Friday, August 8, 2025

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds; The New York Times, August 4, 2025

  , The New York Times; Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds

"Even as paper mills have worked to keep their efforts hidden, Dr. Abalkina has traced the output of companies in Russia, Iran and other countries, and found thousands of their papers in print. “You learn to see the patterns,” she said.

Dr. Amaral and his colleagues have now analyzed those patterns, using network theory and other statistical techniques. “We tried to give a picture of what’s below the surface,” said Reese Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and an author of the new study.

For their analysis, the scientists built a database of more than a million scientific papers. They searched for the papers in online forums where sleuths share duplicated images and tortured phrases, as well as the Retraction Watch Database, maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity.

The researchers compiled a list of 30,000 papers that have either been retracted or show signs of having come from a paper mill. They discovered connections between the papers that strongly hinted that they were the product of large-scale fraud. Many of these connections linked clusters of editors and authors who often worked together.

“There are huge networks that are very densely connected, where they’re all sending their papers to one another,” Dr. Richardson said. “If that’s not collusion, I don’t know what is.”"

 MELISSA GOLDIN , AP; FACT FOCUS: RFK Jr.'s reasons for cutting mRNA vaccine not supported by evidence

"Although mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. incorrectly argued they are ineffective to justify the Department of Health and Human Service’s recent decision to cancel $500 millionin government-funded research projects to develop new vaccines using the technology.

The longtime vaccine critic said in an X video posted Tuesday evening that mRNA vaccines do not adequately prevent upper respiratory infections such as COVID-19 and the flu, advocating instead for the development vaccines that use other processes.

COVID-19 is the only virus for which real-world data on mRNA vaccine effectiveness is currently available, as mRNA vaccines for other diseases, including the flu, are still under development. The two scientists whose discoveries enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 won a Nobel Prize in 2023 for their work."

What if You Can’t Believe the Official Numbers?; The New York Times, August 8, 2025

  , The New York Times; What if You Can’t Believe the Official Numbers?

"Imagine living in a country where you can’t trust the government’s numbers."

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

After years of lap-dog performances, Oklahoma’s Ethics Commission has finally found its bite; Oklahoma Voice, August 4, 2025

 Janelle Specklein , Oklahoma Voice; After years of lap-dog performances, Oklahoma’s Ethics Commission has finally found its bite

"Hats off to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, which over the course of the past few months has seemingly transformed itself from a toothless shih tzu into an aggressive, but well-trained pitbull that’s going for the jugular.

For years, the agency and its governing board inspired about as much fear as a cute baby bunny would into the state employees, lobbyists and political candidates that they were supposed to hold accountable. 

The body had also demonstrated a propensity for secrecy, which kept the public in the dark about what they were doing. In 2023, Attorney General Gentner Drummond accused the public board of violating the state Open Meeting Act by discussing the candidate qualifications and details of the search process for their next executive director behind closed doors.

But in recent months something — or someone — has knocked the board’s rose-colored glasses askew, and politicians, lobbyists and statewide political campaigns have been in for a rude awakening. Democrats and Republicans are suddenly discovering they’re dealing with a board that has plenty of teeth and is willing to fight for Oklahomans, consequences be damned.

It’s been an inspiring sight to behold following years of lackluster performance.

In the past few months, Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters agreed to pay an $18,300 settlement in connection with an improper transfer of funds for a school board election in Jenks and a $5,000 penalty for using his state social media account for personal reasons. Shelley Zumwalt, who once served as a Cabinet secretary for Gov. Kevin Stitt, agreed to pay a $20,000 fine and not to hold any position funded with state dollars for two years to resolve an ethics case involving contracts awarded to a firm her husband worked at. The Commission entered into a settlement agreement with Rep. Ajay Pittman, D-Oklahoma City, to pay the agency $35,000 for a variety of ethics issues related spending campaign funds.

Earlier this month, the Commission disclosed that they’re planning to open another formal investigation into Pittman and will pursue the case in court after she missed payments.

They’ve also disclosed that they’re pursuing a case against the Gamefowl Commission on accusations that it violated financial disclosure rules. The group had been lobbying to reduce the penalty for cockfighting from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Oklahomans appear to finally have the type of board they’ve long deserved and hoped for since 1990 when they voted to create the Ethics Commission and enshrine it into the state’s Constitution so that lawmakers couldn’t abolish it."

