and researchers are sounding the alarm about President Trump's latest plans to scrutinize museums.

Trump recently expanded his criticism of the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture to include 8 additional museums but specialists in the field say these actions could potentially erode the public's trust in shared institutions.

Not just in Washington, but around the country.

Joining us now, our Moreno, visual arts director and chief curator at the National Museum of Mexican Art and Leslie Harris, professor of History and African American Studies at Northwestern University.

Thanks to both for joining us.

so the Trump administration planning to audit 8 more Smithsonian museums as we mentioned to purge them of information that he finds negative or sad.

What concerns you about that.

oh, man, that is such a scary move.

>> You know, as we plan for the future, as we map things out for the direction that we're supposed to go in, all information is important, whether it's good, whether it's bad weather, it's ugly, no matter what it is without that information at your at your disposal.

I think what you're and which will end up with is a poor plan.

It's important to to really look at things critically understand and embrace them and learn without without mistakes without dark periods to learn from.

I think we could have the truth.

I think we get sort of false sense of our understanding of where we should go.

Have we seen this before in the government tries to control the history on display in museums?

The yes, without a doubt, you know, various countries, a Soviet union and actually back in the old the Egyptians and Greeks and Romans also did this.

But but more recently, I guess the 20th century USSR, South Korea, North Korea, definitely the United States.

We've had propaganda, which is basically a one simplified view that pushes and ideology.

in the end really does not rely on the society to create the culture to bring up the culture, but rather uses the arts even in Mexico.

The muralist movement in Mexico was nation building and successful propaganda in a post on truth.

Social last month for the president said, quote.

>> The museums throughout Washington, but all over the country are essentially the last remaining segment of woke.

The Smithsonian is out of control where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was and how an accomplished the downtrodden had been.

It goes on to say nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future.

The country cannot be woke because woke is broke.

We have the hottest country in the world and we want people to talk about it, including in our museums.

That is a direct quote from the President.

Leslie, what do you make of President sentiments and Smithsonian museums?

>> And ignore the casual invocation of woke and then we have a hot nation as if he's talking about someone who wants to date of the bar.

>> But I want to quote, actually, Lonnie Bunch, the incredible director.

>> And the first leader the founder really of the National Museum.

He met with a 90 year-old sharecropper amending Prince Egypt Jenkins in South Carolina.

And he told him he was building this museum and Mr. Jenkins lived on as a sharecropper on the same farm plantation that his enslaved grandmother lives.

And what Mister Jenkins said that Lonnie Dr Bunch the heart is when you tell a history and build a museum, you have to tell people what they want to know and what they need to now.

And the history of slavery of the violence of the racialized violence in this nation inequality ideals stated but not reached and then ultimately overcome and reach.

That is the history that is in the National Museum of African-American History.

And that is the history that is most of the museums around our country.

History is in the past.

We are telling the stories of the past that we have somehow managed to live through and those histories include enslavement.

>> Lynching Jim Crow, segregation kinds of things.

But we are here today in the present and without knowing what we did wrong in the past.

As my colleague just we stand to make the same statement, do need >> Sorry, want to wear got a couple more questions and we're almost out of time, sir.

has the National Museum of Mexican art?

Have you all been impacted by the cuts that this administration is made, for example, to the National Endowment of Arts and or have you made any adjustments to your ration your exhibits as a result of this cure ration, no cure ation.

We continue to tell our story we're using were first wants institution and it's important that we tell our story and our nobody can tell your story as well as you can.

So that has not changed.

Definitely.

We've adapted with the loss of a few grants.

Nothing the really would keep the doors open or close their more project based.

And so what we're doing is we're we're waiting.

We're putting on the back burner.

>> Also other.

>> Institutions are stepping up to assist us, whether Illinois, the state of Illinois or Chicago Department, cultural fares or so many of the foundations that are in Chicago that really believe in the work that we do.

So it's it's we've just slow down a bit.

>> Just slow down of an okay.

I'm Leslie.

As we mentioned, the president has instructed attorneys to go through the museums and start the same process that he says he had such success with that colleges and universities.

Do these museums have a responsibility?

They have an ability to push back against the guidelines that might not tell the full the full story that they're trying to tell.

>> I'm confident that those who are in charge of the museums of the Smithsonian will push back appropriately in the best way that they can.

They are more closely connected to the government, museums around the country.

And so I'm going just support them in the struggle to stand up to this authoritarian move in terms of museums around the country.

However, they have more latitude and I'm convinced that many of these museums have worked decades to change their interpretations to align with.

Hopefully some of them won't.

Yeah, I apologize.

Hopefully they won't have the same struggles and the that some of the