#Colleen Shogan

[saywhat-politics]

The president has dismissed the top U.S. archivist after fuming about the agency’s role in the criminal classified-documents case against him.

President Donald Trump has fired the head of the National Archives, after complaining for nearly two years about the agency’s role in the Justice Department’s investigation and eventual prosecution of him over a slew of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago home following his first term.

The director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, Sergio Gor, announced in a social media post Friday that Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan had been removed from her position.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eli Stokols and Adam Cancryn at Politico:

President Joe Biden on Friday declared that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land, attempting to ratify a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a last-ditch effort to protect women’s reproductive rights. But Biden’s assertion may amount to little more than an expression of his opinion, with the White House acknowledging that it has no immediate force of law — and wouldn’t order the nation’s archivist to formally add it to the Constitution. “I have supported the Equal Rights Amendment for more than 50 years, and I have long been clear that no one should be discriminated against based on their sex,” Biden said in a statement. “We, as a nation, must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all.”

The move, which states that Biden personally believes the ERA has cleared all the hurdles to ratification, would be unlikely to carry weight unless courts agree with him, a hurdle even White House officials conceded as they made the announcement. If successful, the long-shot gambit would provide a dramatic coda to the 50-year effort to get sex-based equality into the Constitution and bolster Biden’s policy record. In Biden’s final days before turning the Oval Office over to President-elect Donald Trump, whose Supreme Court appointees helped to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, the statement on the ERA offered the departing president a final opportunity to push back at the laws that resulted from that decision in several states where lawmakers have restricted and even criminalized abortion procedures. The move shifts the spotlight to U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan, who is responsible for publishing amendments to the Constitution — but has previously said that the ERA’s eligibility has expired, and now could not be added unless Congress acts. Congress, under the control of Republicans, is unlikely to do so.

[...] The ERA would bar sex-based discrimination, including constraints on abortion, by states. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) argued last month in a New York Times op-ed, while urging Biden to formally direct the national archivist to add the ERA to the Constitution, that the amendment has met all the requirements for certification. It passed two-thirds of Congress in 1972 and, after sitting dormant for decades, was finally ratified by three-quarters of the states in 2020. But Donald Trump’s Justice Department said at the time that ratification took too long and the states missed the deadline. That’s a position Shogan supported in a statement last December. Biden disagrees, yet declined to force the issue by going as far as Gillibrand had requested and ordering the archivist to take action.

“On January 27, 2020, the Commonwealth of Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment,” Biden’s statement said. “The American Bar Association (ABA) has recognized that the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. I agree with the ABA and with leading legal constitutional scholars that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution.��� His statement concluded: “It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex.” The declaration is likely to win praise from advocates who have long pushed for the ERA’s recognition. But the move, coming just three days before Biden leaves office, raised questions about why a president who the White House said has long harbored this opinion did not act sooner.

President Biden declared today that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is the law of the land to become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, but doesn’t order the national archivist to formally approve its addition.

See Also:

NPR: Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear

AP: Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment should be considered ratified

[tiredflowercrown]

I hate that I'm digging and digging through tumblr to find someone talking about what is going on at the USA Nationl Archives to help raise awareness and I can't find anything

So for those who are unaware

It has recently come out that head archivist Colleen Shogan and her team have been removing topics and key items from exhibits set to show in 2025. This includes removing Japanese-American Internment camps from a WW2 exhibit, switching photos of Martin Luther King JR., Dolores Huerta, and Minnie Spotted-Wolf for photos of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and removing the patent for birth control from an exhibit about patents that changed the world.

They have said that images are too negative and controversial. A senior official went so far to tell employees that visitors shouldn't feel confronted. Colleen Shogan when reviewing an exhibit on westward expansion asked, why is it so much about Indians?

All of this is horrifying amounts of censorship from an institution and a profession that is supposed to be and is rooted in nonpartisanship. The point of an archive is to keep everything without bias. To tell the truth of history. This exposes just how much rewriting of history and censorship is happening currently in America because if the Archives, the supposed last resort against this, are hiding information, what does that say about our education. About our history. About the knowledge that is available to the public.

Here are some links to read further on this news including the original article breaking the news and the official response from the Archives

[historyhermann]

A link to a PDF version of the fourth newsletter I wrote in 2023! Give it a read if you have a chance!

[usnatarchives]

Dr. Colleen Shogan takes the oath of office, assuming the role of Archivist of the United States today. She is the 11th Archivist and the first woman to permanently hold this position.

