Inside the Holocaust Museum’s quiet changes
With help from Eli Okun, Ali Bianco and Makayla Gray
Good Sunday morning and Happy Easter, Passover and spring to all who celebrate. This is Irie Sentner. Drop me a line at [email protected].
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 Playbook 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 Playbook, 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 Playbook 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, “The allegations made by the two former employees that we have retreated from this content are false.” The spokesperson added, “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 — reviewed by Playbook.
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 Playbook 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 told Playbook he was “surprised” by the “really abrupt” timing of the cancellation.
“It just feels like a shame for this to happen in any context,” he 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.”
SUNDAY BEST …
— House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on how Democrats would handle a huge supplemental war funding request from the White House, on ABC’s “This Week”: “Listen, the Department of Defense has been given over a trillion dollars within the last year. They have more than enough resources, as far as we can tell, in order to do what is necessary. At the same period of time, Congress has to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
— Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) on the rescue of a U.S. airman in Iran, on “Fox News Sunday”: “I just got off the phone with a senior administration official who was deeply involved in every step of the operation, and there’s just so many heroes in this story. The fact that the president, the secretary of Defense, the chairman and the military leadership would do anything necessary to get this airman back on our side, back home … This airman was an absolute hero. He climbed 7,000 feet. When the planners were trying to identify where he was, they couldn’t imagine that he was both injured and was able to get to that point where he could eventually be rescued.”
— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on whether he’d vote for Trump’s next AG nominee, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I never start off as a no. But here’s the lesson from Pam Bondi, Kristen. The AG is supposed to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and have an independent gravitas and integrity. Pam Bondi threw all that away, and she still got fired. … She basically sold out her own integrity. She couldn’t even look at herself in a mirror. And she still got sacked. That should be a lesson to whoever is the next nominee for AG. Be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, and don’t let the president cause you to trim your conscience.”
— Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on federal cuts to health care and SNAP, on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “It is a deeply unfair ask to ask states and/or governors, because we do things that the federal government has never done: We actually balance our budgets. And it is an unfair ask to ask us to take on what should be a joint responsibility, because the federal government has decided to stop doing its job.”
TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
7 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR
1. WAR REPORT: In a dramatic operation, U.S. Special Operations forces went into the Iranian mountains to rescue the injured airman whose plane had been shot down, Trump announced overnight. The president called it “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History” — and noted that a separate rescue also saved another U.S. pilot — without any American troops dying. It was a stunning conclusion to a nearly two-day scramble by both the U.S. and Iran to try to reach the airman first. Trump said he’ll hold a press conference at 1 p.m. tomorrow.
The successful rescue amounts to a significant accomplishment for the U.S. that prevented Iran from landing a big symbolic blow, with Trump eager to tout a daring military victory. The CIA also used a “deception campaign” in Iran to seed the news that the airman had already been rescued before he actually was, per Reuters’ Phil Stewart and Menna Alaaeldin. But Iran, too, showed that its airspace is not yet so easy for Americans to attack: Parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf posted that “if the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.” NYT’s Erika Solomon writes, “To have both sides so emboldened at this moment is particularly precarious for the region.”
The next escalation: Trump has given Iran a deadline of tomorrow to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but Tehran doesn’t seem inclined to comply. This morning, Trump posted an astonishing Easter-morning warning: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” he wrote, per POLITICO’s Jacob Wendler. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Almost all of the U.S.’ JASSM-ER cruise missiles are being pulled from elsewhere for the Iran war, Bloomberg’s Gerry Doyle reports.
“If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil,” Trump told Fox News’ Trey Yingst.
Attacking civilian power plants, as Trump has repeatedly threatened, would likely be a war crime under international law. But some of his top advisers have argued to him, and Trump has agreed, that infrastructure like roads and electric plants is fair game “because destroying them could cripple the country’s missile and nuclear programs,” WSJ’s Michael Gordon and Alex Ward report. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one of the officials making that case to Trump, rose to prominence on Fox News in part by defending some American convicted war criminals as “heroes” who’d been unfairly railroaded.
More from the war: New attacks were reported in Lebanon, Iran, Israel, Bahrain and Kuwait. … Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled the green cards and visas of two of Qassem Soleimani’s relatives and two other Iranians with ties to the regime, per the AP. … With the Strait of Hormuz mostly shuttered, stranded commercial shipping crews are increasingly running low on fresh water and food, WSJ’s Rebecca Feng reports.
2. SCHOOL DAZE: “Judge blocks Trump’s college admissions data push in 17 states,” by POLITICO’s Bianca Quilantan: It’s “a major blow to his crackdown on the use of race in college admissions. … [Judge Dennis] Saylor’s preliminary injunction is a stark example of how the administration’s efforts to dismantle the Education Department are getting in the way of its policy goals.”
