazy. They are extremely unreliable people.” Now I’m a little confused, because a few weeks ago he said that Iran’s leaders were “very rational and pleasant to deal with”, and he described them as “intelligent people”.
The latest polls show that 37% of Americans approve of Trump’s Iran policy. The share of respondents expecting a prolonged conflict has increased, with 79% now expecting a prolonged conflict and 60% expecting gasoline prices to deteriorate over the next year. I wonder if you agree with the majority of Americans on a protracted conflict over rising gas prices.
HM: In a word, yes. All of this simply reflects the governing by whim which is one of Trump’s two ways of thinking. The other is to govern according to fanatical whims, which affects foreign policy, but even more so domestic policy. And yes, we are stuck in a war that made no sense to begin with, that Trump has never plausibly justified, and that sticks to him like fly paper.
JW: And meanwhile, in court, a federal judge just overturned the so-called settlement between the IRS and Trump that would have given him and his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, protection from tax audits, and that it was the so-called settlement that created this slush fund to pay, among other things, the January 6 rioters. The judge wrote: “This lawsuit was not brought to assert rights. It was brought to manipulate the legal process because the parties were not opposing sides.” In other words, Trump was suing himself. The abuse was so serious, she said, that she ordered the bar to consider sanctions against Trump’s lawyer, and she ordered Trump and the Justice Department never again to call the deal a “settlement.” She found that the abuses were committed equally by Trump’s private lawyers and Todd Blanche’s Justice Department. She said the Justice Department’s conduct was untenable and that it had engaged in tactics prohibited by law. And this comes a day or two before Todd Blanche appears before the Senate to answer questions about his nomination by Trump for attorney general. I wonder if you think this will actually affect Todd Blanche’s chances of becoming attorney general.
HM: Actually, yes, because Todd Blanche is the personification of everything that is visibly corrupt, outside of culture war issues or anything like that. So many Republicans have real doubts, at the very least, about the political wisdom of voting to confirm him and the judge’s decision simply gives opponents of Blanche’s nomination the political equivalent of several sticks of dynamite to simply blow up, and will certainly make it harder for Republicans to justify a vote for Blanche now.
You know, Trump has a habit of proposing temporary appointments and just leaving them there if he can’t get them confirmed. So we’ll see what happens with Todd Blanche.
JW: Well, now it’s time for your moment in Minnesota. This is news from my hometown of Saint Paul that you won’t get from Sean Hannity. You will recall that ICE agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti — Renee Good on January 7th.th; Alex Pretti, January 24th. And since then, Minnesota officials have been trying to get information about the killings from ICE. Minnesota ended up suing the federal government in March for refusing to share evidence from the shooting. Minnesota wanted to determine whether ICE agents should be charged with murder or lesser crimes related to the killings. Well, on Monday of this week, federal prosecutors finally released key evidence that Minnesota investigators had been seeking for months. The prosecutor in Hennepin County, which is in Minneapolis, announced that the evidence included hard drives containing statements and body camera footage. They also turned over the wreck of the 2014 Honda Pilot that Renee Good was driving when ICE Agent Jonathan Ross shot her. The prosecutor said: “The wonderful thing now is that we have all the evidence. Any time the government is responsible in any way for the death of a member of the community. We must conduct a full and thorough investigation.” Of course, it is very difficult for a municipality or state to convict a federal agent of murder or any other crime. I wonder why you think the federal government changed course and released information that could lead to murder charges against Minneapolis ICE agents last January?
HM: Well, look, it’s part of the Trump administration realizing that there’s really very little public support for ICE disrupting families, established community members, bystanders, etc. And this comes at the same time as today, after the murders, the killings of individuals by ICE in Maine and Texas. A new ICE policy to not ban moving vehicles, which of course is also the case for Renee Good. So there is something of a tactical recalibration on the part of the administration, probably undoing Stephen Miller, if no one else puts a slightly softer, gentler spin on ICE’s more or less barbaric kidnappings.
JW: And let’s just say the names of the victims of ICE killings. This week in Houston, ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who entered the United States more than 30 years ago and settled in Houston with his wife. They raised three children. He worked as a builder. And in Biddeford, Maine, an ICE agent killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, a native of Colombia who was authorized to work in the United States, had been issued a Social Security number and was not the target of an immigration raid.
I’m sure you’re right: The outrage in Texas and Maine over these new ICE killings contributed to their decision to finally release Minnesota’s information about last January’s killings. And of course, this comes on the eve of the Todd Blanche hearings. So that brings us back to Republican politics in the Senate.
