Republican President Donald Trump intends to make changes at the Smithsonian Institution through an executive order that targets funding for programs he says amount to “improper ideology.”
In a March 27 executive order, Trump claimed there has been a “concerted and widespread effort” over the past decade to rewrite U.S. history by replacing “facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” He said this “revisionist movement” casts the country’s “founding principles” in a “negative light.”
The executive order puts Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s properties, from museums in D.C. and New York City to the National Zoo.
Trump’s executive order and his opposition to facts that counter his white nationalism echo his own personal history. The federal government sued Trump in the 1970s for allegedly refusing to rent apartments to Black tenants.
He called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in the Central Park Five case. The five Black men accused and convicted of that 1969 assault and rape were later found innocent, after serving years each in prison, when the real perpetrator confessed. And last year, Trump amplified baseless rumors that Haitian migrants were eating domestic pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Now, he accuses the Smithsonian of having “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.”
Trump specifically criticized an art exhibit titled “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” for promoting “the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct.” He also singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the American Women’s History Museum (which has yet to open) in his criticism.
Trump also said his administration intends to determine whether public monuments, statues and markers have been improperly “removed or changed” since Jan. 1, 2020. This would seem to suggest the Trump administration looks to reinstate Confederate statues and monuments removed during the summer of 2020 amid nationwide Black Lives Matter protests ignited by the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
And Trump said his administration intends to fund improvements to Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. He wants the improvements to be completed by July 4, 2026, which will mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Trump’s order also mandates no Smithsonian spending on “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.”
That directive follows a pattern of Trump administration attacks against historical and cultural figures, under the guise of curbing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
In January, the U.S. Air Force removed training videos that featured the Tuskegee Airmen, the first-ever squadron of Black American military pilots who fought in World War II and undermined racist assumptions about the capability of Black pilots. The move was reversed by the Air Force after swift public outcry.
More recently, the Department of Defense removed a webpage highlighting Jackie Robinson’s military service as part of its attempted compliance with Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives. Robinson, who in 1947 became the first Black American to play Major League Baseball, served in the U.S. Army during WWII and was court-martialed after he refused to move to the back of a military bus (he was eventually acquitted). Again, the webpage was restored after swift public outcry.
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