President Trump signed an executive order Thursday targeting what he calls "improper ideology" at the Smithsonian Institution. In recent years, Trump said, the institution has "come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology," which has "promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive." The "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" order directs Vice President JD Vance to "effectuate the policies of this order" at the Smithsonian's 21 museums, 14 research centers, and the National Zoo. Vance is a member of the institution's Board of Regents because of his position in government.
Trump's order singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture, saying it "has proclaimed that 'hard work,' 'individualism, and 'the nuclear family' are aspects of 'White culture.'" The Washington Post notes that those phrases appeared in an infographic on the museum's website about how race is often talked about, and they were removed in 2020 after a complaint from Donald Trump Jr.
- Order threatens funding. The Smithsonian, established by an act of Congress in 1846, is a public-private partnership that gets around 62% of its funding from the government. Trump's order bans "expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy."
- Biden accused of promoting "corrosive ideology." Trump's order accuses the Biden administration of advancing a "corrosive ideology" that casts the nation's history in a negative light. "Under this historical revision, our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive," the order states.
- "Stunningly brittle insecurity." Chandra Manning, a professor of American history at Georgetown University, tells the Post that the order shows a "stunningly brittle insecurity about our nation and its past." The order "seems to suggest that if we allow anyone to hear the whole story of challenges that Americans have overcome, our nation will shatter," Manning says. "The American people are not so fragile as all that."
- Confederate monuments could return. The order also suggests that Confederate monuments taken down after Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 could be replaced, the AP reports. It directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine which "public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties" have been removed or changed since Jan.1, 2020 "to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."
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