White House EXPOSES Smithsonian's Anti-American Agenda

The White House chose America's 250th birthday to release a damning 162-page indictment of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, concluding that the taxpayer-funded museum has been captured by a "radical, activist ideology" that treats the American story not as a shared national inheritance but as a political instrument designed to divide, dispirit, and transform the country.

The report, titled "Saving America's Story," was produced by the White House Domestic Policy Council following President Trump's March 2025 executive order directing federal agencies to restore historical sites and museums to their founding missions. Its findings are sweeping and specific. The report concludes that NMAH director Anthea Hartig — in her own words — has explicitly described history as a "prime tool of social justice" and her role as connecting research to "activism and advocacy." It finds the museum has no exhibit specifically dedicated to the Founding Fathers, the Second Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, or the American Revolutionary War, while featuring extensive programming on systemic racism, immigration, gender ideology, and LGBTQ themes framed through a modern activist lens. The museum, the report says, "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."

"Museum leadership 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." — White House Domestic Policy Council

The five key conclusions of the report are direct: the museum attempted to subvert America's founding and cancel its founders by mentioning them only in the context of slavery; it "problematized" the nation's 250th anniversary rather than celebrating it; it adopted the loaded vocabulary of modern political activism rather than the language of history; it abandoned scholarship for advocacy; and it failed its fundamental obligations to the American people. The report also singles out Hartig's own self-description — noting her acknowledgment that she is "propped up by the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeoisie" — as evidence that what is leading the museum is not a historian but an ideological activist.

The Smithsonian receives more than $959 million in annual federal appropriations — part of a total budget of $1.86 billion. Its secretary, Lonnie Bunch III, pushed back on Sunday, telling CNN that the institution has maintained nonpartisan independence for more than 180 years and that history is "about ambiguity, complexity, nuance, debate." The report stops short of ordering specific immediate actions but states that the president has a duty to seek reforms and urges the Chief Justice, the Vice President, and the Speaker of the House — all of whom serve as Smithsonian regents — to take appropriate action to restore the museum's integrity.

A museum that receives nearly $1 billion annually from American taxpayers — including from the millions of Americans who love their country and bring their children to the National Mall to learn its history — has an obligation to tell that history honestly and with appropriate pride. An institution where the director openly describes history as a tool of social justice advocacy and her role as connecting scholarship to activism is not performing that function. The White House report is long overdue, and the question it leaves open is not whether the Smithsonian needs reform — the museum's own leadership answers that question in its own words — but whether the political will exists to actually deliver it.