Trump orders ‘ideological’ cleanup of Smithsonian museums and a ‘restoration’ of American history

U.S. President Donald Trump has made good on his threat to intervene in the museums of the Smithsonian network in Washington, and even the capital’s zoo. In an executive order called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, he calls on these institutions to be purged of “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history” and entrusts that task to Vice President J. D. Vance.

The executive order also calls for a review of whether statues with racist overtones that were toppled on federally managed lands following the killing of George Floyd should be returned to their original locations, and requires officials to ensure that public monuments run by the Department of the Interior “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times) [i.e., during slavery].” Trump calls for such commemorative artifacts to “instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”

In its explanatory statement, the decree asserts that “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. 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.”

“Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame,” it adds.

The order focuses on several examples: Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where according to the Trump administration, Joe Biden ‘s team “pressured National Historical Park rangers that their racial identity should dictate how they convey history to visiting Americans because America is purportedly racist”; the order also targets a currently open exhibition at the American Art Museum titled The Shape of Power: Histories of Race and American Sculpture; or the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which, the order claims, “has proclaimed that ‘hard work,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘the nuclear family’ are aspects of ‘White culture.’”

Trump’s order also discusses a museum that the Smithsonian Institution plans to build in the coming years to honor the history of American women. Its future officials are hereby prohibited from making any reference to transgender people.

As for Philadelphia’s Independence Park, Trump’s fixation is not without reason: the United States is preparing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence in 2026, an event that promises to be a unique opportunity to spread the values of the MAGA movement.

A nation tells its story

The Smithsonian museum network is concentrated, but not limited to, the vast National Mall, which stretches from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and serves as a gigantic symbolic space for the celebration of American values, and is visited by millions of people from across the country each year. From the Museum of Natural History to the Museum of Native Americans and the Museum of American History to the National Portrait Gallery, there are 21 spaces in which the nation tells its own story. These stories were revised during the Covid pandemic, in the wake of the unrest that followed Floyd’s murder and the dawning awareness of the systemic racism of a society built on the original sin of slavery. For Trump and his followers, this revision is a product of woke ideology and only seeks to weaken traditional values.

“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” reads the order.

This isn’t the first decision since returning to power last January in which Trump has proposed an assault on the city’s cultural institutions: the president has already taken control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and has appointed Richard Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and current envoy of his administration to Venezuela, to head it. Grenell’s mission is to cleanse the institution of the “woke virus.” Furthermore, like other federal agencies, these institutions are subject to decrees promulgated by Trump ordering the elimination of initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion.

On Thursday, the president went a step further in his plan to subdue Washington, a city that voted 92% for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and viewed him with indifference during his first four years in the White House. His revenge came in the shape of another executive order entitled Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful.

The text orders the creation of a task force whose objectives include increasing the number of law enforcement officers in public spaces and “ensuring that all applicable quality of life, nuisance, and public-safety laws are strictly enforced, such as those prohibiting assault, battery, larceny, graffiti and other vandalism, unpermitted disturbances and demonstrations, noise, trespassing, public intoxication, drug possession, sale, and use, and traffic violations.” The order also seeks “to apprehend and deport illegal aliens in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”

Trump, who has fired tens of thousands of government employees residing in the region, also threatens to use an existing power, but one rarely invoked in the past. Under the law that has governed Washington since the 1970s, the DC area, as it is not a state, depends on whoever controls the House of Representatives. The Republicans, in this case.

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