A scathing report released on the Fourth of July says the National Museum of American History downplays the role of the founders while empha
In a broadside posted to its website just as fireworks celebrating America’s 250th birthday were lighting up skies on Saturday, the White House condemned the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for what it said was a failure to celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing it had become a political tool intent on denigrating the American story.
The 162-page report, by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, represents a sweeping attack on the museum’s presentation of American history. It is the latest step in the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure the Smithsonian into conforming to what President Trump has described as “patriotic” history.
While the report concludes that the broader Smithsonian Institution — which oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo — “has not met its obligations to the American people,” it places particular blame on the National Museum of American 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 anti-white bias and of minimizing and distorting the nation’s founding. Those actions, the report asserts, have shifted the museum’s mission “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
The museum, it says, “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.”
The report takes issue with specific exhibits, such as an 1840 statue of George Washington that includes a depiction of Hercules. The work’s accompanying text describes “the perceived courage of the American people.” That language, the report says, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”
But the report’s “main concerns” involve what is not there.
Visitors today, it says, “will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other founding fathers, the Continental Congress, the pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.” Instead, it claims, many founders are presented chiefly in terms of their connection to slavery.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, Julissa Marenco, said, “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 White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Domestic Policy Council, which wrote the report, is a White House group tasked with developing the president’s domestic agenda and advising him on issues like education and health care. Its leader, Vince Haley, has spearheaded the administration’s commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, including Mr. Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot arch in Washington. Mr. Haley has also been credited with the idea for a patriotic sculpture garden known as the National Garden of American Heroes.
The Smithsonian has long been regarded as independent of the executive branch. But in an effort to have much greater influence on cultural matters in Washington, Mr. Trump has focused on the Smithsonian since March 2025, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
In that order, which calls on Vice President JD Vance to overhaul the Smithsonian with the help of Congress, the president described a “revisionist movement” across the country that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
Mr. Trump has since announced that he was dismissing the director of the institution’s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, calling her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.” (The Smithsonian did not follow through — publicly insisting it controlled personnel matters — but Ms. Sajet resigned, saying in a statement that her decision served the institution’s best interests.)
The White House also issued an ultimatum to turn over Smithsonian records or face potential budget cuts. In response, the Smithsonian’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch III, reasserted the institution’s independence but said materials had been submitted in an effort to be “transparent and open.”
Some 62 percent of the Smithsonian’s annual $1 billion budget is derived from federal sources, including funds directly appropriated by Congress. The Trump administration proposed cutting the Smithsonian’s budget by about 12 percent in the 2026 fiscal year, but Congress has maintained the institution’s federal funding.
Saturday’s report summons the specter of a funding withdrawal, citing how the president’s executive order directed Mr. Vance to work with the Office of Management and Budget to “prohibit 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.”
Without specifying the exact remedy, the report says that “the president has a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian.”
The report criticizes the museum for viewing “traditional patriotic narratives” with suspicion or contempt. It says the museum endorses illegal immigration and advocates transgender issues, while it focuses on Christianity as “an instrument of conquest, exclusion or cultural erasure,” rather than its “constructive role” in “shaping the nation and its freedoms.”
It takes particular aim at the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, saying she has advanced “an ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism.”
The story the museum tells, the report says, “is not one of ‘the victory of freedom and genius of our country’ but one of regret, tragedy and shame.”
Ms. Hartig did not respond to a request for comment.
The report immediately drew pushback from some in the historical profession, which has sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s efforts to enforce his view of history.
Sarah Weicksel, the executive director of the American Historical Association, the country’s largest group of history scholars, questioned the report’s claims that the museum neglects the nation’s founding and its founders.
“The museum has extraordinary objects that tell the history of the Revolution, including the newly restored Gunboat Philadelphia,” she said, referring to a Revolutionary-era warship. “Visitors also encounter George Washington, his leadership prowess and the American Revolution in ‘The Price of Freedom,’” another exhibition.
But some conservatives commended the report.
“The National Museum of American History is the tip of the iceberg,” said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has called for Mr. Bunch’s dismissal. “It’s not the only museum that erases our history and our heritage — all the other museums do. We have to go back to celebrating our country and its great achievements.”
The report, which contains more than 30 pages of footnotes, also criticizes an exhibition called “Many Voices, One Nation” that it claims tries “to convince visitors that illegal aliens are entitled to citizenship, voting rights and ‘belonging’ in America.”
And it criticizes an exhibition that closed in November 2025, “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” for what it says was too heavy of an emphasis on Benjamin Franklin’s connection to slavery, including his ownership of slaves, and not enough on his work as an abolitionist.
The report comes as the Smithsonian faces potentially significant turnover in its governing Board of Regents, a 17-member panel that includes Democratic and Republican elected officials as well as nine citizens.
Mr. Bunch has led the Smithsonian since 2019, and his relationship with the White House is, at best, strained. He has enjoyed the support of the board in asserting that the Smithsonian is independent.
But the museum is working with a diminished board since the terms of two Smithsonian trustees ended in March. Their replacements have yet to be named as Mr. Trump’s efforts to gain control of the institution have slowed that process.
Over the past few months, the Smithsonian managed to avoid further confrontations with Trump officials, perhaps because it made tweaks like altering some wall text and because the president was focused on matters like the war in Iran.
But the new report makes clear that the White House is fed up with the Smithsonian.
“The serious concerns raised in this report are not about a few exhibits or a few controversial labels,” the report says. “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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Next time you’re watching any news show or political coverage see how many of these you can spot:
Quick rundown of each propaganda technique:
• Glittering Generalities: Using vague, emotionally appealing words (like “freedom” or “justice”) that sound good but lack specific meaning.
• Transfer: Associating a person, idea, or product with something already respected or disliked (like using a flag, religion, or celebrity image) to carry over those feelings.
• Name-Calling: Attaching negative labels to an opponent or idea to create fear or distrust without real evidence.
• Card-Stacking: Presenting only positive information for one side and leaving out or distorting the negatives.
• Testimonial: Having a famous or respected person endorse an idea, product, or cause.
• Plain Folks: Presenting the speaker as an “ordinary” person to seem relatable and trustworthy.
• Band Wagon: Urging people to follow the crowd with the idea that “everyone else is doing it.”
Behold the Taiwanese serow (Capricornis swinhoei)! Of the four living members of the genus Capricornis, this species is the smallest—reaching weights of only 60 lbs (30 kg). It inhabits mountainous forests on the island of Taiwan, and its strong legs allow it to scale steep slopes and rocky cliffs in search of food. Though there are some 300 living ungulate species known to science, the Taiwanese serow is one of the few known to climb trees!
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