President Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was,” CNN reports.

Said Trump: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

“I think FDR would recognize him… The whole campaign was about affordability.” 

— Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in an interview with Time, on Zohran Mamdani.

“The U.S. National Park Service will restore and reinstall the statue of a Confederate military officer in Washington, DC, after protesters toppled the monument five years ago,” CNN reports.

Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump is not the first president to mess with BLS. Richard Nixon decided that Jews were out to get him… and had his underlings draw up a list of Jews at BLS and then demote them.”

“As I said a while ago, pick a past presidential scandal and odds are Trump has topped it; in this case, Nixon didn’t publicly undermine the entire agency. Also, unlike Trump, Nixon used antisemitic slurs only in private (as far as I know), so no one found out until the White House tapes revealed them.”

The Smithsonian said on Saturday that it would restore information about President Donald Trump’s two impeachments to an exhibit in the National Museum of American History “in the coming weeks,” the Washington Post reports.

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

— President Trump, quoted by Politico, responding to news of special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017.

A new Morning Consult poll finds 53% of Americans don’t know why the American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence to separate from Britain on July 4, 1776.

New York Times: “During his first term, Mr. Trump told Kristi Noem — then a U.S. representative from South Dakota, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security — that his “dream” was to be on Mount Rushmore. She later gave Mr. Trump a model of Mount Rushmore with his face on it.”

“The idea has resurfaced since Mr. Trump returned to office. A congresswoman from Florida sponsored a bill in January to ‘direct the Secretary of the Interior to arrange for the carving of the figure of President Donald Trump on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.’ It was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources, which has yet to act on it.”

“If you look at the end of the Civil War — the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. If you take the end day — was it 1869? Or whatever.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters.

“I wonder if—you know, the Civil War, it always seemed to me maybe that could’ve been solved without losing 600,000-plus people.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters.

“The last time the United States held a national military parade was in June 1991, timed to welcome returning veterans of the 100-day Persian Gulf War,” NPR reports.

ABC News: Democrats slam military parade as Trump’s multimillion-dollar “birthday party.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new probe into the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, vowing accountability for what he called the Biden administration’s “disastrous and embarrassing” handling of the events that led to the deaths of 13 US troops, Bloomberg reports.

“For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected, from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity,” the AP reports.

“Now, the Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable.”