Reading archive 2025-06-05

Karine Jean-Pierre leaves Democratic Party, pens book about ‘broken’ White House: Former press secretary’s tome will publish in October, and its title is a nod to her recently announced departure from the Democratic Party to become an independent.

The Trump administration is trying to block politically inconvenient government data

The Smithsonian faces an existential crisis. The world is watching.: Trump’s effort to oust the director of the National Portrait Gallery could give him absolute control of Smithsonian content. - "The Smithsonian has a long and sadly craven history of caving to critics, including making changes to exhibitions after pressure from activists and members of Congress. Former Smithsonian secretary G. Wayne Clough censored an NPG exhibition of portraiture featuring LGBT people in 2010, after pressure from conservative Christian activists. Clough forced museum curators to remove a single video, by the gay artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz, which actually made the exhibition more popular when it traveled to Brooklyn and Tacoma, Washington.

...

"There is no middle road. Appeasement won’t work. The fate of the Smithsonian is now in the hands of Bunch and the regents, and the precedent they set will reverberate throughout every institution in America that, like the Smithsonian, is dedicated to the 'increase and diffusion of knowledge.'"

Defying Trump, National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet is still at work: The president said he had fired the museum leader — setting up a standoff between the White House and the Smithsonian.

Rising prices, war rooms and layoffs: The cost of Trump’s tariffs is coming: Retailers, wholesalers and distributors say shifting U.S. trade policies have led to pervasive uncertainty as they gear up for back-to-school and holiday orders.