HM: Yeah. And Republican politics in general is, I think today’s word would be nervous. The administration has involved itself in a multitude of initiatives, the war in Iran being perhaps the most significant at the moment, that have very little public support, and even initiatives that have public support, like reducing the volume of immigration to the United States, it has gone so wild and overstepped, and just followed the kind of fanatical brutality that is a byproduct of that, but a very unnecessary byproduct of reducing the volume of immigration, that there are very politically vulnerable Republican elected officials who appear before voters. November understands that, at least if he understands nothing else.
JW: And we learned on Monday that Trump is giving a prime-time televised address to the nation. I think it’s Thursday night for the other presidents. They only did so during major defining moments for the nation. Apparently, Trump is going to say that he has new evidence showing that he won the 2020 election. At times, it seems like he is more obsessed with winning the 2020 election than winning the 2026 midterm elections. This comes from a report originally from MS NOW. They reported Monday that Trump planned to reveal a recently declassified intelligence report that he said would reveal plans by foreign countries to interfere in the 2020 election and prevent him from winning re-election. They say he will be joined on his TV show by the head of the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the secretary of Homeland Security and the head of the FBI. I guess we’ll all be watching Trump on TV with his panel here Thursday night.
HM: Well, actually, we’re not all going to watch it. You and I will probably watch it, Jon, but at this point Trump’s mid-summer TV speeches kind of have the viewership of reruns of obscure black-and-white TV shows from 1956. So I don’t know if we’ll all watch it. This seems to me to be an attempt to revive MAGA, what’s left of it, to energize Republicans who are hesitant to show up to the polls in 2026. I would expect, at the rate we are going, that Samuel Tilden will soon appear on television to contest the results of the 1876 election. I would watch that, in fact.
JW: Apparently, Trump is going to try to connect what he says was foreign interference that prevented him from winning in 2020, with the need to pass the SAVE Act, which is the one that places restrictions on Democratic voting, primarily Democratic, banning mail-in voting and requiring government-issued ID at polling places. I’m not sure there’s really a connection between the restrictions Trump wants now and what the director of national intelligence is going to say that he found out about foreign interference in 2020, but Trump is going to try to make that point. And you and I will be there to listen.
HM: That’s true. And, you know, that’s really, as far as Trump is concerned, the only electoral strategy he has: making it more difficult and ideally illegal for a lot of people who are going to show up to vote against him, in fact, to vote. This is his electoral strategy: to win the electorate rather than conquer it.
JW: Conquer rather than win. ” Perfect. New subject: housing in America. We need more housing in America. We need a lot more housing. We need affordable housing. Housing prices hit a record high this month, and that’s one reason Congress passed a housing bill with strong bipartisan majorities. It’s pretty amazing these days that there can be strong bipartisan majorities for anything, but Trump announced he wouldn’t sign it. He said he was not signing it, “to protest the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE Act.” These restrictions on voting like the Lincoln Project, anti-Trump Republicans summed up Trump’s message four months before the midterms. You won’t get affordable housing unless you give up your right to vote. But in the end, this week, Trump simply did not sign the bill. And as a result, it automatically became law because he did not veto the bill. This is an interesting strategic decision on his part. We assume that the Republicans in Congress absolutely insisted that they had to have this thing. They needed something to run on. I have been trying all week to find out exactly what is in this bill. And the problem is, it’s not a big boost. It’s like two dozen little boosts. What can you tell us about the housing bill?
HM: Not much more than what you just said, Jon. Yeah. It’s a series of relationships. It’s a lot of micro-initiatives that, in essence, they’re hoping will be seen as a macro-initiative, which it’s not. Much of the bill’s positive elements were presented by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who worked on the bill with her Republican counterpart. And, you know, that’s what we have. And I’m sure of it – even invertebrate Mike Johnson pointed out to the White House that his members needed this bill. But Trump is really only concerned, as I said, with winnowing the electorate so that he can escape the fate that might await him if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress. So that’s really his only concern at the moment. And the housing dilemmas facing the American public are none of their business.
JW: He had demanded that the Senate abolish the filibuster, which would perhaps allow him to pass the SAVE Act. You expressed many doubts that a majority of Republican senators would vote for the SAVE Act. But it is very interesting that the Senate refused his request to abolish the filibuster. This shows a kind of unexpected resistance to Trump from Senate Republicans.