Shogan will maintain two official presences on social media. Follow her at @aotus11_shogan on Instagram and Twitter.

Photo: Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan gets sworn into office by the National Archives and Records Administration Chief, Management and Administration Micah Cheatham on May 17, 2023. NARA photo by Susana Raab

[gregdotorg]

The US Government is back on its bullshit, censoring Dorothea Lange's photographs of WWII-era racist incarceration of American citizens and legal immigrants of Japanese descent it commissioned her to take.

[vague-humanoid]

The Wall Street Journal has an incredible story today. The National Archives museum, under Biden-appointed U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan, has been working to reshape its narrative of American history in order to make white conservatives more comfortable. The Journal describes a pattern of efforts to shape its newest upcoming exhibits to better fit right-wing narratives of U.S. history. The museum has removed references to Martin Luther King Jr., Japanese internment, Native Americans, union organizers, and birth control, because presenting American history honestly would make Republicans upset. 

The changes to the new exhibits are remarkable. A photo of King was replaced with one of Richard Nixon meeting Elvis Presley. A “proposed exhibit exploring changes to the Constitution since 1787,” including “amendments abolishing slavery and expanding the right to vote,” was reduced in size, and employees were told that “focusing on the amendments portrayed the Founding Fathers in a negative light.” Shogan “told employees to remove Dorothea Lange’s photos of Japanese-American incarceration camps from a planned exhibit because the images were too negative and controversial, according to documents and current and former employees” and her aides “also asked staff to eliminate references about the wartime incarceration from some educational material.” An exhibit on coal communities “cut references to the environmental hazards caused by the mining industry.” Shogan’s aides “also ordered the removal of labor-union pioneer Dolores Huerta and Minnie Spotted-Wolf, the first Native American woman to join the Marine Corps, from the photo booth, according to current and former employees and agency documents.” A photo of Betty Ford wearing an Equal Rights Amendment pin was removed from a video, and in an exhibit of “patents that changed the world,” the birth control pill was replaced with, of all things, the bump stock. The Journal notes that "Shogan’s changes have delayed the opening of new exhibits, initially set for next summer, and are expected to add at least $332,000 to costs."

The explicit justification here was that the facts would hurt the feelings of guests who didn’t want to hear about union organizers and Native Americans. Visitors shouldn’t “feel confronted,” the Archivist said, but rather “welcomed.” Of course, Japanese Americans or Native Americans are unlikely to feel “confronted” by exhibits on their history, so the archivist was clearly referring to making white conservatives feel more at ease. In fact, an employee was specifically “told to look for success stories about white people.” And, looking over an exhibit about westward expansion, Shogan asked a staffer “Why is it so much about Indians?”

@britomartis @el-shab-hussein @ubernegro

this is making me actually insane..... this is how we fight fascism? by whitewashing history in a nationalistic myth?

[otrtbs]

Btw, they’re censoring the National Archives of the United States. The fucking Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, has been altering photographic exhibits to make them “more palatable” to a wider audience. Alterations which include:

- Removing images of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders and activists and replacing them with images of Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley

- Altering and removing displays featuring the forced relocation of indigenous people in the United States

- Removing Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese internment camps in the United States after WWII for being “too negative and controversial”

- Replacing a patent in the American Inventions exhibit display for birth control with a television patent instead

Several senior-level people have left the National Archives in the wake of Shogan’s directives. And, several employees have stated these changes are happening because Shogan’s advisors have raised concerns that conservative lawmakers could take issue with the materials in the exhibits and begin targeting the National Archives with punitive legislation.

You can read about this censorship in more detail here , here, and here.

[sleepnoises]

in re ERA ratification

(CNN 10:01AM est Friday Jan 17)

i know you don't get to become the archivist of the united states due to a sense of fun and whimsy in your heart but Dr Colleen Shogan has the chance to be real whimsical coming up

[follow-up-news]

President Joe Biden announced a major opinion Friday that the Equal Rights Amendment is ratified, enshrining its protections into the Constitution, a last-minute move that some believe could pave the way to bolstering reproductive rights. It will, however, certainly draw swift legal challenges – and its next steps remain extremely unclear as Biden prepares to leave office. The amendment, which was passed by Congress in 1972, enshrines equal rights for women. An amendment to the Constitution requires three-quarters of states, or 38, to ratify it. Virginia in 2020 became the 38th state to ratify the bill after it sat stagnant for decades. Biden is now issuing his opinion that the amendment is ratified, directing the archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, to certify and publish the amendment. “It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex,” Biden said in a statement Friday. Biden, a senior administration official said, is not taking executive action, but is “stating an opinion that it is ratified.”

