Vowing to “use any lever at our disposal to keep the National Archives here,” South San Francisco Congressman Kevin Mullin announced legislation Monday to combat Trump administration plans to shut down the local federal archives facility in San Bruno.
Mullin’s bill, H.R. 10131, comes in response to advocacy by historians and Asian American immigrant and civil rights advocates who have collected almost 14,000 signatures in just the past month on petitions to keep the federal records centers here and in Chicago open. A similar federal records center in Seattle may also be at risk. The Mullin bill would bar the archivist from closing records centers or moving the records themselves for more than six months if facilities are restructured or repaired. Five House Democrats have now cosponsored the Mullin bill while 36 House members and senators have joined his Letter of Congressional inquiry to the archivist.
Over 125 constituents flanked Congressman Mullin on Monday outside the San Bruno records center. They included Rosalyn Tonai, a leader in an ad hoc group, Save Our National Archives, that was formed to oppose a previously threatened closure in 1998; Kristen Hayashi, curator of the Japanese American National Museum; and local Chinese American community leader Julie Soo, who spoke on behalf of Congresswoman Judy Chu of Los Angeles.
Of special importance to these and other stakeholders are the centers’ holdings of immigration case records from the Angel Island immigration station, records associated with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and Native American tribal documents. As Congresswoman Chu’s statement noted, “Closing these facilities will force families to travel great distances at significant costs to access their own American histories.” For example, historian Peter Irons’ discovery in government archives of memoranda by senior government officials acknowledging that Japanese Americans were not national security threats during World War II paved the way for litigation and advocacy in the 1980s, resulting in the federal government apology to the Japanese American community and redress payment to incarcerated individuals.
Closing these facilities will force families to travel great distances at significant costs to access their own American histories.
— Congresswoman Judy Chu
The Mullin bill is the latest salvo in a battle that began in July, when then-Acting U.S. Archivist Edward Forst told staff to begin closing the two facilities as an “efficiency and effectiveness” measure. Observers suspect Forst and the Trump administration have a different motivation for taking this action. Forst was a major real estate executive based in Florida prior to his Trump administration appointment as administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) in December 2025. Contradicting the 1984 law that established the Archives as independent from GSA and required the archivist to be “appointed without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of … professional qualifications …,” Trump named Forst as acting archivist while keeping his GSA authority. At the time of this appointment, Forst had no known experience or qualifications to serve as U.S. archivist.
In addition to its responsibility for what Congressman Mullin termed “culturally significant records,” the Archives also works with all federal agencies, including the Office of the President, to collect, organize, and maintain documents and records, sometimes for over a century. The Archives does not receive Congressional appropriations for these duties but is paid by the agencies whose records it services and retains. Closing two of the current 14 regional facilities, as the Trump administration plans to do, may actually increase transportation and staff costs to send documents to a more distant facility or retrieve them for agency use. Closing the facilities will also make the documents more difficult to access by scholars, researchers, demographers, genealogists, and other members of the public. JANM curator Hayashi noted that moving the documents distances them from Archives staff members who have developed expertise in their meaning and importance. Moreover, researchers will have to travel to multiple sites if the documents are transferred to more than one of the remaining Archives locations.
Congressman Mullin pledged to continue the fight to keep the records center open beyond Sept. 18, the deadline for an administration response to the congressional letter, into next year “when we have the gavels back,” suggesting Democratic Party control of the House and a vigorous oversight agenda. The Trump administration will also keep tight control over the archivist’s activities and resist oversight. Under federal law, the archivist will receive Electoral College ballots and documents from states following the November 2028 presidential election before turning them over to Congress for counting.
Decisions by the archivist amidst pressure from the White House could “make” history. For now, the focus is on “keeping” history and keeping the important historic documents accessible to the public at the federal records center in San Bruno.
