Smithsonian: Is Trump rewriting history?

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is seen on July 15, 2026 in Washington, DC — (Image credit: Kevin Carter / Getty Images)

President Trump has declared war on the Smithsonian for daring to teach history, said Marc Stein in Time. In a new 162-page report, the White House Domestic Policy Council argues the institution’s National Museum of American History has been captured “by a radical, activist ideology” intent on undermining “the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.” The document condemns “as anti-American” historically accurate displays that detail national shortcomings, including the fact that many Founding Fathers were slaveowners, and that the notoriously racist 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was shaped by white supremacism. Museum director Anthea Hartig is mentioned 229 times, and is blasted for including a transgender child’s diary in a 2020–23 exhibit on girlhood and for correctly noting that Black girls are suspended from school six times more often than white girls. “The report’s authors seem to believe that there is only one correct way to do history,” and that’s to teach it as the story of the “white Christian men” achieving “national greatness.”

If anyone is guilty of rewriting history, it’s the museum’s leftist leaders, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The report notes that the Pledge of Allegiance is described in one exhibit as a tool to “instill American nationalism.” Why not patriotism? “The museum also highlights the worst facts about the Founders.” Yes, Alexander Hamilton did own slaves—but there’s no wall text to explain that he was also a vocal critic of slavery who sought to end the transatlantic slave trade. Any visitor would be forgiven for leaving the museum thinking that “racism, sexism, and oppression define the nation’s past.” Trump isn’t “seeking to hide America’s warts.” But the federal government provides 62% of the Smithsonian’s budget—$1.1 billion in fiscal 2026— and he’s right to seek a history of the U.S. that isn’t shaped by progressive bias.

Parts of this report made me want to laugh out loud, said Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post, “as when the authors claim there aren’t enough American flags on display.” But there’s nothing funny about the White House’s wider goal, which is not simply to take over the Smithsonian but to stop the process of historical inquiry and enforce “a single, happy narrative of American exceptionalism.” If Trump gets his way, the Smithsonian will become a temple of “shallow patriotism,” said Hayes Brown in MS.now. But to truly love our nation, we must “see it in all its fullness, its failures and triumphs alike, and decide that it is still worth loving.”

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