United States: Trump asks the courts to investigate “Woke” museums

Continuing his offensive against American educational and cultural institutions, Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he had asked justice to investigate museums throughout the country he accuses of being “wokes”, in particular concerning the history of slavery.

“Washington’s museums, but also throughout the country, are essentially the last remains of the +wokism +”, denounced the president on his social social network. “I gave instruction to my prosecutors to review (the policy of the) museums and to start exactly the same process followed with universities, where immense advances have been carried out,” added the country’s billionaire. ” + Woke + because wokism is over, “he proclaimed.

The White House had announced last week in a letter to the institution which manages around twenty public museums in Washington, the Smithsonian Institution, that the government was going to carry out an in-depth examination to ensure their “alignment” with the vision of the history of the United States advocated by Donald Trump, based on “truth and reason”.

“Smithsonian is out of control,” said Donald Trump, deploring that the museums of the federal capital present, according to him, a “horrible image of our country, (in particular) on the misdeeds of slavery (…) and nothing about its success and its brilliance”.

The American president to sign last March a decree aimed at regaining control of the content of the museums of Smithsonian, which he had already accused of “historical revisionism” and “racial indoctrination”, especially under his predecessors and political enemies Barack Obama (2009-2017) and Joe Biden (2021-2025).

The American government justified these measures against museums-which also affect the Washington cultural center, the Kennedy Center-by the 250th anniversary of the United States independence in 2026.

Donald Trump has been committed for seven months in a rapid recovery of cultural and educational institutions on which he has an influence, from museums to universities, in order to expurge them from what he considers to be progressive ideas in favor of minorities.

The English term “woke” and “wokism” are borrowed from African-American struggles, the meaning of which is “to be awake” to injustices. They have been recovered and diverted in a pejorative way by leaders and conservative movements in Europe and the United States, to denounce what they deem to be excesses of militancy in matters of struggle for minorities and against social and climatic injustices.