The White House issued a scathing report accusing the Smithsonian Institution of warping history to match far-left ideology, saying the world’s largest museum complex and research institution can no longer be trusted to tell America’s story.
The 162-page report issued over the weekend by the White House Domestic Policy Council blasted the Smithsonian and its National Museum of American History, in particular, calling both political tools to disparage U.S. history.
Titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” the report accuses the museum of harboring anti-White bias, minimizing the courage of America’s Founders and distorting the creation of the nation. It says the museum’s mission has been transformed “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
“The Museum purposely presents America as a problematic country irredeemably conceived, founded by deeply flawed men and still operating today as an instrument of systemic racism and oppression. In the Museum’s current telling, the country is above all defined by White supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny and systemic injustice,” an executive summary of the report states.
“The report identifies a broad pattern: the founders are minimized, if not entirely excluded; traditional patriotic narratives are treated with suspicion, if not outright contempt; and the basic symbols and stories that once helped unify Americans are presented not as reasons for gratitude and inspiration, but as objects to be inherently questioned, dismantled, ’problematized’ and reinterpreted to achieve ideological ends,” the summary states.
Ultimately, the report concludes that the Smithsonian’s leaders “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying and worthy of our great republic.”
A Smithsonian spokesperson rebutted the report’s allegations.
“For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The Organization of American Historians, the nation’s largest professional historian organization, accused the White House of trying to coerce the Smithsonian into presenting history that ignores immigrants, the LGBTQ community, workers, people of color and people with disabilities.
The organization called the report “a broad attempt to return the nation to a vision of America that never actually existed and serves the end of superficial patriotism.”
“Make no mistake: the report represents an attempt to turn back the clock to a time when U.S. history was taught as the history of white Christian men who conquered a continent, U.S. military leaders who rarely lost a battle and U.S. presidents who were single-handedly responsible for national greatness all under the cover of ’anti-DEI’ and ’anti-woke’ crusading,” the group said in a statement.
Others cheered the White House for calling out the Smithsonian’s liberal rewrite of history.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the White House report was long overdue. The version of America presented at the Smithsonian, he said, reflects efforts to indoctrinate young Americans with a liberal perspective that teaches America is bad.
“A national museum should transmit culture and history and a sense of understanding to future generations, and the Smithsonian does the opposite,” he said. “It wants to dismantle America.”
Mr. Gonzalez said the Smithsonian teaches new generations that America has “a horrid history and a horrid heritage that we should all be ashamed of.” The reality is that America devised a system to get rid of slavery, which the U.S. inherited from the Europeans, he said, noting that 700,000 Americans lost their lives fighting against slavery.
The report was released Saturday night, moments before fireworks lit up the National Mall.
Roughly 62% of the Smithsonian’s annual $1 billion budget comes from the federal government, including taxpayer funds directly appropriated by Congress. Mr. Trump proposed cutting the Smithsonian’s budget by about 12% in fiscal year 2026, but Congress declined to do so.
The White House may use the report released Saturday to pull funding from the Smithsonian. The report states that the president “has a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian,” but it does not propose fixes.
Specific exhibits are called out in the report. For example, a section in the museum’s learning lab discusses Whiteness as a “system of power that normalizes and reproduces structures of inequality, exclusion and violence.”
An 1840 statue of George Washington on display at the National Museum of American History includes a depiction of Hercules and describes “the perceived courage” of the American people. That language, the report says, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”
The report also criticized the Smithsonian for omitting key parts of American history. The report concluded that there are no major exhibits dedicated to America’s Founding, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.
Instead, it says, many of the Founders are presented primarily through their ties to slavery, including claims that many of Benjamin Franklin’s inventions were “enabled” by slavery.
Other exhibits singled out in the report include:
• An exhibit that refers to Christopher Columbus as a “slaver,” “murderer,” “killer” and “thief.”
• An exhibit saying the Founding Fathers envisioned “opportunity and freedom — but only for some.”
• A full exhibit on the “March for Our Lives” gun control rally.
• An exhibit called “Many Voices, One Nation,” designed to convince visitors that illegal immigrants are “entitled to citizenship, voting rights and ’belonging’ in America.”
• An exhibit on transgender activist Jazz Jennings quoting her as saying, “She always knew [that] she was a girl trapped inside a boy’s body” and “I was a boy when I was supposed to be a girl.”
• An exhibit featuring the diary of a girl writing about how she wishes she were male, including excerpts describing how she prays to God every night for a penis.
The report blames museum director Anthea M. Hartig, saying she is using the Smithsonian to promote “an advanced ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism.”
Last year, Mr. Trump ordered a broad review of the Smithsonian Institution, demanding it provide exhibition plans, internal guidelines and programming materials. He directed Vice President J.D. Vance to work with Congress to overhaul the Smithsonian and stop what Mr. Trump described as a “revisionist movement” at the venerable museum.
In January, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III said the requested materials had been turned over to the White House. He said in an email to employees that the museum would remain independent of the White House, but the materials were submitted to be “transparent and open.”
The president announced last year that he was dismissing the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, calling her “a highly partisan person and a strong supporter of DEI.” Ms. Sajet has said she resigned because it served the Smithsonian’s best interests.
The White House Domestic Policy Council is tasked with advising the president on domestic issues, including education and healthcare. It is led by Vince Haley, who spearheaded the administration’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.
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