‘proactively Fall In Line:’ Holocaust Memorial Museum Quietly Changed Content After Trump Returned To Office

In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington quietly removed from its website educational resources about American racism and canceled a workshop about the “fragility of democracy.”

The changes, which have not been previously reported, came as Trump cracked down on what he called “corrosive ideology” at the Smithsonian Institution, demanding a slew of alterations at the world’s largest museum network to more closely align its content with his worldview. They also coincided with the administration’s efforts to remove content related to diversity, equity and inclusion from federal websites.

Unlike his posture toward the Smithsonian, Trump has not publicly commented on the USHMM’s content or publicly called for any modifications. But two former museum employees who left amid the changes told POLITICO they believed the museum was altering its content preemptively, so as to not draw unwanted negative attention from the Trump administration. Both were granted anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation.

“It seems like they were trying to proactively fall in line as to not then be forced to change,” one of the people said.

The museum pulled from its website a page called “Teaching Materials on Nazism and Jim Crow” at some point after Aug. 29, 2025, the last time the page was captured on the Internet Archive. That page provided lesson plans and resources about the connections between American de jure racism and the Nazi regime, including links to sites about “African American Soldiers during World War II” and “Afro-Germans during the Holocaust,” among other topics.

It also linked to a 2018 video on the museum’s YouTube channel featuring a conversation between a Holocaust survivor and a woman whose father was lynched in Alabama. That video is now unlisted, meaning it does not show up on the USHMM’s YouTube page but is still accessible via direct URL.

Leaders at the museum also renamed a one-day civic education workshop designed for college students from “Fragility of Democracy and the Rise of the Nazis” to “Before the Holocaust: German Society and the Nazi Rise to Power.” In an email, obtained by POLITICO, between a senior staff member at the museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education and a staffer planning the workshop, the senior staff member said the change was necessary due to “concerns regarding how the term fragility may be perceived or interpreted in the current climate.”

Since taking office, Trump has tightened his grip on the USHMM, an independent museum that relies on both private donations and federal appropriations and is not affiliated with the Smithsonian. In an unprecedented move last year, the president purged from its board several of President Joe Biden’s appointees before the end of their terms. And in the months since, he has installed his own loyalists on the board — most notably replacing Stuart Eizenstat, who helped found the museum, with GOP megalobbyist Jeffrey Miller as chair last month.

In an unsolicited statement to POLITICO during this story’s reporting, a museum spokesperson emphasized: “The Trump administration has not requested any changes to the Museum’s content or programming.”

Asked to respond specifically to the claims made in this story, the spokesperson said in a follow-up statement that “The allegations made by the two former employees that we have retreated from this content are false.” The spokesperson added that “Neither the Trump administration nor others ordered changes to the Museum’s content or programming.”

The spokesperson did not respond to specific questions about why the teaching materials page had been taken down, but provided links to active webpages on the museum’s site about racism in Germany and the U.S., the 1936 Olympics and Americans and the Holocaust.

Neither Miller nor the White House responded to requests for comment. Eizenstat declined to comment.

The “Fragility of Democracy” workshop was intended to engage students to “examine key questions, including: What motivated ordinary Germans to vote for an extremist party like the Nazis in free and fair elections? What factors strengthened or weakened democracy in 1920s Germany?” according to copies of two flyers advertising the workshop — one with the original name and one with the new name.

The program behind the workshop, called Civic Learning for Campus Communities, had started in 2020. After years of research and testing, the “Fragility of Democracy” workshop piloted in 2024. The program was canceled in July 2025.

In emails reviewed by POLITICO sent from a museum employee to two professors who had planned on hosting the workshops, the employee attributed the cancellation to “a set of cuts that are due to limited federal funds and a difficult fundraising environment.” But the employee — who has since left USHMM — said museum leadership had privately told them the cancellation was also about “shifting priorities.”

“The decisions here … from the name change to cutting the program, absolutely seem to be preemptive in order to save face and not cause any disturbances,” the second former staffer said. They added that there was concern about “engaging in conversations that might take the participant out of the context of Europe, 1933 to 1945, and into present day.”

The museum recorded a $52.4 million increase in net assets that fiscal year, and its total assets surpassed $1 billion, according to a public report that attributes that financial position to “strong support from the Museum’s donors and the success of fundraising campaigns.” The spokesperson did not respond directly to questions about why the program was canceled, and why that cancellation was attributed to fundraising challenges.

Marc Carpenter, a history professor at the University of Jamestown, had planned to host the workshop before being informed in July 2025 that the program was ending. He said he was “surprised” by the “really abrupt” timing of the cancellation.

“It just feels like a shame for this to happen in any context,” Carpenter said. “The museum generally brings together wonderful programming for universities, and it seemed especially suited to the call for civic engagement that seemed to be core to both what our university was doing, but also to what the museum’s mission was.”

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