The Daily Fuckup

The White House spent March sending out familiar signals: ceremonial proclamations early in the month, then a sharper-edged culture fight later on. On March 6, 2025, the administration issued proclamations for Women’s History Month and Irish-American Heritage Month. On March 27, 2025, it followed with a fact sheet tied to an executive order aimed at the Smithsonian and framed around removing what it called “improper,” “divisive,” or “anti-American” ideology.

The women’s history proclamation cast the administration’s approach in explicitly partisan terms. It said the White House would reject what it described as “radical ideologies” and fight “gender extremism,” while also claiming broad public support for that posture. The Irish-American proclamation was more traditional in tone, but it still placed the commemoration inside the administration’s broader political language about heritage, national identity, and policy.

The Smithsonian fact sheet was the clearest example of the same pattern. It said the new order would steer the institution away from material the administration considers ideologically suspect and toward exhibits that fit its view of American history. That is not a neutral statement of commemoration. It is a directive about how a major public cultural institution should present the past.

What these documents show is not that a single message replaced governing, but that the White House kept using official communications to press cultural grievances and identity politics. The proclamations were routine in form. The language inside them was not. By the end of the month, the administration had used both celebratory calendar items and a Smithsonian order to keep history, gender, and national identity in the foreground.