HM: That’s true. And given that there is no doubt that the purpose of this presentation on Thursday night is to get the MAGA folks to put pressure on Republican senators who are unwilling to abandon the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE Act. It’s a sort of three-band shot. But that’s the blow Trump takes.
JW: It’s time for today’s current affairs quiz. Harold, are you ready to play?
HM: I’m ready. Especially if I know the answer.
JW: Multiple choice question: Who said, “There’s only one way to make America great again: tell Donald Trump to go to hell”? Was it Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or Lindsay Graham?
HM: I think it might have been Lindsay Graham, once upon a time – speaking of invertebrates, that may have been the ultimate cause of his death, since he did a 180 on the merits and demerits of Donald Trump.
JW: You are right! It was Lindsay Graham, during the 2016 primaries, while contesting Trump’s inauguration, who declared “there is only one way to make America great again: tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
Harold Meyerson – winning and winnowing. Read it @prospect.org. THANKS. Harold!
HM: Happy to multitask, Jon.
[BREAK]
Jon Wiener: Now it’s time for “History in the Making: Reporting on the Battles to Understand Our Nation’s Past.” Today we’ll talk about Trump’s July 4 attack on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History — for telling America’s story “not as the victory of freedom, but rather as a victory of regret, tragedy, and shame” — in the words of Trump’s committee report. For comment, we turn to Beverly Gage. She teaches history at Yale and her book on J. Edgar Hoover, titled G-Manreceived the Pulitzer Prize in history, the Bancroft Prize in American history, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. We talked about it here – memorable segment. His new book is This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through American History. Beverly Gage, welcome back.
Beverly Gage: Thank you. It’s good to be here.
JW: On July 4, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Trump not only provided the greatest fireworks display in the nation’s history, but he also released a scathing 162-page report that claims the Smithsonian Museum has failed to celebrate the nation’s heritage and has become “a victim of left-wing ideological capture.” They have turned the mall museum, particularly the National Museum of American History, into “a political tool that denigrates American history.” The report was written by the White House Domestic Policy Council in response to an executive order from Trump calling for “restoring truth and common sense to American history.”
You and I are both professionals here. We have both taught U.S. History Survey to students. And of course, we both went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, even though I haven’t been there in at least 20 years. So we have a lot to say. Perhaps we should start with the big picture: History teaching, they say, should celebrate America’s past, not criticize it.
BG: Well, it’s a strange way to approach what is a complex set of facts that has elements of celebration, of course. But it would be very strange not to be able to criticize anything about the past. And it’s a strange and troubling turn by our federal government.
JW: The museum, they say, has moved – in their words – “from simple education and historical research to extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.” Now, they’re not completely wrong in that I think most American historians are not Trump supporters. They voted against him. But still… but still what?
BG: Well, there is something very funny in the way the report is constructed because it complains about a lack of objectivity and then about ideological capture. And by that, of course, they mean ideological capture by the left. And then there is this intensely ideological approach to American history. As you say, some essential elements of the criticism are not entirely wrong. I mean, the American historical profession is actually quite liberal in many ways. And so it’s a fact. And there are legitimate critiques to be made about how we tell our national story, about whether we have a national story, about how the left might engage in something like the 250th. But these are not really the criticisms made in this document. This document goes from saying “we just need an objective story” to then, you know, calling out the Smithsonian for mentioning gender, calling out the Smithsonian for refusing to use the words “illegal alien” or “criminal illegal alien.” RIGHT? So it’s a very, very strange document in that sense.
JW: Their main concern is what they think is missing. They claim that today’s visitors “will find no major exhibits devoted to America’s founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution. In fact,” they say, “the founders are presented primarily in terms of their connection to slavery.” What do you say to that?
BG: Well, I’m not sure that’s really true for the Museum of American History. Tim Noah from The New Republic went and said, “Is this really true?” And he walked in and the first thing he saw was a big giant statue of George Washington. I therefore doubt the factual basis of this report, even though I have not been there in the last two years. So I’m not going to get into describing the museum’s exhibits.
I mean, I think there are interesting questions for the left about the left’s relationship to the founding at this point, and whether or not slavery is the central part of the story, whether revolutionary ideas about equality are central to the story. So that’s a very interesting conversation that we could have, and we could have. But of course, this is not the legitimate concern of this report, which is in reality only a successful and very selective work. In fact, if you read the report, it’s very repetitive because it only has a few distinct pieces of evidence that it really wants to present over and over again.