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

All Nations LibGuide: Introduction, 2025

 

All Nations LibGuide: Introduction

"Librarians will continue to ensure that everyone has equal access to information. It is one of the tenets of librarianship, and it is something that we are here to do as trusted service professionals in our communities." 
—Cindy Hohl, Dakota of the Santee Sioux Nation, American Library Association President 2024-2025

The All Nations resource guide highlights the impact of Indigenous Librarianship and the importance of serving the library and information needs of Indigenous and Native peoples. It contains information on equitable access to information, literacy, welcoming spaces, and sustainability for future generations of library staff and patrons. The collection of resources throughout the guide are primarily Indigenous-centric and includes scholarly works from allies and non-Native librarians in tribal and mainstream libraries. As sovereign nations, the guide includes references to treaties and federal and state resources. 

This introductory page features a guide on terminology, allyship, stereotypes, and land acknowledgments, as well as digital maps for use in learning and teaching and an informative video on why treaties matter."

Seventy Years Ago, Johnny Cash Recorded ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and Became a Folk Hero for the Ignored and Downtrodden; Smithsonian Magazine, July 30, 2025

 Raj Tawney, Smithsonian Magazine; Seventy Years Ago, Johnny Cash Recorded ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and Became a Folk Hero for the Ignored and Downtrodden

"Throughout his five-decade career, Cash performed for thousands of incarcerated people across the country, appearing in-concert at over 30 prisons, where he’d always include “Folsom Prison Blues” in his set. By showing them his respect, the inmates often felt he was one of their own and treated him in kind. Though he’d been arrested seven times for minor offenses, some due to his struggles with substance abuse, he never served prison time. Yet somehow, he found a way to relate to and empathize with prisoners while the rest of society turned their backs on them. He even testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on prison reform in 1972 and continued to advocate for prison conditions with six sitting presidents."

Trump firing of statistics chief puts US data credibility at risk, experts warn; The Guardian, August 5, 2025

 , The Washington Post ; The truth hurts

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/04/trump-bls-commissioner-firing/

Trump firing of statistics chief puts US data credibility at risk, experts warn; The Guardian, August 5, 2025

   , The Guardian; Trump firing of statistics chief puts US data credibility at risk, experts warn

"Donald Trump’s firing of the head of the main agency for producing jobs figures risks propelling the US into the same category as countries notorious for “cooking the books” such as Argentina and Greece, experts have warned.

Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner last Friday, after accusing her agency of “faking” the latest employment figures for “political purposes,” which showed the US economy adding a lower-than-expected 73,000 jobs in July.

The BLS, the US government official source for labor statistics since 1884, also revised down the estimates of new positions created in May and June by a combined 258,000.

Trump provided no evidence for his accusations against McEntarfer, which he reinforced in social media posts on Monday, calling the bureau’s latest reports “rigged” and concocted.

But his decision jeopardizes the US’s tradition of impartial and reliable statistic collection on which the country’s economic stability and international reputation depends, specialists have told the Guardian.

Erica Groshen, McEnterfer’s predecessor as BLS commissioner during Barack Obama’s presidency, warned earlier this year that an impending civil-servant rule change that presaged last Friday’s sacking could usher in a “politicization” of government statistical bodies – whereby experts are pressured to produce massaged numbers that fitted an incumbent president’s agenda.

She raised the specter of Greece and Argentina, where official statistics became discredited as a result of government-instigated misrepresenting of figures."

Monday, August 4, 2025

Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year; Iowa Capital Dispatch, July 23, 2025

  , Iowa Capital Dispatch ; Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year

"State lawmakers across the country filed more bills to restrict or protect libraries and readers in the first half of this year than last year, a new report found.

The split fell largely along geographic lines, according to the report from EveryLibrary, a group that advocates against book bans and censorship...

The geographic split among these policies is stark.

In Southern and Plains states, new laws increasingly criminalize certain actions of librarians, restrict access to materials about gender and race, and transfer decision-making power to politically appointed boards or parent-led councils.

Texas alone passed a trio of sweeping laws stripping educators of certain legal protections when providing potentially obscene materials; banning public funding for instructional materials containing obscene content; and giving parents more authority over student reading choices and new library additions.

In contrast, several Northeastern states have passed legislation protections for libraries and librarians and anti-censorship laws.

New JerseyDelawareRhode Island and Connecticut have each enacted “freedom to read” or other laws that codify protections against ideological censorship in libraries."

‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has; The New York Times, July 27, 2025

 Charlie English , The New York Times; ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has


[Kip Currier: It's incredibly heartening -- and disheartening at the same time -- to read about post-WWII "CIA Book Program" efforts to provide Soviet-propagandized citizens with access to books, ideas, and information (e.g. George Orwell's "1984"), but then reflect on book banning efforts in American libraries and censorship and erasure of information in museums like the Smithsonian right now.]

[Excerpt]

"There are myriad reasons the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989. The economic stagnation of the East and the war in Afghanistan are two of the most commonly cited. But literature also played its part, thanks to a long-running U.S. operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency that covertly moved millions of books through the Iron Curtain in a bid to undermine Communist Party censorship.

While it is hard to quantify the program’s effect in absolute terms, its history offers valuable lessons for today, not least since some of the very same titles and authors the C.I.A. sent East during the Cold War — including “1984”— are now deemed objectionable by a network of conservative groups across the United States.

First published in English in 1949, Orwell’s novel describes the dystopian world of Oceania, a totalitarian state where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works in a huge government department called the Ministry of Truth. The ministry is ironically named: Its role is not to safeguard the truth but to destroy it, to edit history to fit the present needs of the party and its leader, Big Brother, since, as the slogan runs, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

In the real Soviet system, every country had its equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, modeled on the Moscow template. In Poland, the largest Eastern European nation outside the Soviet Union, this censorship and propaganda apparatus was called the Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performances, and its headquarters occupied most of a city block in downtown Warsaw.

From art to advertising, television to theater, the Main Office reached into all aspects of Polish life. It had employees in every TV and radio station, every film studio and every publishing house. Every typewriter in Poland had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed even to buy a ream of paper. Books that did not conform to the censor’s rules were pulped.

The result was intellectual stultification, what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz called a logocracy, a society where words and language were manipulated to fit the propaganda needs of the regime...

Troublesome people, inconvenient facts and awkward areas of journalistic inquiry were removed from public life...

Orwell was made a “nonperson” in the Soviet Union, after the publication of his satire of the Russian Revolution, “Animal Farm,” in 1945. It was dangerous even to mention the author’s name in print there, and when “1984” was published it was banned in the Eastern Bloc in all languages. But when copies of the novel did slip through the Iron Curtain, they had enormous power. The book was “difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess,” Milosz wrote, but Orwell — who had never visited Eastern Europe — fascinated people there because of “his insight into details they know well.”

What some Eastern European readers of contraband copies of “1984” suspected, but very few knew for sure, was that these and millions of other uncensored texts were not reaching them entirely by chance, but were part of a decades-long U.S. intelligence operation called the “C.I.A. book program,” based for much of its existence in the nondescript office building at 475 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan. There, a small team of C.I.A. employees organized the infiltration of 10 million books and periodicals into the Eastern Bloc, sending literature by every imaginable means: in trucks fitted with secret compartments, on yachts that traversed the stormy Baltic, in the mail, or slipped into the luggage of countless travelers from Eastern Europe who dropped in at C.I.A. distribution hubs in the West."

The DC public library system falls way short of ‘Abundance’; The Hill, August 3, 2025

CHASE LANFER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR, The Hill ; The DC public library system falls way short of ‘Abundance’

"Book clubs nationwide have been talking for months about whether you are “Abundance-pilled,” a reference to the recent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that has made it into the lexicon of many public policy nerds.

And public policy nerds happen to be everywhere in the District of Columbia. That is why the waitlist to borrow this book at the D.C. Public Library is more than 300 people long for a hard copy, over 500-long for an eBook and more than 800-long for an audiobook.

How many copies does the D.C. library system have of this New York Times-bestseller, which was published in March? Well, from March to July, the total was just one. One hard copy, zero eBook registrations and zero audio books.

Only in August did the D.C. public library finally expand its catalogue to 51 copies, which is still little relief for the hundreds who have been waiting months. Think of the debates we missed out on, the replies we never sent. The online discourse was impoverished by the absence of witty, wonky D.C.-based keyboard warriors.

Other library systems nearby have copies of “Abundance.” The Arlington Public Library has had 47 copies all along. Fairfax County has 45 and Montgomery County has 18 hardcover copies, 63 eBook registrations and 75 audiobooks. So these books have been lining the shelves of our suburban friends’ and families’ local libraries. Just not ours...

Could it be that one of the places we need to modernize by removing regulations is our public library? I reached out to the director of new title procurement at the D.C. library, asking about the policies regarding the acquisition of new copies, but I did not receive a response."


