This is an opinion column.

Last week, President Donald Trump assigned his other vice president, J.D. Vance, to oversee an important task.

No, not another trip to Greenland. Vance got a chilly reception there.

No, not more White House chit-chat with Ukrainian officials, either. It turns out, there’s a real reason to keep J.D. away from Oval Office couches.

And no, not another bombing run on Houthi terrorists. According to his text messages, which now everybody’s read, Vance didn’t even want to do that the first time.

Instead, with an executive order signed last week, Trump has tasked Vance with purging “improper ideology” from Smithsonian institutions, including the National Zoo.

That’s right. Trump was J.D. to de-wokify the zoo.

Nobody has assigned busywork for a vice president like this since Joe Biden made Kamala Harris his border czar.

As a parent of young children, I have spent my share of time in zoos, including recent trips to the National Zoo. This doesn’t make me an expert, but it does qualify me to leave nasty reviews on Yelp, especially when the hamburgers are worse than the ones at my high school cafeteria and cost more than my first date with my wife.

But in terms of wokeness, the National Zoo isn’t notably different from others I’ve seen.

There are animals that are awake.

And there are animals that are asleep.

There are also animals “off exhibit,” which I will choose to believe means they’re on break and not deceased.

The most popular attraction at the National Zoo are the giant pandas, Bao Li and Qing Bao, playful people-pleasers on loan from quasi-communist China.

I’m sure the president is pleased.

The least popular might be the manatee — more common in President Trump’s now-home state of Florida. Last week, I stared at the manatee for at least two or three minutes before it moved. For a second, I thought it might need some time off-exhibit.

Other American animals include cows, donkeys and goats — things that, when not living in captivity at the zoo, spend their time living in captivity on a farm.

Of course, the improper ideology isn’t the animals themselves, but the signage and interpretation of the National Zoo exhibit. As at other zoos, almost every animal comes with a plaque nearby explaining how it’s endangered or no longer able to exist in the wild.

And therein lies the problem for Trumpism.

If you don’t spend much time at zoos, you might be under the impression that they are depressing places where animals that should be wild and free spend their days confined, bored or even abused.

Zoos might be depressing, but rather, for what happens outside their fences.

There are more tigers in captivity today than there are in the wild.

The elephants in the pachyderm house are safe from poachers.

The small primates’ habitat is not endangered by deforestation.

Zoos might be the one place where animals are safe from people, the one place where humans try to keep species alive, where we can coexist.

A display at the National Zoo’s prairie dog exhibit describes how the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute is helping save the adorable varmints from a plague — with a vaccine.

Forget J.D. Vance. Just wait until R.F.K. Jr. hears about this.

What’s woke about the zoo?

Zoos have important lessons to teach, as they do to millions of children who pass through them each year.

Zoos teach us that, where there is no diversity in a species, a single virus or invasive predator can wipe it from existence.

Zoos show us that, where there is no equity or balance in a habitat, the whole ecosystem can be at risk of collapse.

Zoos put us on notice that, when we humans make no room for inclusion, we erase the natural world from the Earth.

Zoos demonstrate that diversity, equity and inclusion are not just things that happen on college campuses or in your company’s HR department, but are vital things for the natural world.

At the zoo, you can’t look the other way, even when an animal is off-exhibit.

What’s woke about the zoo?

Maybe everything.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. You can follow him on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X , Threads and Bluesky.