JW: One of my favorite sections are the critiques of what they call “the museum’s efforts to convince American children to defy authority.” It’s hard to read this without laughing. This is an exhibition called “Girlhood – It’s Complicated”. In the museum, this exhibit is no longer there, it was sent as part of a national tour of state history museums to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote. It was loaded with wall texts: “Girls have consistently resisted and even subverted the way institutions, pundits, and other social authorities have sought to define and shape them and their childhoods. They have creatively shaped their own identities and influenced the way we see and understand gender in all its nuances. This encourages us to explore how power operates in American society through the concept of Girlhood.” How bad is it?
BG: This all seems rather trivial to me. I mean, as a former girl, I can say it’s complicated. But yeah, there’s a lot of examples like this, I think in this report where they say there’s this terrible thing and now we’re going to expose it – and then you read it. Another is, I don’t have it in front of me, but in their description of the narrative of the Declaration of Independence, which says, the Declaration of Independence, it was an important document, it’s a document that people have since then adopted and redefined and reshaped to meet their own historical moments. And it is a bad thing.
JW: What’s wrong with that?
BG: Exactly true. But truth isn’t really the standard we seem to be measuring in this report. And I would also say that the report wants a kind of positive story about the United States, that there’s a way of thinking about it, that’s what it is; It’s reasonably set in time, and it’s the only story that should be exposed.
JW: I’m sure you have criticisms of the National Museum of American History, and I do too. Of course, these are not the same as Trump’s. My main complaint is that this is a very thin effort to engage young people, perhaps even those who are not so young. They feature things like Julia Child’s Kitchen, her real kitchen. The most famous place since I was little is the first ladies’ dress exhibition. And Dorothy’s red slippers from The Wizard of Oz, that kind of thing. Objects that, I don’t know, people would enjoy seeing or showing their children that they brought there. I’m sure most kids today don’t know what Dorothy’s red slippers are. But it really has nothing to do with what we find in academic surveys of American history. And that’s kind of my main complaint about this place.
BG: Actually, I have a real weakness for everything you described, so I don’t have that objection. I think it’s very important that historians and people who are interested in history allow themselves to have fun. I think most of the things you listed are also important to women’s history, right? Women’s play, the role of women in culture, first ladies, all that. So, I don’t want to dismiss it just for that reason, but I think it can be kind of a big tent museum. They actually have extraordinary collections. And so, I’m not going to, I’m not going to vote with you on this, Jon.
JW: Okay. Well, my main interest when I went there, I was writing my book, I was doing research for my book on Cold War memory. And they had an exhibit at that time of a family fallout shelter, a real one, the kind of thing that only the Smithsonian could do. An all-steel fallout shelter that was buried in a yard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1955; Somehow they dug it up, moved it and put it in the museum. Fort Wayne, of course, was, you know, the number one target on Stalin’s hit list for the United States. And these poor people had invested a lot of money and effort to bury this thing. And it is the most sinister and horrible place. It’s actually right next to Julia Child’s kitchen, or at least it was 20 years ago, but it’s been put away now. You can simply find it on the website. It’s still in their collections, but it’s the kind of thing only the Smithsonian would do, and I certainly liked it.
BG: Yes, I think it’s actually a great example of finding a path into history that families, people who are just curious, can really relate to and take that imaginative leap into the past. What were the fears that motivated this? What made people do this in their own backyard? And one of the things that I find interesting about this report is that it doesn’t just seem to oppose the usual list of things that the Trump administration doesn’t like, too much talk about slavery, too much talk about gender, too much respect for immigrants. But it is also, even if it does not make it explicit, intervening in one of the perpetual historical debates, which concern the question of whether we focus only on the great men of history? Should we tell a more popular story, more focused on ordinary people? And in some ways, you would think that the Trump administration would take an anti-elite stance, right? We must not limit ourselves to the elites. You want to look at the everyday person. But in reality it is quite the opposite in this report. The idea is actually that there is a sort of shortlist of major elite political figures who don’t get enough attention. And all these moves to expand the story, to look at the lives of ordinary people, the way they thought about the founding, their incredible diversity, et cetera, et cetera, are supposed to be irrelevant.
