President Trump has signed a new executive order directing federal agencies to pressure the Smithsonian Institution into overhauling its exhibits, capping a 16-month campaign to root out what the White House calls ideological bias at the taxpayer-funded museum complex.
The July 24, 2026, order titled "Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution" directs the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration, and the White House Domestic Policy Council to use every available authority to push the Smithsonian toward compliance with the administration's vision. It also instructs the National Park Service to install temporary signs outside the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., pointing visitors to a White House report and laying out the administration's objections to the museum's presentation of the nation's past.
That report, a 162-page document titled "Saving America's Story", landed earlier in July from the White House Domestic Policy Council. Its central conclusion: the National Museum of American History has undergone what it calls "ideological capture." The report recommends stripping political activism from exhibits and restoring displays that emphasize America's founding principles, national achievements, and patriotic history. It included photographs of exhibits, placards, curators, and museum leaders, and Fox News Digital reported the document spent significant space on how the museum classified and portrayed illegal immigration in its exhibits.
The effort traces back to March 27, 2025, when Trump signed the executive order "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." That order argued that federal cultural institutions, the Smithsonian chief among them, had promoted "divisive" ideological narratives. It tasked the White House Domestic Policy Council and Vice President JD Vance, who holds a seat as a Smithsonian Regent, with reviewing the institution's exhibits and programs.
The order quoted language describing how the nation's "unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed," the Washington Examiner noted in a piece framing the directive as a long-overdue correction to progressive historical revisionism at the institution.
The Smithsonian is no small operation. It oversees 21 museums, the National Zoo, and nearly 157 million objects and specimens. It receives more than $1 billion annually in federal funding, separate from whatever it raises privately. For an institution of that scale and public reach, the question of who shapes the story it tells carries real weight.
The Smithsonian has long said its mission is to preserve and present the nation's history through scholarship, research, and public education. But the administration's position is that scholarship had drifted into advocacy, and that taxpayer dollars were funding the drift.
On August 12, 2025, White House officials sent a formal letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch formally launching the review. The letter directed the institution to turn over exhibition plans, educational materials, internal policies, and other records. It outlined a review covering eight Smithsonian museums, set deadlines for document production and curator interviews, and instructed museums to begin revising public-facing content within 120 days. The directive was specific: exhibits should "celebrate American exceptionalism" and remove what the administration called divisive narratives.
Bunch and the Smithsonian did not move quickly enough for the White House. By December 18, 2025, the administration sent a second letter stating the institution had failed to provide most of the records requested during the review. The letter gave the Smithsonian until January 13, 2026, to produce the outstanding materials and reminded Bunch that federal funding must be used in a manner consistent with Trump's original executive order.
The administration's frustration extended beyond document production. The White House criticized the Smithsonian for holding no special Independence Day programming on July 4, 2025, for discontinuing traditional Flag Day ceremonies, and for planning 250th anniversary exhibits that the administration argued emphasized American flaws over the Founders and the founding documents. The broader pattern the Trump administration has pushed back on, including efforts to reinstall updated history panels at Philadelphia's President's House, reflects a consistent position that federal sites should present the country's founding in a more affirmative light.
By early 2026, White House investigators had moved from paper to pavement. They completed on-site walkthroughs of Smithsonian museums, reviewed exhibits, educational materials, and digital content, examined internal planning documents, and interviewed museum staff. The findings fed directly into the "Saving America's Story" report released months later.
On May 14, 2026, the National Museum of American History debuted its signature America 250 exhibition, a showcase of 250 objects from the Smithsonian's collection, including Thomas Jefferson's writing desk, George Washington's uniform, and the Star-Spangled Banner. The White House was unimpressed. Administration officials criticized the exhibition for repackaging existing displays, failing to meaningfully celebrate America's Founders, the Declaration of Independence, or the American Revolution, and for downplaying patriotic themes and national symbols.
That criticism landed just weeks before the Domestic Policy Council released its full report. The 162-page document did not sugarcoat it: the museum had been captured by ideology, and the cure was a wholesale reorientation toward founding principles and national achievement.
The review's reach extended beyond the National Museum of American History. The Associated Press reported that the executive order also affected the National Museum of African American History and Culture, where Rev. Amos C. Brown, an 84-year-old civil rights veteran, was notified that artifacts he had loaned to the museum, including a Bible he carried during protests alongside Martin Luther King Jr., might be returned. The Smithsonian pushed back on the characterization, stating that "recent claims that objects have been removed for reasons other than adherence to standard loan agreements or museum practices are false."
Rep. Jonathan Jackson offered a sharper response, telling AP: "We wouldn't need African American history exhibits if America hadn't been founded by excluding African Americans and distorting our image." The comment captures the fault line in this dispute, whether the Smithsonian's job is to present a unified patriotic narrative or to document the full scope of the American experience, including its failures.
The administration's answer is clear. The March 2025 executive order designated Vance and senior White House aide Lindsey Halligan to "remove improper ideology" from Smithsonian properties. That language leaves little room for ambiguity about the administration's intent.
The broader push to strip ideological frameworks from federal institutions has faced resistance in the courts on other fronts. A federal appeals court blocked the firing of intelligence officers assigned to DEI roles, citing due process failures. And a federal judge in California blocked anti-DEI grant conditions the administration tried to impose on West Coast cities and counties. Whether the Smithsonian fight ends up in court remains an open question, the institution occupies an unusual legal space, receiving federal money but operating with a degree of independence from the executive branch.
The July 24 order does not shut down exhibits, fire curators, or cut funding directly. What it does is marshal the bureaucratic machinery of the federal government, Interior, OMB, GSA, the Domestic Policy Council, to use "available authorities" to push the Smithsonian toward the report's recommendations. The NPS sign directive is the most visible and immediate action: visitors approaching the National Museum of American History will encounter government-installed signage directing them to the White House's critique of the museum they are about to enter.
The Smithsonian did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the report or the new executive order. That silence is itself notable for an institution that oversees 21 museums and holds nearly 157 million objects, an institution built to speak about America, now declining to speak about its own future.
House Republicans have also entered the picture, questioning Smithsonian officials over claims of political bias, though details of those exchanges remain sparse. The administration's effort to reshape how federal institutions present American history is not limited to the Smithsonian, the broader pattern of White House policy directives meeting institutional resistance has played out across multiple agencies and courtrooms.
Several questions remain unanswered. What records, if any, did the Smithsonian ultimately produce? Has the institution formally responded to the report's findings? What specific exhibits does the White House consider most objectionable? Which eight museums were singled out for review? And what have the Interior Department, OMB, and GSA actually done since the order was signed?
Taxpayers send more than a billion dollars a year to the Smithsonian. They have every right to ask what story that money is telling, and whether the people spending it answer to anyone at all.
