Trump State Department Takes From Americans, Gives to Terrorists and Tyrants
The U.S. Department of State continues to put the interests of foreign despots, terrorist groups and hostile nations over the interests of the American people.
The latest example of this is the recently-announced consideration of renewing an “emergency import restrictions” agreement with Taliban-led Afghanistan. This will be on the agenda of the September 15, 2025 meeting of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC). Public notice of this meeting was issued on August 7, when Congress is out of session and most of Washington, DC is enjoying summer vacation, meaning the attempt to collaborate with the Taliban is likely to fly well under the public radar.
If renewed, this agreement would continue the State Department’s Biden-era practices of prioritizing the interests of questionable state actors over those of American museums, historians, students and collectors. While many in the research and collecting community had hopes that the new administration would put a halt to these practices, in reality the pace of advancing these disadvantageous agreements has actually accelerated. To cite a few recent examples:
- The administration has moved to implement a Biden-era Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with India that imposes severe import restrictions on a wide variety of art, artifacts, coins and similar items. Yet India has publicly proclaimed that they will continue to purchase oil from Russia, and also has a long history of destroying these very items within its own borders.
- Similarly, implementation is moving forward on another “emergency” agreement with Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. Repatriating objects already in the possession of U.S. museums, universities and private collectors hardly ensures their safety, and there have even been reports that such items are being sold by Hezbollah to fund their terrorist activities.
- Already in 2025, the Biden-era holdovers that dominate CPAC have advanced new or renewed agreements with five nations, including Communist Vietnam. Several of the renewed agreements did not even expire until next year, but CPAC seems intent on ramming these through before President Trump can make his own appointees to the panel.
- Also on the September 15 agenda is new agreement with Cameroon, whose authoritarian government is widely accused of mistreating citizens of its English-speaking minority.
- That agenda also includes MOU renewals with the repressive government of Turkey and with Columbia, with whose government the Trump administration and State Department are openly feuding. Yet neither of these agreements expires until 2026.
It is exceedingly difficult to understand why the Trump State Department is so interested in making deals with the Taliban and Hezbollah, supporting authoritarian regimes around the world, and rewarding governments that support adversaries such as Russia – all at the expense of United States citizens and institutions. The administration needs to be held accountable for allowing this unchecked power of Biden-era appointees and their agendas – and to make its own CPAC appointments so that more rational approaches to legitimate cultural and historical protection can advance without inhibiting the rights of American researchers, students and collectors.
Comments about these and other items on the September 15 CPAC meeting may be submitted via this link: https://www.regulations.gov/document/DOS-2025-0203-0001. Comments may be submitted through September 8.
