A view of the Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017.

What is it about the historic Ten Broeck Mansion’s plan to create its new Rosanna Vosburgh Education Center does the Trump administration dislike so much that it would go out of its way to rescind a $481,000 grant the government promised a year ago?

We're not quite sure. Perhaps the plan isn’t white enough, or male enough, for a president determined to cover up evidence of diversity in one of the most diverse nations in the world.

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Maybe Ms. Vosburgh’s story — formerly enslaved in Columbia County, she gained her freedom and went on to become the paid manager of the Arbor Hill mansion; she was also an abolitionist, founder of a philanthropic trust to benefit Black widows and co-founder of an organization dedicated to the education of Black youth — is just too much for this president and his thought police to bear.

Or maybe a permanent cultural educational center in the heart of a predominantly minority neighborhood strikes this president as a necessary sacrifice to help pay for another tax cut for the rich.

Whatever the reason, the revocation of the grant is a potentially fatal blow to the planned center and the historic site, one of Albany’s cultural treasures, which had already fronted much of the cost and is now unsure how to cover the bill. And it’s yet another insult to Congress: The move violates the separation of powers that undergirds our republic.

The Ten Broeck grant, approved in 2024 by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is among........

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