DJT Fires Non-Partisan Group that Records USA Foreign Policy

News surfaced through the Washington Post that 30 April 2025, Donald Trump’s White House fired all of the non-partisan Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, which keeps records of USA foreign policy.

The termination was carried out via email by Cate Dillon, White House liaison to the State Department.

The committee has nine members. They are historians who make recommendations to the State Department’s Office of the Historian and Foreign Service Institute, helping to shape its Foreign Relations of the United States series that documents major foreign policy decisions with a goal of providing unbiased historical records.

One of the classic actions of an authoritarian regime is rewriting history to suit its favored narrative.

FRUS published the first of its approximately 450 volumes in 1861, documenting former President Abraham Lincoln’s foreign policy. The committee was working on documenting the Clinton administration when Trump terminated it.

The group meets quarterly and discusses declassification of records that are at least 30 years old. Its meetings are open to the public and documented. Committee members are paid $250 for attending each meeting.

The group is Congressionally mandated, so technically Trump does not have legal authority to dissolve it. Instead he has left it existing but with all its seats vacant.

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