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The U.S. Government is Erasing Our History
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As everyone who has paid attention to the news for the past month should be aware, the second administration of President Donald Trump has been making rapid changes to the federal government, with far-reaching consequences. As a Black trans person, the executive orders directly targeting trans and nonbinary people and DEI initiatives have been particularly concerning. For the trans publication Assigned Media, I wrote about what I and other trans and nonbinary editors are doing to document these actions on the English Wikipedia (hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation).
And document it we must, because in addition to the removal of words now considered too “woke” to be published, entire government websites are being gutted or disappearing entirely. This should concern every US-American, regardless of political party or ideology. When I say the government is erasing our history, that “our” applies to all of us.
Consider the most recent change that I helped document on Wikipedia. Michelle King was appointed Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration by Trump on the first day of his term, January 20. She had worked for that agency for 30 years. But this week, when King was asked to turn over sensitive information to Elon Musk’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), she resigned rather than grant the request, one of many similar resignations in recent days (on top of the numerous staff layoffs).
When I clicked on a link to visit King’s profile on the SSA website, I was redirected to the main page for the Social Security Administration. Fortunately, the original page was preserved by the Internet Archive, so I was able to access her profile and add the link to Wikipedia for others…