Sunday, August 3, 2025

Experts Raise Concerns Over Trump’s White House Ballroom Renovation Plans; The New York Times, August 3, 2025

 , The New York Times; Experts Raise Concerns Over Trump’s White House Ballroom Renovation Plans

"Experts on historic preservation are raising concerns over the feasibility of President Trump’s plans to complete large-scale renovations to the White House by the end of his term, and whether the project can be done while respecting the historic nature of the building.

Mr. Trump unveiled plans on Thursday to construct a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot state ballroom off the East Wing to be completed “long before” the end of his term in 2029. The project would be one of the largest renovations to the iconic building in decades...

The White House, the Supreme Court building, the Capitol and all their “related buildings and grounds” are exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which requires federal agencies to assess and mitigate adverse effects to historic properties and seek consultation through a formal review process.

Instead, the White House has its own committee that provides advice on the “preservation and the interpretation of the museum character” of the building. The Committee for the Preservation of the White House — chaired by the director of the National Park Service — is made up of several federal officials and a number of members appointed by the president.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said on Thursday in a news release that the administration was “fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House.”

Still, the committee’s recommendations are not binding, giving the president significant leeway to do as he wishes."

He thought he was too old to be an EMT. At 76, he’s saved countless lives.; The Washington Post, August 1, 2025

 , The Washington Post ; He thought he was too old to be an EMT. At 76, he’s saved countless lives.

"The day a man collapsed in a parking lot in Bethesda, Maryland, EMT Ed Levien rushed in an ambulance to the scene, where the injured man repeatedly called for Jesus.

“Jesus isn’t here,” Levien recalled telling him. “You’ve got to put up with me.”

The man looked at Levien’s mustached face, his thinning gray hair and his round glasses and replied, “Okay, Pops.”

That’s how Levien, one of the oldest EMTs in Maryland, got his nickname a few years ago in the volunteer job that — to his surprise — has become an unintended second career and reshaped his identity.

“I never had an impact on anyone until I started doing this,” Levien, who previously worked in advertising, told The Washington Post.

Levien began working as a volunteer EMT when he was 65 years old, far surpassing the age of his colleagues at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad. After recovering from an unexpected injury — with the help of strangers — he decided to help others for as long as his body would allow."

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Fantastic Four vs. Superman promised to be the showdown of the summer, but the real winners are comic book movie fans after a half-decade of mediocrity; Games Radar, July 30, 2025

 , Games Radar; Fantastic Four vs. Superman promised to be the showdown of the summer, but the real winners are comic book movie fans after a half-decade of mediocrity

 "In one fell swoop, Fantastic Four and Superman have brightened things up and made everything fair game.

That's without even talking about the optimism and, yes, the punk rock of Reed Richards and Superman. We've had cynical heroes and self-destructive heroes aplenty. It feels good, in a real-world mired in turmoil, to have a set of heroes that are unabashedly working towards the greater good, sans the snark and snarling. They can use their stretchy fists and heat vision, respectively, sure, but they are emblematic of so much more – a chance to entertain and inspire a new generation of audiences and storytellers. Along the way, Marvel and DC had lost that idea. Now, it's back. DC may have just undergone a literal reboot but, for both, this resembles a creative reboot that should be the catalyst for the next decade of storytelling."

 Clay Wirestone, News From The States; For this Kansan, Fantastic Four and Superman films slice through grimness with moral clarity

"The films put me in mind of another Kansas Reflector columnist, Mark McCormick. Last week, he argued that attacks on the U.S. Department of Education undermine the common good.

Increasing waves of politicians exalt qualities that should disqualify them as public officials: a mistrust of government, demonizing opponents, and supporting private schools with public money,” Mark wrote. “These qualities should stand as barriers to candidacy, not bona fides.

Both the Fantastic Four and Superman devote themselves to the common good.

That’s why they’re superheroes — not because of their powers, but because of their morals. They serve humanity. They serve their country. They serve one another. The Fantastic Four literally contains a family: Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) and Sue Storm (the Invisible Woman) are a married couple, while Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) is Sue’s brother and Ben Grimm (the Thing) is a close friend. During the film, Reed and Sue welcome their son, Franklin, into the world.

“They are parents first,” director Matt Shakman told Variety. “They are scientists and explorers second. And they’re superheroes only when they have to be. I come at this as a dad and as a husband. That’s what makes it so special to me.”

Every summer brings superhero films. Almost every superhero film brings battles between good and evil. Yet these films, and this summer, suggest to me that both filmmakers and audiences yearn for more than thrills. They want clarity. They want warm, nurturing, uncomplicated goodness."

