Amidst the gales of rage and consternation being generated by the firehose of nonsense emanating from the new government in the USA, it is difficult to appreciate equally the implications of a New Order that places loyalty to an autocratic leader above considerations of experience, expertise, and integrity in determining who stays in their jobs. Just one of many instances of this Orwellian behaviour – but one which is almost as remarkable for the way in which it is being reported as for the story itself – concerns the news emerging from the National Archives in Washington DC.

Background context is widely known and relatively uncontroversial in terms of what actually happened. Following the handover in 2021 from the first Trump administration to the incoming Biden team, the leadership of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) asked the Department of Justice to investigate the apparent “mishandling” of official documents by outgoing employees of the old administration, under the ultimate authority of the ex-President, in whose private residence many boxes of official records had been spotted.

Roll forward four years and Trump Team v2 is on a mission to defenestrate the American Civil Service in dozens of ways that appear to be about revising and relitigating much of what is loosely understood to be “the past” but which, it is now emerging, seems at least as dedicated to articulating today the reality of tomorrow. Advocates for the future they wish to impose on their country – and by extension to the limits of their ability, the world – are laying the foundations for that future in reframing the past. Anyone working in the National Archives – people charged with maintaining scrupulously the records of what happened – were always going to end up in the crosshairs of people as cynically anti-historical as this.

As reported on CNN, it was made clear to NARA’s leadership that they were to resign, notwithstanding protests across the archives community that all the people being targeted were “consummate professionals” who were “dedicated to the preservation of historic documents”. One of the senior leaders titled his graceful resignation letter “Littera Scripta Manet” which CNN translated with abstract vagueness as “The Word Remains”.

Perhaps the clue to the inadequacy of this translation lies in the Latin being three words, and the English only two. It would be more accurate to render the English protest as “The Letter Remains Written”, with its clearer focus upon a literal rather than a metaphorical thing.

The quoted resignation letter also references the “The Archivist’s Code”, composed by the then director of the National Archives in 1956. This magnificent message to the future contains just seven paragraphs: strictures beginning with the words “The Archivist . . .”. The second paragraph stands out as relevant to the challenges of today. Like the rest of the code it remains, and will forever have been, written:

“The archivist must realize that, in selecting records for retention or disposal, he acts as the agent of the future in determining its heritage from the past. Therefore, insofar as his intellectual attainments, experience, and judgment permit, he must be ever conscious of the future’s needs, making his decisions impartially without taint of ideological, political, or personal bias.”