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Friday, July 24, 2026
ANNAL$ OF TRUMPI$TAN: Trump orders warning signs near Smithsonian, escalating fight over history. (WaPo, July 24, 2026)
From The Washington Post:
Trump orders warning signs near Smithsonian, escalating fight over history
The president’s executive order calls for signage near the National Museum of American History cautioning visitors about “inaccurate information.”
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The entrance of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. (Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post)
AI Overview
President Donald Trump ordered signs outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History warning of "inaccurate" exhibits. An executive order cited a White House report claiming the museum promotes social justice over shared national history. Trump directed temporary signage to correct inaccuracies. The Smithsonian did not immediately comment.
President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the installation of signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History that warn people that the museum does not accurately reflect American history while pointing them to material that does — a dramatic escalation in his campaign to wrest control of how the nation’s story is told.
The executive order, signed at the end of a week of contentious congressional hearingson the museum, directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to erect temporary signage along the National Park Service-controlled sidewalks and walkways the public uses to reach the museum. The signs would inform visitors of the White House’s criticisms, tell them the museum’s exhibits “should be renovated” and direct them elsewhere “to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.”
The move marks a new front in a 16-month pressure campaign against the Smithsonian Institution that has included museum content reviews, funding threatsand a successful effort to push out a museum director. Now the White House is moving to plant a competing government narrative on the ground outside one of the country’s most visited museums — an approach historians say has no precedent.
Trump grounded the order in the White House Domestic Policy Council’s July 4 report, “Saving America’s Story,” which he said “demonstrates that the Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”
A companion White House statement went further, accusing the Smithsonian and its history museum of veering “toward extreme political activism, rooted in Marxism, to divide, dispirit, and discourage Americans.” It said that “in the last decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted effort to rewrite American history and force our Nation to adopt a factually baseless ideology aimed at discrediting American heroes and diminishing American achievement.”
Trump also accused the museum of failing to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during the country’s 250th anniversary year, and directed Burgum to install temporary exhibits or signage on Park Service land that “corrects inaccurate information presented in the Museum.”
The Smithsonian declined to comment. Its leaders have said the White House’s report mischaracterizes the museum, and that they are committed to accuracy and nonpartisan scholarship.
The order drew swift condemnation from Democrats who oversee the institution. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-New Mexico), ranking member of the House Administration Committee, called it “one of the dumbest and most bizarre Executive Orders we have ever read.”
“This EO is a clear political overreach, driven by an ideological agenda to rewrite American history,” Stansbury wrote on X. “Our Smithsonian institutions do not belong to the President, but to the American people and so does our nation’s history.”
Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the plan to station government material outside the museum was “an absolute affront to the professionals who work in that building” and likened the signage to issuing a trigger warning to visitors before they encounter exhibits such as the Star-Spangled Banner.
“There’s no precedent for this,” Weicksel said. She noted that the Smithsonian has weathered exhibit controversies before — most famously over its presentation of the Enola Gay and the bombing of Japan — but said the executive branch had never before sought “to present a completely alternative narrative” to the one told inside the national museum.
The report and order rested on “a very narrow and very circumscribed definition of patriotism,” Weicksel added, one at odds with the founding generation the administration invokes. The nation’s founders, she said, understood that “one’s love of nation is tied to recognizing where it has gone wrong, where it can do better.”
Her deepest worry, she said, was that the campaign would erode public trust in an institution that teachers and researchers have relied on for more than 150 years.
“The White House is essentially telling the American public not to trust the Smithsonian Institution,” she said.
Mike Gonzalez, far left, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and museum director Anthea Hartig, second from right, attend a hearing Wednesday. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Hartig after the hearing Wednesday. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Conservatives who have long pressed for change at the Smithsonian welcomed the order, though some hoped it would go further. Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who testified at both congressional hearings this week, said the provisions he valued most were those naming administration officials, including Domestic Policy Council chief Vince Haley, and directing them to use “any and all available authorities” to force corrections.
“If they can use this EO to clean house and get rid of the leadership, then that would be great,” Gonzalez said, adding that he thought installing the signs “is a clever thing.”
When asked if he had consulted with the White House on the report or the executive order, Gonzalez said any such conversations would be “private.”
The order is the latest chapter in a fight that has escalated steadily since Trump’s March 2025 executive order demanding “improper ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian. Since then, the White House has launched reviews of the content of several Smithsonian museums, criticized specific exhibits and wall texts and threatened to withhold funds already approved to the institution if it fell short.
As a public-private institution, the sprawling museum and research complex ishistorically independent, with a federal budget appropriated by Congress. But those funds are disbursed by the White House’s budget office, and the administration has said all spending must align with the president’s orders.
The White House report’s footnotes signal the pressure will continue, promising a “future update” on the Smithsonian’s approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Mike Gonzalez, far left, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and museum director Anthea Hartig, second from right, attend a hearing Wednesday. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Hartig after the hearing Wednesday. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Conservatives who have long pressed for change at the Smithsonian welcomed the order, though some hoped it would go further. Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who testified at both congressional hearings this week, said the provisions he valued most were those naming administration officials, including Domestic Policy Council chief Vince Haley, and directing them to use “any and all available authorities” to force corrections.
The comments express strong criticism and frustration towards President Donald Trump, particularly regarding his perceived attempts to rewrite or influence American history. Many commenters accuse him of historical revisionism, incompetence, and spreading misinformation. There is also a significant sentiment that his actions are damaging to the country and its institutions, with some commenters expressing a desire for his presidency to end. A few comments support Trump's stance against what they perceive as left-wing narratives in historical presentations.Show less
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