Superman’s Earthly Birthplace? It’s Cleveland, and It’s Embracing Its Hero.; The New York Times, August 1, 2025

 , The New York Times; Superman’s Earthly Birthplace? It’s Cleveland, and It’s Embracing Its Hero.

"In a 2007 article, Sangiacomo asked, “Isn’t it time Cleveland embraced its most famous son?” That article then led to the formation of the Siegel and Shuster Society, a nonprofit that is now spearheading the construction of the Superman memorial. (Sangiacomo is a founding board member and the vice president of the society.)...

The Siegel & Shuster Superman Plaza will sit at the city’s Huntington Convention Center and include statues of Superman in midflight, of Siegel and Shuster, and of Siegel’s wife, Joanne, the original model for Lois Lane...

For Siegel and Shuster, it was a long journey to publication after they created their superhero. They pitched Superman to many publishers before National Comics Publications, the forerunner of DC Comics, took a chance on him in 1938. Having no clue how successful the character would become, the pair sold the rights to their creation for just $130 (around $3,000 in today’s dollars). When they later tried to renegotiate, DC Comics stripped them of credit and denied them further work. Siegel eventually became a typist in Los Angeles and Shuster a messenger in Manhattan. It was not until the 1970s that a publicity campaign brought them recognition and a substantial annuity...

Justin M. Bibb, the mayor of Cleveland, said in an interview that he understood why Superman resonates today in these “chaotic and challenging times.”

“People want to feel good about being better neighbors to one another,” he said. “And so, hopefully, this film inspires us all to be our own version of our best selves.”"

The Library Dads: Atlanta fathers turning pages and changing lives; 11Alive, July 30, 2025

 Alexis Derickson , 11Alive; The Library Dads: Atlanta fathers turning pages and changing lives

"Two years ago, an Atlanta man sat on the floor of a local library, gently cradling his newborn daughter. 

She was just four months old, but already, this dad was searching for something the two could bond over together. Something that was just theirs.

Khari Arnold, founder of The Library Dads, soon found himself returning to the library each week, tucked into a reading routine. Arnold started to notice a difference not just in their relationship, but in his daughter Ariah’s development. Doctors said her vocabulary was over 20 times larger than that of her peers by 18 months old...


Their father-daughter tradition became the foundation for The Library Dads, an Atlanta-based nonprofit redefining early literacy while empowering men through fatherhood. Founded by Arnold, the group draws dozens of dads across metro Atlanta and is grounded in three pillars: bonding, books, and brotherhood."

Judge Declines to Order Trump Administration to Restore Research Cuts; The New York Times, August 1, 2025

 Benjamin WeiserKatrina Miller and , The New York Times ; Judge Declines to Order Trump Administration to Restore Research Cuts

"A federal judge in New York declined in a ruling on Friday to order the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in terminated funding that had been awarded to research institutions by the National Science Foundation.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in May in which a coalition of 16 states argued that the grants were critical to maintaining the United States as a leader in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, subjects, and that the cuts were “in complete derogation of the policies and priorities set by Congress.”...

The judge, John P. Cronan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, found that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the suit because it sought monetary damages from the federal government. Such cases, he wrote, must be brought before the Court of Federal Claims in Washington...

“This evidence powerfully undermines plaintiffs’ argument that the priority directive renders this class of projects categorically ineligible for funding,” wrote Judge Cronan, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Trump in 2019 and confirmed the following year."

Friday, August 1, 2025

Corporation for Public Broadcasting to close after US funding cut; The Guardian, August 1, 2025

 , The Guardian ; Corporation for Public Broadcasting to close after US funding cut

"The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Friday it will shut down operations after losing federal funding, delivering a blow to America’s public media system and the more than 1,500 local stations that have relied on its support for nearly six decades.

The closure follows the Republican-controlled House’s decision last month to eliminate $1.1bn in CPB funding over two years, part of a $9bn reduction to public media and foreign aid programs.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s president and chief executive.

The 57-year-old corporation distributed more than $500m annually to PBS, NPR and 1,500 local stations nationwide. Despite the federal support, stations mostly rely on viewer donations, corporate sponsorships and local government support for the remainder."

Trump has weaponized the government to replace ‘wokeness’ with his version of diversity; CNN, July 30, 2025

 , CNN ; Trump has weaponized the government to replace ‘wokeness’ with his version of diversity

"It’s not news that the government is using withheld federal funds, the threat of blocked mergers and other strong-arm tactics to exploit pressure points and impose President Donald Trump’s version of diversity on the country.

