Uh oh, somebody doesn’t understand what “history” is.
A new report from the White House accuses the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism” and blames museum leaders for erasing America’s heritage.
The report, titled “Saving America’s Story” and published Saturday, is the result of an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March 2025 demanding “improper ideology” be eliminated from Smithsonian’s museums.
The report’s “central finding” is that “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.”
The buried assumption there is that history can be free of ideology. Fun fact: it can’t. There is no ideology-free delivery device that sweeps up all the bits and pieces that make up “history” and dumps them into a book or museum or statue. Deciding which bits to include and which bits to skip depends on the starting assumptions: bam, there’s your ideology.
“To the extent that there is a story told at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, it is not one of ‘the victory of freedom and genius of our country’ but one of regret, tragedy, and shame,” the report adds.
See? That’s ideology right there, talking about more ideologies. It’s ideology all the way down.
A Smithsonian spokesperson said in a statement Sunday: “For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so.”
Trump don’t want no stinkin’ nonpartisan independent scholarship, Trump wants trumpy dependent propaganda.
The National Museum of American History has long been among the most scrutinized of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums.
In July 2025, it removed references to Trump’s impeachments from an exhibit display, as part of a content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House, The Washington Post reported at the time. The references were restored a week later.
Propaganda much?
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. The Smithsonian has sent over files in return.
But the new report marks yet another escalation. It accuses current Smithsonian leadership of imposing a “radical, activist ideology” on the museums and refusing to tell “the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”
Noble, eh? Is the story noble all the way through, in every particular, without spot or blemish? Are you sure?