Kevin M. Kruse
‪@kevinmkruse.bsky.social‬

I knew they’d come for the archivists and librarians but honestly I assumed it would be for a reason better than “Our Special Boy wants to give his friend a sword! Give him a sword!”

‪Jess Piper‬
‪@piperformissouri.bsky.social‬
· 21h
“They asked for a sword, and we said, ‘Well, we do have swords, but we can’t give them away because they’re museum artifacts,’” said Todd Arrington, forced to resign as head of Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.”

October 4, 2025 at 11:19 AM

Jess Piper
‪@piperformissouri.bsky.social‬

“They asked for a sword, and we said, ‘Well, we do have swords, but we can’t give them away because they’re museum artifacts,’” said Todd Arrington, forced to resign as head of Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.”

October 3, 2025 at 7:31 PM

KANSAS
Head of Kansas’ Eisenhower library forced out over Trump demand for museum sword

By Eric Adler October 3, 2025 1:02 PM


Todd Arrington, director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home in Abilene, Kansas, was pressured to resign on Thursday by the Trump administration over his inability to allow the president to give a sword, a museum artifact, as a gift to King Charles III of Great Britain. National Archives

Todd Arrington, the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home in Abilene, Kansas, was told that he could either “resign or be fired” from his job after refusing to give into a Trump Administration demand to hand over a museum sword that the president wished to deliver as a gift to Great Britain’s King Charles III.

Arrington was pressured to resign Thursday, according to multiple news outlets.

Presidential libraries are administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 makes it illegal to use artifacts given to presidential libraries as gifts.

“They asked for a sword,” Arrington told the Kansas News Service in a recent interview, “and we said, ‘Well, we do have swords, but we can’t give them away because they’re museum artifacts.’”

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