The New History Wars
On a recent afternoon in Washington, I put on a pair of augmented-reality glasses for a tour of some very recent ruins: the White House East Wing.
In recent months, black fencing has overtaken the area, where Donald Trump’s ballroom construction is speeding along as the Supreme Court decides its fate.
Visitors can’t see much of anything from the street.
As I wore the clunky eyewear, though, historic images of the structure flashed in front of me.
The glasses showed me features wiped away by the president during his ongoing renovation spree, such as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and the White House Family Theater.
Looking around, I could see a panorama of images visualizing Trump’s plans to transform Washington, D.C.: the Reflecting Pool, the Triumphal Arch, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and more.
The tour guide, a public historian named Lexi Cleveland, created this very 2026 experience as the executive vice president of ARtGlass, an AR company. (One of the co-founders is Greg Werkheiser, a cultural-heritage lawyer currently suing the Trump administration over plans to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.) Cleveland prompted me with questions throughout.
“What do we actually lose when we lose a building?” she asked.
When the glasses showed me a Black Lives Matter mural that the city removed after Trump’s return to office, Cleveland juxtaposed it with the equestrian statue of President Andrew Jackson in front of the White House.
The populist Jackson is one of Trump’s favorite presidents; expanding slavery and signing the Indian Removal Act are inextricable parts of his legacy.
The construction of the statue, completed in 1852, involved an enslaved apprentice.
“If you got to decide,” Cleveland asked, “does the statue stay, go, get contextualized with signage, or get moved to a museum?” She plans to ask these questions to larger groups when the tours start in full this month, and she’s prepared to mediate debates.
The approach feels fitting in a country engaged in an active struggle over how to remember its past.
History is on Trump’s mind.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.theatlantic.com — the content belongs to The Atlantic.
