President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March condemning the “revisionist movement” that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light”. The order essentially directs the federal government to restore truth and patriotism to various institutions focused on American history and culture, including the Smithsonian, by removing false or “inappropriately disparaging” content.
Many Americans, or at least many conservative Americans, have noticed instances where the country’s past is distorted and the nation’s achievements are diminished for the purposes of highlighting supposedly overlooked contributions of “marginalized” groups.
I imagine most people do not object in principle to learning about how different communities have shaped the United States.
But unfortunately, many initiatives that claim to provide a more comprehensive account of American history just amount to flawed, inflammatory and demoralizing propaganda that seeks to impede any sense of national pride.
For just one example, look to the “1619 Project,” which attempts to reframe the country’s origins as beginning with the arrival of slaves and (incorrectly) argues that the American Revolution was a pro-slavery cause. Although many of its claims have been thoroughly refuted, the 1619 Project has been honored with various awards and developed into supposedly educational material for young children across the nation.
How Ideology Captured the Museum
While we all know that revisionism is trendy in leftist circles, an alarming new report reveals that the woke mythology about American history is more nefarious than we feared. One of the most prestigious taxpayer-funded historical centers promulgated dubious narratives about the United States, and the staff turned the beloved museum into a vehicle for progressive activism.
The Trump administration recently issued a 162-page report titled Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage, which alleges that the Smithsonian leadership subverted the mission of the National Museum of American History to advance progressive causes.
“Our central finding is not that the Museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope”, reads the report. “Rather, it is that Museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
America’s Founding Story Pushed Aside
The first cause for frustration and outrage is that the museum ostensibly centered on American history largely fails to display archives related to crucial developments in American history, thereby abandoning its very purpose.
The administration’s report notes that a recent visitor would not have seen a “major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution, such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware”.
It is confusing why the museum does not always have an exhibit focused on the Founding era, but it is particularly troublesome that such a display is missing for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Even worse, the select museum materials that do reference the Founding Fathers are generally oriented around their connections to slavery, while important contributions to the anti-slavery movement are minimized or unmentioned.
In some cases, admirable heroes are treated as evil perpetrators of mass injustice. For instance, Christopher Columbus is described in the museum’s materials as a “murderer”, “slaver”, “killer” and “thief”.
The museum staff did not limit their radical reinterpretations to historical figures and significant national events. A museum committee issued guidance in 2021 that declared the exhibits and activities, “whatever the topic”, must “speak to the core issues of our time”, specifically “race and identity; gender and sexuality; environmental change; immigration and migrations; economic inequality; technological change; nationalism and globalism”.
In other words, nothing in the museum could be left untainted by radical politics. In its ongoing “Entertainment Nation” exhibit, the museum instructs visitors that “Ukeleles are both a product of U.S. imperialism and a potent symbol of Native Hawaiian resistance”, further claiming that Mickey Mouse represents “vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy”.
That same exhibit includes sexually suggestive materials such as images of drag performers, a magazine cover with nude women and a harness designed for sadomasochistic activity.
From Public History to Political Instruction
Those who dislike Trump will discredit the report because it was produced by his administration, but the museum’s leaders have publicly disclosed that they sought to implement progressive values throughout the institution. Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director since 2019, said in a lecture years ago that the museum profession has “to figure out” how it would “problematize” the “250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026”.
More recently, in 2024, Hartig began a lecture delivered on Zoom by acknowledging that Washington DC is “unceded lands” of indigenous tribes. She described “history” as a “prime tool of social justice”, and she dedicated a portion of that lecture to discussing ways in which “National Museum of American History is taking an equity-based, justice-forward, community-driven and necessarily humble approach to public history and to service”.
Hartig stated that, when she began serving as the director, she challenged the museum’s staff by asking, “what does it look like to become the most accessible, inclusive, relevant, and sustainable public history institution in the nation?”
The report, which cannot be summarized in full here, is a valuable resource because it documents the various approaches adopted by progressive activists to distort history and evoke shame. The curators effectively lie by omission to hide important facts that, if presented, would undermine their preferred narrative. They strategically present artifacts in misleading or false contexts, thereby misrepresenting the objects and records on display.
Finally, as a result of their uncompromising commitment to promoting progressive causes, they infuse virtually everything – including the harmless cartoon Mickey Mouse – with radical political claims. The ideological capture of the National Museum of American History is not an accidental byproduct of staff members being ignorant, careless or simply misguided.
Rather, the Smithsonian team deliberately redesigned the museum so that its educational project is restricted to teaching visitors why America is bad. As a result, a place where we should go to learn and deepen our appreciation for America devolved into a center for indoctrination that fosters feelings of guilt.
