The White Home is reportedly launching a sweeping evaluation of Smithsonian museums to verify they align with President Donald Trump’s sanitized model of U.S. historical past.
Trump’s campaign to rewrite historical past will depart no stone unturned. The Journal reviews that all the things—from exhibition textual content and digital content material to curatorial choices, assortment administration, and artist funding—will likely be scrutinized.
The letter was signed by White Home senior affiliate Lindsey Halligan, Home Coverage Council Director Vince Haley, and Workplace of Administration and Finances Director Russ Vought. And it requires changing “divisive or ideologically driven” language with “unifying, historically accurate” supplies.
“This is about preserving trust in one of our most cherished institutions,” Halligan advised The Journal. “The Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate, patriotic, and enlightening—ensuring they remain places of learning, wonder, and national pride for generations to come.”
Individuals wait in line to enter the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition, in Washington, in 2017.
However it is a exhausting promote given Trump’s monitor file. His administration has aggressively purged variety, fairness, and inclusion content material from federal web sites, erasing mentions of Navajo Code Talkers from the Protection Division’s web sites, and deleting tributes to Black, Hispanic, and feminine service members from the Arlington Cemetery web site.
The White Home’s newest Smithsonian effort takes place amid different latest controversies on the storied museum. In July, the museum eliminated a short lived set up referencing Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibit that additionally displayed artifacts associated to the impeachments (or resignations) of former Presidents Invoice Clinton, Andrew Johnson, and Richard Nixon. After going through public condemnation, the placards had been restored, although with softened textual content and a much less distinguished placement.
And that is all a part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to reshape historical past. Final week, the Nationwide Park Service introduced it will reinstall a statue of Accomplice Normal Albert Pike in Washington, D.C.—a person who advocated expelling free Black folks from Arkansas—after protesters toppled it in 2020. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed monument removals because the work of “woke lemmings.”
The Journal reviews the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents has agreed to a full evaluation of its museums and zoo to root out supposed political bias. However Trump’s government order accuses the establishment of pushing a “divisive, race-centered ideology” that paints American and Western values as dangerous. Vice President JD Vance, a board member, has been tasked with serving to block funding for exhibitions that conflict with Trump’s racist agenda.
The White Home’s Smithsonian evaluation will give attention to eight museums in D.C., together with the Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition, the Nationwide Museum of the American Indian, and the Nationwide Portrait Gallery. In different phrases, anticipate extra girls and other people of shade to be focused.
The method is slated to wrap up in early 2026, simply in time for Trump to assert victory over “wokeness” throughout the anniversary celebrations.
It’s a stark instance of how far Trump and his allies will go to purge something remotely inclusive from America’s cultural reminiscence. However this isn’t about “restoring truth”—he desires to rewrite it altogether.
