Erasing history must not go unnoticed

By Alyssa Roberts

In the early hours of the morning on June 28, 1969, just outside Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, a revolution occurred that would change America’s history forever.

What became known as the Stonewall Riots were a passionate rebellion against the brutalization of LGBTQIA+ people. Hundreds of marginalized people from all walks of life collectively decided that they were not going to be treated like subhumans because of their gender identity or sexual orientation … at least, not without putting up a fight.

Within weeks of the 2025 presidential inauguration, an important part of this critical moment in history was censored and removed from government websites by President Donald Trump’s orders. Despite transgender women being among the most influential figures during the riots, all mentions of transgender people were scrubbed from the National Park Service’s website for the Stonewall Monument. 

As a snapshot from the internet archival database the Wayback Machine shows, before Feb. 14, the website read, “Stonewall was a milestone for LGBTQ civil rights that provided momentum for a movement.”

As of Nov. 10, though, the website has removed the phrase “LGBTQ” from all of its pages. The aforementioned quote now reads, “Stonewall was a milestone for gay and lesbian civil rights that provided momentum for a movement.”

The website made this change to comply with President Trump’s Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which declared, among other things, that “[a]gencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.” 

This executive order has led to the censorship of scientifically-backed research and verified history related to transgender people. According to NewsNation, over 3,000 datasets were erased from data.gov, a publicly-available source of statistics. Many were claimed to be removed because they contained content about gender identity or sexual orientation. 

But it did not stop there.

Executive Order 11246, “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” demanded an end to diversity, equity and inclusion, which it claimed was a form of illegal discrimination.

A New York Times article published on Feb. 2 claims that around 8,000 government webpages removed or censored content to comply with this order.

The U.S. Department of Defense issued a memo that instructed all military media platforms to remove all content that “focus[es] on immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity or sex.” The Army and Navy removed pages about the Navajo Code Talkers and the history of women in the military. Tens of thousands of historical photographs were marked for removal by the Pentagon, many of which featured war heroes, women and people of color. 

While some content has been restored since the initial purge due to public backlash, many historical resources have been entirely lost, or are now only accessible through internet archives like the Wayback Machine.

Having erased DEI initiatives across government websites, the Trump administration then turned its attention to museums.

In an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” the president took aim at museums and programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.” 

Trump notoriously said that the Smithsonian museums seemed too focused on “how bad slavery was,” a comment that drew public mockery and ire.

Trump’s actions bring to light a very important question: Should the president have the right to censor American history?

The answer, to me, is obvious: no. Of course not.

Integral to the American experience of freedom is the system of governmental checks and balances that prevent too much power from falling into the hands of any one individual. No one person — not the president, nor any other government individual — should have the power to forcibly remove publicly available information that is, by all accounts, historically accurate and reliable, solely because it does not align with their political agenda. It is a dangerous precedent to set.

If we allow this to continue, what will be targeted next? What groups will be forbidden to research? Which heroes will be forgotten or written out of our history textbooks? What will the next generation of children grow up learning?

History is crucial, and to erase it is criminal. After all, as the adage goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Alyssa Roberts is a sophomore English major