3. AFTER PAM BONDI: More changes could be coming to the top echelons of the Justice Department. CBS’ Jennifer Jacobs and Sarah Lynch scooped that senior officials have eyed Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, for a promotion and Associate AG Stanley Woodward for a demotion. And as Todd Blanche steps into the role as acting AG under pressure from Trump to weaponize law enforcement politically, people close to him tell WSJ’s Sadie Gurman and colleagues that Blanche “genuinely shares Trump’s belief that he was wrongly targeted by years of federal investigations.”
But but but: NYT’s Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush write that Trump might be disappointed by Blanche — or anybody else. “Mr. Trump is searching for a tougher version of Ms. Bondi but the fault lies not in the shirking weakness of those he has called upon to execute his will, but rather in the impossibility of his request — to bring criminal charges against political targets with little to no evidence or legal justification.”
4. WHAT IMMIGRATION PIVOT? “Stephen Miller Is Still Pursuing His Immigration Agenda, but More Quietly,” by NYT’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs and colleagues: “Far from acknowledging defeat, [Stephen] Miller appears to have simply adjusted his strategy in an effort to minimize political fallout. … He is pushing for new ways to squeeze the lives of undocumented immigrants and those with legal protections, such as making it harder to get public housing or other benefits … He has targeted those with refugee status, particularly Somalis, a group he has long derided. He is also putting the finishing touches on a rule to block green cards for immigrants who might need public assistance.”
More immigration reading: Doctors from 39 countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban have lost their jobs or seen their professional futures imperiled in the U.S., often in areas with dire physician shortages, NYT’s Miriam Jordan reports. And in Donna, Texas, NYT’s Edgar Sandoval has the story of a group of five siblings, ages 11 to 22, who’ve had to take care of each other after ICE arrested both of their parents.
5. UKRAINE LATEST: “Ukraine Expects Top US Envoys in Kyiv This Month to Reboot Talks,” by Bloomberg’s Volodymyr Verbianyi and Olesia Safronova: “Ukraine expects top envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to lead a US delegation to Kyiv this month, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff said … The team may arrive shortly after Orthodox Easter, which is celebrated on April 12 … [T]his would mark their first visit to Ukraine. Budanov said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham could also be part of the team. … A US official said a potential trip by Witkoff and Kushner to Ukraine is under discussion but has not yet been confirmed.”
6. THE TAXMAN COMETH: It’s tax filing season — the moment that Republicans have long awaited, when they hope many Americans will start to feel the financial benefits of last year’s massive domestic policy law and tax cuts. NYT’s Andrew Duehren spoke with dozens of taxpayers around the country and found many of them thrilled to get bigger refunds, particularly the wealthy, while some low-income people saw little benefit. One of the prominent new cuts — “no tax on overtime” — has proven way more popular than expected, WSJ’s Richard Rubin and Ashlea Ebeling report. The number of returns that have claimed the tax break so far is roughly double what was projected last year.
7. DANCE OF THE SUPERPOWERS: “‘Walking on eggshells’: How Trump is managing his delicate China truce,” by POLITICO’s Diana Nerozzi and Megan Messerly: “The Trump administration is filled with China hawks who have spent the first 15 months in office pushing for a harder break with Beijing. But what President Donald Trump wants from his trip to China next month isn’t a confrontation — it’s a win. It’s a goal so important to the president that administration officials are under orders not to rock the boat with China, especially ahead of the trip. Two officials are enforcing that edict: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent … and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.”
STRICTLY BALLROOM — The Trump administration filed an emergency motion trying to overturn a federal judge’s order to stop work on the White House ballroom, per Reuters. The National Park Service claimed that the ruling was “threatening grave national-security harms.”
TRANSITION — Gavin Humble will be VP of political operations at Campaign Engine. He previously was president of 5 Point Strategy.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Mary Katharine Ham … Annie Gowen … Matt Gertz of Media Matters … Adam Rubenstein … CNN’s Dan Berman … POLITICO’s Maya Kaufman … Jacqueline Usyk … AFGE’s Eric Heggie … PBS’ Sam Lane … Yasmeen Alamiri … Jesse Rifkin … NYT’s Jill Rayfield … Shea Miller … Josh Culling of Dezenhall Resources … Sarah Horvitz … former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler … former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky … former Reps. Peter King (R-N.Y.), Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) and Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) … Terry Szuplat … Adham Sahloul … Luke and Brian Principato … Benjamin Rosenbaum … Rory Heslington of Autos Drive America … Heather Hopkins of Amazon … Miles Lichtman … Melissa Shuffield … Teri Galvez … Oni Chaytor … Microsoft’s Howard Wachtel … Ohio state treasurer candidate Seth Walsh … Jimmy Peacock of Cornerstone
Send Playbookers tips to [email protected] or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Giuseppe Macri and deputy editor Garrett Ross.
