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The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) “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,” says a White House report released July 4.
The document, titled “Saving America’s Story,” was prepared by the Domestic Policy Council in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” released March 27, 2025.
“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” the order observed. “This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
Examples of this ideology cited in the order include The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s assertion that “’hard work,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘the nuclear family’ are aspects of ‘White culture.’”
“The forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of male athletes participating in women’s sports,” the order points to as well.
According to the report, the council finds that “as confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
The Museum is quite open about its political activism.
On its website, the “Museum’s Vision” reads, “As the nation’s history museum, we challenge ourselves to become the country’s most accessible, inclusive, relevant, and sustainable public history institution.”
Similarly, its “Mission,” is “empowering people to create a just and compassionate future by exploring, preserving, and sharing the complexity of our past.”
In documenting the museum’s mission of political activism, the council notes that NMAH Director Anthea Hartig, “has explicitly stated that she sees history as a ‘prime tool of social justice’ and one of her roles as connecting ‘research and scholarship to activism and advocacy.’”
The report observes the depths of Hartig’s commitment to woke ideology, as she explains to one audience that “loving America is very complicated,” and recommends to another that museum collection objects should serve to distract people from an “Anglo-centric” focus on the founding of the nation.
To her alma mater, University of California Riverside, Hartig stated in November 2020 in a lecture titled “Public History as a Practice,” that she experienced an advantage in starting her career “propped up as I was and I am by the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeoisie.”
The NMAH director also quoted the words of Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, “that he published in, um, in the 1619 Project in collaboration with the New York Times, that inspire me every day.”
Just two years after Hartig’s presentation, however, the 1619 Project was debunked and discredited as it “unrepentingly pushes junk history,” as it was reported by Phillip Magness at Reason in May 2022.
Hartig has also noted to colleagues the “challenges” public historians must tackle, which, in 2020, included the COVID pandemic forced shutdowns.
Explaining that she and her staff were “devoted to telling the histories of African Americans, specifically in Washington, but also across the nation,” Hartig said, “We all worked together very closely this summer in the field in collecting local Black Lives Matter movements, the huge marches, the new Black Lives Matter Plaza, the fence that I showed you briefly around Lafayette Park or Square, and that was hugely important and very collaborative, and we learned a lot together.”
Yet another challenge Hartig anticipated in advance was how “to figure out altogether how we’re going to commemorate, problematize, remember, or celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.”
“These are not the words of an objective historian, but rather those of an activist advancing an ideological agenda contradictory to the Museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism,” the council asserted in its report.
The council presented the following key findings in its report:
The Domestic Policy Council concluded that “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.”
Its members added that, entrenched in its current ideology defined largely by critical race and gender theory, the Museum has succeeded at nearly entirely excluding America’s Founders. Additionally, under the current direction, “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.”
“To the extent that there is a story told at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, it is not one of ‘the victory of freedom and genius of our country’ but one of regret, tragedy, and shame,” the council asserted. “As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: ‘Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.’”
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