Trump's attack on history continues in Philadelphia

Saratoga filmmaker brings newspaper movie to Sundance Film Festival

Please consider supporting The Front Page with a paid subscription: HERE

The seven executive orders that Donald Trump signed last year are remarkable for the way they tear at our shared history and story of different peoples coming together as one.

There is an insanity to their logic.

An evil to their purpose.

Donald Trump demands we rewrite American history, defund museums and libraries, stop all efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion and suggests our schools are indoctrinating children with anti-American ideologies.

That’s not the world I live in.

The president decided the Gulf of Mexico was an insult and it was more appropriate to name the towering Alaskan mountain Denali after an afterthought of an American president (William McKinley).

You probably forgot Trump has also ordered a National Garden of American Heroes to celebrate American exceptionalism, but I can only imagine his likeness will be the first - and perhaps only - one honored.

I take the attack on our history personally.

I love a great story and our history is a great story.

Over the Memorial Day weekend last year, my brother and I stopped in Philadelphia on our way north.

Neither of us had been to the cradle of our democracy.

We had never seen the Liberty Bell.

Or Independence Hall.

We were surprised at how much there was to be seen regarding our Revolutionary War roots and vowed to come back when we had more time.

While taking the obligatory photos of Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell, we must have walked right by the “President’s House.” Probably, because it isn’t really a house, just the foundation of the building where George and Martha Washington lived while he was our nation’s first president and the capital was still Philadelphia.

The National Park Service described the site as an outdoor exhibit that “examines the paradox between slavery and freedom in the new nation.” That is not allowed under President Trump anymore. He believes it makes our country look bad.

It does, but that does not make it any less important.

On Thursday, National Park Service employees dismantled the exhibit under orders from President Trump.

It is just feet from the building where the Liberty Bell is housed.

It is just yards from Independence Hall.

The removal of the panels left “empty bolt holes” on the brick walls at the President’s House site.

“One woman cried silently at their absence,” The Associated Press wrote. “Someone left a bouquet of flowers. A hand-lettered sign said `Slavery was real.’”

Over the coming days, handmade signs were posted where the panels were once bolted to the brick that read “History is real” and “Learn all history.”

There was also a sign posted with a quote from writer Maya Angelou, “We can only know where we are going if we know where we’ve been.”

The city of Philadelphia promptly filed a lawsuit because of its agreement with the federal government that it has equal say in the exhibit.

When The Associated Press asked the Interior Department about the lawsuit, it called the lawsuit frivolous and said it was aimed at “demeaning our brave Founding Fathers who set the brilliant road map for the greatest country in the world.”

Of course, many of those brave Founding Fathers did own other human beings.

That can’t be changed or erased by any executive order.

Unless the Trump administration starts burning books.

It’s hard to rule that out these days.

“Their shameful desecration of this exhibit raises broader, disturbing questions about this administration’s continued abuse of power and commitment to whitewashing history,” Rep. Dwight Evans told The Associated Press.

This is our story being erased.

---

`Seized’

I’ve written before about an illegal police raid on the Marion County Record, a Kansas weekly newspaper, and the subsequent death of its 98-year-old co-owner.

Now it is a documentary film that is being seen at the Sundance Film Festival.

Paul Grondahl reported in the Albany Times Union that Seized is one of 10 full-length documentaries that will be shown at Sundance this year.

And while it is great to see an illegal attack on a newspaper highlighted, Seized was made by a Saratoga Springs filmmaker name Sharon Liese.

Looking forward to seeing it in a theater near us.

---

North Country needs

It is the type of information Rep. Elise Stefanik would find invaluable if she were still doing her job in Congress.

Each year, the North Country Survey of the Community polls citizens in Jefferson, Lewis, St. Lawrence and Oswego Counties about how they are doing.

This year’s results show that folks in the western part of the North Country believe their recreational and education opportunities are good, but their overall quality of life is not so good.

Check out all the results of the survey:

---

Nursing homes

Sooner or later, all of us will have to deal with a loved one in a nursing home. We might have to deal with it personally.

In preparation, you might want to check out this story in the New York Times Magazine from Sunday, Jan. 17.

The story takes a deep dive into recent rollbacks in nursing home staffing by the Trump administration. The article points out that the Biden administration tackled the problem of understaffing in 2023 with a new Medicare regulation that mandated 3.48 hours of care from nurses and aides per resident per day and required an RN on site 24 hours a day.

The improvements were less than what was hoped for, but still something.

This past July, the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill killed the new staffing standards before 2034, then they were repealed all together.

This is a big issues for our aging seniors.

Paula Span of The New York Times wrote this:

As with environmental law and consumer protections, the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for deregulation has undone long-sought rules to improve care for the aged. And it has introduced a Medicare experiment for prior authorizations, now getting underway in six states, that has alarmed advocates, congressional Democrats and a good number of older Americans. Taken together, the moves will affect many of the facilities and workers who provide care, and introduce complications in health coverage in several states.

“On the nursing home front, it’s clear C.M.S. has no interest in ensuring adequate staffing,” said Sam Brooks, director of public policy for the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care.

This is a story of critical importantance. Read it today.

---

Melania’s story

Is any First Lady’s Story worth $40 million?

We’re about to find out.

Amazon, owned by Washington Post owner Jeffrey Bezos, shelled out $40 million to Melania Trump to do a documentary film on her life. It then spent another $35 million to market the film.

Most documentaries, even those nominated for Oscars, operate on a shoe-string budget so this is not normal.

The question now is whether enough Republicans will turn out to make the film money. But I suspect, the filmmakers never expected to make money on it. This was an investment for the future.

Don’t be surprised if President Trump demands the movie receive an Academy Award.

---

Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book “The Last American Newspaper” into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.