President Donald Trump dismissed all members of the supposedly non-partisan Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation via email sent last month.
“On behalf of President Donald Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation is terminated effective immediately,” White House liaison to the State Department Cate Dillon wrote in one of the dismissal emails, the Washington Post reported.
No reason was given by Dillon, according to the outlet. However, after former committee member and Canadian-American historian Timothy Naftali announced his dismissal on X, critics on the right pointed to past statements they viewed as evidence of his anti-Trump and anti-American bias.
The Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation guides the State Department on the publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, the official documentary record of U.S. foreign policy, according to the Office of the Historian.
The committee is responsible for ensuring that all papers, letters, and reports included in the FRUS series are carefully selected, accurately reflect historical events, and are published in a timely manner. It also oversees the proper declassification and public release of relevant documents.
Naftali isn’t the only former member facing scrutiny for alleged anti-Trump and anti-American bias. The committee’s chairman, James Goldgeier—a professor at American University’s School of International Service—has also come under similar criticism.
Goldgeier was especially critical of Trump during the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.
“It wasn’t enough for Trump to kill Americans through his incompetence and disinterest in dealing with the pandemic,” he posted to X on July 20, 2020. “Now he’s got DHS attacking peaceful Americans to distract from his failure to care about the pandemic. It’s startling that he has enablers in this effort.”
In an interview with the Post, Goldgeier acknowledged that the committee is still working through records from former President Ronald Reagan’s administration, citing a rule that requires the federal government to declassify and release historical documents only after 30 years.
“Right now, the office is still trying to get volumes out from the Reagan era,” he said. “There’s no work that’s being done here regarding the current administration.”
He also expressed concern about the committee being disbanded, arguing that Congress mandates its existence.
“It just seems to me like they just got a list from all the agencies [of similar committees] … I can’t imagine they looked much into what any of the particular ones did,” he said. “And I don’t know that they understood that this one is congressionally mandated.”
That said, a senior State Department official told the Post that “there is a plan in place to maintain the committee,” indicating that Trump has no intention of shutting it down — just replacing it with appointees who aren’t so politically biased.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval numbers are rising fast, and it’s not just a small bump in what’s another sign that the tide is turning as more Americans wake up to what’s really going on.
In April, a joint national poll from InsiderAdvantage and Trafalgar Group showed President Trump holding a narrow 2-point lead in approval versus disapproval among likely voters. Out of 1,200 respondents, 46% approved of Trump’s performance, 44% disapproved, and 10% were undecided.
But that was then.
By the end of May and into early June, Trafalgar’s latest poll showed a major shift. This time, 54% of likely voters said they either approved or strongly approved of Trump’s job as president. Only 46% disapproved or strongly disapproved. That’s an 8-point swing—and it came despite the survey slightly oversampling Democrat voters compared to Republicans.
Over at Rasmussen, their presidential approval tracker told a similar story. On June 2, Trump’s approval sat at 53%, just 3 points below where he stood during inauguration week.