JW: The report doesn’t just criticize specific exhibits that are there and things that aren’t there, it actually threatens budget cuts. 62% of the Smithsonian’s annual budget, or $1 billion for all Smithsonian museums, comes from funds appropriated by Congress. Trump has proposed cutting the Smithsonian’s budget by 12% this fiscal year. That doesn’t really seem to measure up to what they’re criticizing here, but Congress has maintained the same level of funding this year. The July 4 report cites how the executive order directed JD Vance, who is ex officio an official of the Smithsonian Board of Regents. JD Vance is supposed to work with the Office of Management and Budget to “prohibit spending on exhibits or programs that degrade common American values, divide Americans on the basis of race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.” Of course, this policy is against diversity, equity and inclusion. So it can be assumed that they would like to defund all exhibitions referring to immigrants, for example. I wonder if it is even possible to tell the American story today without diversity?
BG: Well, the answer is no. This is really not the case. And the standard for what they’re talking about is not: Did something happen? And is it true? Which should be our baseline standard for history. But like I said, it’s sort of a stripped-down top-down story, made up of just the good stuff, as you might imagine.
And what happens at the Smithsonian also happens at many other major cultural institutions. The National Park Service, over the last year or so, has had to put up signs that really go along the same lines as what you’re saying. The signs read: “If you see anything that unduly denigrates a great American of the past, report it to your federal government. » So they are under enormous pressure, both financially and in terms of control over what is exhibited and what staff and guides can say. The National Endowment for the Humanities, I mean, a number of these institutions, and unfortunately, I think they’ve been quite effective in bringing caution into these institutions, really scaring people, which of course is the goal.
Now, I’m optimistic about the telling of the story, which is that once people know this story and we’ve documented all of this history that’s being pushed aside here, it’s not that easy, actually, to get rid of the story or tell people that the things that they know to be true aren’t. But I think these federal institutions are in an incredibly difficult situation. And to some extent, they have a different set of civic and legal obligations than many private institutions.
JW: The defense of the Smithsonian History Museum is led by Lonnie Bunch. He was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History, and he became the first historian and first African American to be appointed to lead the entire Smithsonian, all 21 museums, in its 173-year history.
He relates an astonishing anecdote in his memoir which he published in 2019. When Trump became president in January 2017, Lonnie Bunch showed him around the Museum of African American History and he reports that he showed Trump an exhibit on the history of slavery in the United States. And they visited an exhibit about the Netherlands’ role in the slave trade, and Trump commented, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.” » And that was his only comment. It’s so pure Trump, but it’s still pretty incredible.
BG: If only we could have a museum that told the entire story of American history up to the election of Donald Trump as the end of history, the coming together of all things, the arrival of our great leader. That’s really what the American people want, isn’t it?
JW: As you suggested, it’s a familiar view of America’s past: the great white men and their heroic achievements. This is how American history was taught when Trump himself was in high school: no civil rights movement, no feminist movement, no gay liberation movement, no Mexicans, no Muslims. This is the America Trump remembers when he says, “Make America Great Again.”
You might be wondering, why does he care so much about the story? We fear that no one will major in history anymore, that classes will be closed and TAs will be laid off. But you can understand why it’s so important for him to regain control of how we understand American history. This is the America he wants to make great again. Last time we spoke, you said that “history is hard to suppress.” And you talked about it again a few minutes ago. I wonder if you could explain this a little more.
BG: Well, I think we’ve spent decades and decades expanding our ideas about American history, expanding the study of American history. And it exists. So unless we embark, which we certainly wouldn’t, on massive book burnings and the imprisonment of history professors, I think these stories exist, the research is there. And if the federal government can’t pick up these stories, others will.
I think there’s really value in continuing to study some of the touchstones, the most important figures of America’s past, the figures that have been brought up again and again. So, I’m not one to not watch George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett, and Abraham Lincoln. And I believe in this kind of story. I am a political historian. I think it’s important. But it should not be studied to the exclusion of studying the worlds in which these men existed, the other people who played a truly important role in the creation of American politics, society, and institutions. And I think we’re kind of locked in this country in an either/or divide that’s both methodological: “Who do you study? How much power do they have? Do you do history from the top down and the bottom up?” – and then ideological in the sense of this great ongoing debate about how to tell history.
It’s true that if anyone thought history didn’t matter, the Trump administration believes that the study of history — the way we teach it, the way we learn it, the way we tell it — believes that it really, really matters. So, I guess it’s a sort of vote of confidence for the history profession. Maybe.
JW: Beverly Gage – she teaches American history at Yale. His new book is This land is your land A road trip through American history. Bev, thanks for speaking with us today.
BG: Thanks, Jon.
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Jon W iener Jon Wiener is editor-in-chief of The nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: Los Angeles in the 1960s.
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