It is new that the efforts are yielding results.

In higher education: The Department of Justice has transformed its Civil Rights Division into a strike team against what it views as unwarranted and illegal diversity efforts in higher education."

Building presidential library for John Adams and son in Quincy, Massachusetts is of "national importance," CEO says; CBS News, July 31, 2025

Paula Ebben, Mike Toole, CBS News; Building presidential library for John Adams and son in Quincy, Massachusetts is of "national importance," CEO says

"A presidential library for John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams is a step closer to becoming a reality in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Adams was the nation's second president, and his son was the sixth, but there's no presidential library for either of them."

Stacks of Cash; The New Yorker, August 1, 2025

 ; The New Yorker; Stacks of Cash

"The idea of the Presidential library dates to the late nineteen-thirties, when Roosevelt decided to donate his papers to the federal government and move them to a fireproof building near his family home. According to Anthony Clark, a former congressional staffer who has written a book about Presidential libraries, Roosevelt made room to display memorabilia to the public “almost as an afterthought.” Most Presidential libraries would come to house both the paper trail of a Presidency, for researchers to consult, and also a commemorative museum, which is the bit that most tourists actually visit. Over time, these museums grew more ambitious, and sometimes proved to be of questionable historical value. Richard Nixon’s museum initially presented Watergate as a coup, and accused Woodward and Bernstein of bribery.

Roosevelt was under no legal obligation to make his papers publicly available—but since 1978, thanks to Nixon and Watergate, Presidential records have been considered federal property, and are supposed to be handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration. There has never been a governmental requirement to open an associated museum, but typically these have also been managed by nara. (Nixon’s was unusual in that it was run privately for many years; in 2007, nara took it over and ripped out and replaced the Watergate exhibit.) Before the government gets involved on the museum side, however, the structures must be planned and built using outside funds, making them, in practice, fuzzy mixes of the public and the private. When Presidential libraries are donated to the government, they must also hand over endowments to help defray future maintenance costs.

Barack Obama broke the mold: his Presidential museum, in Chicago, which somehow is still not open, is an entirely private endeavor, run by a foundation; his official records are being digitized and will continue to be supervised by nara. After this effective divorce of library and museum functions was announced, Clark expressed hope about the arrangement. “What were intended to be serious research centers have grown into flashy, partisan temples touting huckster history,” he wrote, in Politico. “Even though they are taxpayer-funded and controlled by a federal agency, the private foundations established by former presidents to build the libraries retain outsize influence.” The Obama model would at least keep the government out of the business of hagiography. Not everyone was supportive, however. Timothy Naftali, who was responsible for overhauling the Nixon facility as its first federal director and who is now a historian at Columbia, has argued that the private nature of Obama’s center is an impediment to nonpartisan public history. “It opens the door,” he said, “to a truly terrible Trump library.”"

Smithsonian Removes Reference to Trump’s Impeachments, but Says It Will Return; The New York Times, July 31, 2025

 , The New York Times; Smithsonian Removes Reference to Trump’s Impeachments, but Says It Will Return


[Kip Currier: Any reasonable, thinking person can see how unacceptable and troubling this is in a democracy, right?]


[Excerpt]

"The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History this month removed a label referring to President Trump’s two impeachments, a move museum officials said was part of a review of the institution’s content for bias.

The temporary label was added in 2021 to an exhibition about the American presidency. The label also included information about the impeachments of former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, as well as about former President Richard M. Nixon, who faced possible impeachment before resigning from office.

Mr. Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice, in 2019 and again in 2021. He was acquitted both times after facing trials in the Senate.

The removal of the label, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post, came after the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which governs the institution, recently committed to reviewing its content under pressure from the Trump administration. Mr. Trump has called for a more positive framing of the country’s history in Smithsonian museums, and tried to fire the director of the National Portrait Gallery, accusing her of being political."

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Judge Bars Trump Administration From Punishing 2 Law Professors for I.C.C. Work; The New York Times, July 30, 2025

  , The New York Times; Judge Bars Trump Administration From Punishing 2 Law Professors for I.C.C. Work

"A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred the Trump administration from imposing penalties on two law professors over their involvement with the International Criminal Court, finding that the threat violated their First Amendment rights...

Judge Furman’s ruling mirrored the conclusions of another judge during President Trump’s first term, who found in January 2021 that a similar executive order Mr. Trump had signed likely forced Mr. Rona and three other professors to abandon or reconsider speech and legal advocacy out of fear that the order could be enforced against them."