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s symbolic declaration on Friday that the Equal Rights Amendment is “the law of the land” likely only sets up more debates for Congress and the courts over the constitutional prohibition on gender-based discrimination.

Here’s a rundown on what the ERA is, how long it’s been debated and what Biden’s action means:

What is the Equal Rights Amendment?

The ERA is a 1970s-era prohibition on discrimination based on gender, guaranteeing men and women equal rights under the law. As a constitutional amendment, it needs ratification from three-quarters of the states before it’s added to the U.S. Constitution.

How long has the push to codify the ERA been going on?

There have been debates over the ERA ever since it was initially approved by Congress.

The ERA was initially sent to the states for ratification in 1972, and Congress set a deadline of 1979 for three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify it. That deadline was then extended to 1982.

But it wasn’t until nearly 40 years later, 2020, when Virginia lawmakers voted to ratify the amendment, meaning that the necessary 38 states had ratified it. Congress tried in 2023 to lift the deadline to allow for the amendment’s ratification, but the measure didn’t reach the required 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

What’s the archivist’s role in ERA certification?

The director of the National Archives is responsible for certifying and publishing new amendments once they meet the required ratification threshold.

Last month, the archivist and deputy archivist of the United States said in a rare joint statement that the ERA could not be certified without further action by Congress or the courts, saying that either entity must change the deadline to consider the amendment as certified.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House’s plans, said the Democratic president was not directing the archivist to certify the amendment.

Does Biden’s action on the ERA change anything?

Not really. Biden’s move is largely symbolic, and it’s unclear if his statement will have any impact. Presidents don’t have any role in the amendment process. And the leader of the National Archives has said that the amendment cannot be certified because it wasn’t ratified before a deadline set by Congress.

Democrats have been pushing Biden to act unilaterally on its ratification before he leaves office next week, and some members of Congress planned to rally Friday at the National Archives.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has led the effort among Democrats in the Senate, has insisted that the archivist’s analysis was flawed. Gillibrand previously said Colleen Shogan was “wrongfully inserting herself into a clear constitutional process, despite the fact that her role is purely ministerial,” encouraging Biden to certify the ERA anyway over Shogan’s objections.

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

Just taking out more trash. Carry on Mr. President, it's EXACTLY what we voted for you to do ! ! ! ! ! !

[dertaglichedan]

Politics

Trump fires archivist of the United States, official who oversees government records

President Trump has fired Archivist of the United States Colleen J. Shogan, the government official responsible for preserving and providing access to government records. 

Sergio Gor, director of the Presidential Personnel Office, announced Shogan's dismissal Friday night. Shogan has held the job since 2023. 

"At the direction of @realDonaldTrump the Archivist of the United States has been dismissed tonight," Gor wrote on X. "We thank Colleen Shogan for her service."

The move isn't unexpected. Mr. Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt earlier this month that "we will have a new archivist." 

On Thursday, however, a senior archivist official told CBS News there was "no word that anything is changing."  

"The archivist looks forward to continuing her strong working relationship with the president and first lady," the official said at the time. 

The archivist of the United States, who oversees the National Archives and Records Administration, is typically an apolitical role that receives little attention. But Mr. Trump has expressed ire toward the agency in the past, after it was a key player in the case about his mishandling of classified records. 

[historyhermann]

A PDF-version of my third newsletter in 2023!

[usnatarchives]

As mentioned on 60 Minutes last night, we are thrilled to announce that the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, will go on permanent display at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.

Beginning in March 2026, visitors will have the unique opportunity to see this groundbreaking legislation alongside some of the most important documents in American history—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

The 19th Amendment represents a pivotal moment in our nation's history, as it removed voting restrictions for more than half of Americans and was the result of over eight decades of tireless advocacy by the women’s suffrage movement. This addition to the display marks an effort to present a fuller story of America’s journey toward equality and democracy. It also serves as a powerful reminder of the progress we’ve made and the work that continues as we move toward a more perfect union, just in time to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan shared her excitement: "I am thrilled we are adding these documents as we celebrate 250 years of the United States of America. I look forward to welcoming all Americans to experience first-hand this engaging history on display.”

Learn more about this momentous announcement in this National Archives press release: https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2024/nr24-40

📸: Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, June 4, 1919 (cropped). https://catalog.archives.gov/id/596314