For generations official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected, from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity.

Now, the Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable.

It has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view the government-slashing efforts of Elon Musk’s team and other key administration initiatives.

Officials have used apps such as Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for recordkeeping.

And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership and even ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

All of that follows President Donald Trump discouraging note-taking at meetings, ripping up records when he was done with them, refusing to release White House visitor logs and having staffers sign nondisclosure agreements during his first term
— then being indicted for hauling to Florida boxes of sensitive documents that he was legally required to relinquish.

To historians and archivists, it points to the possibility that Trump’s presidency will leave less for the nation’s historical record than nearly any before it
and that what is authorized for public release will be sanitized and edited to reinforce a carefully sculpted image the president wants projected,
even if the facts don’t back that up.

How will experts and their fellow Americans understand what went on during Trump’s term when those charged with setting aside the artifacts documenting history refuse to do so?

How to piece together a history of truth and accuracy?

The administration says it’s the “most transparent in history,” citing the Republican president’s penchant for taking questions from reporters nearly every day.

But flooding the airwaves, media outlets and the internet with all things Trump isn’t the same as keeping records that document the inner workings of an administration, historians caution.

That’s especially true given the president’s propensity for exaggerating, particularly when it comes to bolstering his own image and accomplishments.

Leaders at the George Washington Presidential Library, said Congress, the courts and even the public often don’t have the bandwidth to ensure records retention laws are enforced,
meaning, “A lot of it is still, I think, an honor system.”

“There aren’t that many people who are practicing oversight,” she said.

“So, a lot of it does require people acting in good faith and using the operating systems that they’re supposed to use, and using the filing systems they’re supposed to use.”

Angered by the role the National Archives played in his documents case, meanwhile, Trump fired the ostensibly independent agency’s head, Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan, and named Secretary of State Marco Rubio as her acting replacement.

Peterson, the former acting national archivist, said she still believes key information about the Trump administration will eventually emerge,
but “I don’t know how soon.”

“Ultimately things come out,” she said. “That’s just the way the world works.”
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