President Donald Trump directed the Smithsonian Institution and Department of the Interior on Thursday to sanitize exhibitions, possibly restore Confederate monuments and remove objectionable pieces to restore “truth and sanity to American history," part of what he described as a war on “corrosive ideology.”
An executive order on Thursday instructs the Smithsonian museum system to axe any projects or exhibitions that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
The order instructs Vice President JD Vance to "remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo, per the order. The order is the biggest executive reach into the quasi-independent trust in its more than 175 year history.
One specific issue raised by the order is the depiction of race, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws, and other historical narratives in the Smithsonian’s collections.
The order calls for a purge of “divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” including works or exhibitions that reinforce the notion that “race is not a biological reality but a social construct.” At the heart of the attack are collections in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the five most popular D.C. museums in 2024, and the American Women’s History Museum.
Another provision of the decree appears to take action to restore monuments to Confederate leaders on federal land under the auspices of rejecting “anti-American ideology.”
The head of the Department of the Interior is directed to restore monuments that have “have been improperly removed or changed in the last five years to perpetuate a false revision of history,” per a White House fact sheet.
