Hostile Takeover of the Archives?

Photo of the now-ominous inscription on the statue in front of the National Archives and Records Administration by April Sims (Pexels)

A brief news squib announces something unsettling: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is apparently now the acting Archivist of the United States. (The ABC News link misidentifies this as “acting director of the National Archives”—that’s not the title; first, it’s the National Archives and Records Administration, and second the Archivist of the United States is a post with a history longer than NARA.)

Second update, February 8, 6:52 am Qatar time: It’s official—Trump fired Shogan on Friday evening US time.

Update 4:07 pm Qatar time: The ABC report remains up (here, at MSN; screenshot provided) but the well-sourced Kevin Kosar says this is not true and Shogan remains in place. Did ABC pre-report the news? (That is, did someone let a cat out of a bag?) Shogan is not popular with Trump, who has promised to fire her, but a midnight dismissal would be somewhat out of character even for DJT. Nevertheless, I am keeping this post up because I had, actually, planned a Shogan/NARA post at some point, and because the chances that she will face dismissal soon keep this operative. Also, who knows, maybe she has been fired and hasn’t found out yet.

Among other responsibilities, the Archivist certifies whether constitutional amendments have been ratified, officially receives the electoral votes cast by electors in presidential elections, and—very important—oversees federal records. That includes all presidential records in the modern era, but it also includes a wide array of classified documents.

There had been, as far as I know, no official word that Colleen Shogan, a political scientist and Senate-confirmed official, had been dismissed. Her official Instagram account still refers to her as Archivist, and as of a couple of days ago she was still doing public events.

The Archives is a keystone of access to federal records. It is a core agency for historians and researchers, and through them for the practice of democratic deliberation and understanding of official acts. It was granted its independence from GSA in order to help it fulfill its important mission, dramatically underscored during the Nixon administration and subsequent litigation and affirmed during the tempests over the classified records taken to Mar-a-Lago.

Almost twenty years ago, NARA undertook efforts to re-classify (or withdraw de-classified documents from public access) records—a scandal that transformed the agency’s relationship with Congress and the scholarly community, and raised the spectre that agencies could withhold records that had already been cleared for release. That dramatized how important an independent NARA is, and how easily it could be compromised.

I know every agency is on fire now, but this is not a bureaucratic detail. In the long term, a healthy democracy will require an independent record-keeper. Please pay attention to this. If the Archivist has been replaced in secret, this is a big deal.

Second update (same time as the first): While I’m updating this post, let me also share something from reader SN, who notes that “what’s past is prologue” has always been a threatening line: it comes just before two characters in The Tempest commit homicide. Per Shakespeare expert Marjorie Garber, the ironies go deeper: