In New Report, White House Accuses Smithsonian Museum of Abandoning Scholarship for Extreme ‘Political Activism’

While most of the country was celebrating United States’s 250th birthday, the Trump White House launched its latest broadside against the Smithsonian Institution: a 162-page report from the Domestic Policy Council detailing supposed “ideological capture” at the National Museum of American History.

The report, released on July 4, alleges the museum “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. In the Museum’s current telling, the country is, above all, defined by white supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and systemic injustice.”

As evidence of NMAH’s “institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology,” the report cites numerous exhibitions, including the 2022 show “Upending 1620,” which analyzed early relationships between Wampanoag peoples and the English to reframe “pilgrims” as “colonists.” It also targeted NMAH’s 2021 Interpretive Plan, which called for ensuring materials and exhibitions “resonate with the present” by “ask[ing] questions that speak to the core issues of our time, including: race and identity; gender and sexuality; environmental change; immigration and migrations; economic inequality; technological change; nationalism and globalism.”

Predictably, a major point of contention is exhibits and education materials, particularly those targeted at children and young people, that discuss gender fluidity, gender normativity, gender identity, and gender roles. The report also takes issue with the museum’s “Becoming US” educational curriculum, its “Undocumented Organizing Collective Initiative,” and “Tell Me What Democracy Looks Like, a “digital space” that connects with students with undocumented immigrant organizers—all of which it claims “extensively advocated for millions of illegal aliens to be granted US citizenship and voting rights …”

The report also takes issue with presentations of LGBTQIA+ Americans, abortion rights, Indigenous rights, and discussions of white privilege. Ultimately, the report concludes the Smithsonian and the museum “engage in discriminatory and likely illegal behaviors and practices.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for NMAH 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 report, titled “Saving America’s Story,” was initiated by President Trump’s March 2025 executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the Smithsonian of propagating a version of history that “deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.” Throughout 2025, Trump put pressure on the Institution, and Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, targeting certain artworks and exhibitions and even claiming to fire the director of the National Portrait Gallery, a Smithsonian-run museum, before she resigned soon after. 

The campaign culminated in a threat by the White House to withhold federal funding unless the Smithsonian agreed to turn over all documents for a content review. Bunch agreed to that review, while steadfastly maintaining the museum network’s independence. However, in December, Russell Vought and Vince Haley, the budget director for the White House and the director of the Domestic Policy Council, respectively, accused the Smithsonian in a leaked email of falling “far short of what was requested” and demanded that it submit all documentation for its exhibitions by January 13. In light of the US’s 250th anniversary, Vought and Haley added that the public would have “no patience” for exhibitions that don’t present “a positive view of American history.”

The Smithsonian’s total budget for fiscal year 2026 is $1.86 billion, about $959.3 million of which is appropriated by the federal government. (Some $839.2 million comes from the Smithsonian Trust, and $66 million from non-appropriated federal funds.)

While the report stops short of calling for specific actions, it says that the president has “a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian, and to urge the Chief Justice of the United States, as the Chancellor of the Smithsonian, as well as the Vice President, as a Regent of the Smithsonian and as President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, to take appropriate action to restore the integrity of the National Museum of American History.”