President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at purging “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution an...
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at purging “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution and restoring monuments that were removed during the past five years.
The executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate “improper partisan ideology” from the Smithsonian, which has, according to the order, promoted the idea that American history is “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” the order states.
“This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846 as a public-private partnership, and is the “world’s largest museum, education, and research complex,” according to its website.
The White House points to several examples of “anti-American ideology” the administration plans to address:
- At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Biden Administration sponsored training by an organization that advocates for dismantling “Western foundations” and that taught Park Rangers that their racial identity should dictate how they present history to visitors.
- The American Art Museum currently features an exhibit that purports to address how “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism” and claims that the United States has “used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”
- The National Museum of African American History and Culture has proclaimed that “hard work,” “individualism,” and “the nuclear family” are aspects of “White culture.”
The American Women’s History Museum plans to celebrate male athletes participating in women’s sports.
The order prohibits the museum from including transgender-identifying men, specifying that funding should “celebrate the achievements of women” and “not recognize men as women in any respect.”
Additionally, it instructs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to identify monuments under the federal government’s jurisdiction that were taken down to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” and to “take action to reinstate” them.
Burgum is also tasked with ensuring that current monuments “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
Trump’s order represents the first direct attempt by a presidential administration to reshape the Smithsonian’s content approach in its nearly 180-year history, despite the institution receiving 62% of its annual funding from the federal government, according to The Washington Post.