Trump Whitewashes History in New Smithsonian Executive Order

President Donald Trump issued an executive order yesterday, March 27, targeting so-called “race-centered ideology” in the Smithsonian Institution, conflating critical examinations of the nation’s oppression of women, people of color, and other groups with “anti-American” sentiment and effectively whitewashing United States history. 

In addition to influencing programming at the Smithsonian, which oversees 21 museums, 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo, Trump’s order seeks to reinstall public monuments removed since 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement swept the nation and led to the toppling of racist statues and Confederate markers.

The last few years have seen a widespread reckoning with the country’s violent past, throwing into relief the links between historical wrongs such as slavery and Indigenous land dispossession and present-day scourges like police brutality. Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order characterizes this period of cognizance as “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” that “deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.”

While not a federal agency, the Smithsonian Institution is about 62% government-funded, with a federal budget of more than $1 billion in the 2024 fiscal year. The new executive order grants Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, the power to block funding for the organization if it does not adapt its programming to Trump’s vision, specifically targeting museum exhibitions that “portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” 

As an example, the order cites the ongoing The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which examines the medium in the context of race-based violence in the United States.

“The exhibit further claims that ‘sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism’ and promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct,” the executive order says, alarmingly suggesting that race is a “biological reality” — a tenet of the pseudoscientific belief of racial superiority. (The fact that race is a socially constructed category is widely accepted, espoused even by conservative figures like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.)

Elsewhere, Trump’s mandate decries the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s reexamination of White hegemonic societal values, such as “the nuclear family” and “individualism,” and their historical influence on non-White communities, echoing recent campaigns by Conservative lawmakers targeting critical race theory in public school curricula.

The order also references an upcoming exhibition at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, allegedly focused on “the exploits of male athletes participating in women’s sports.” (Hyperallergic was unable to find any such exhibition on the museum’s website.) Trump’s order further prohibits the institution from “recogniz[ing] men as women in any respect,” carrying on his administration’s heavily criticized attacks on trans, non-binary, and gender fluid individuals by mandating essentialist concepts of gender. 

Last month, the National Park Service removed references to trans and queer people from its website, including erasing the “T” and “Q” from the LGBTQ+ acronym and deleting mentions of trans and gender non-conforming people from the description of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. The move immediately drew outrage from queer rights activists and civil rights advocacy groups. 

Trump’s order also directs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to carry out the reinstallment of dismantled or altered monuments and memorials. Earlier this month, Burgum called for a sweeping review of all public monuments across the country as part of an effort to expand energy production.

Hyperallergic has contacted the Smithsonian Institution and its affiliated museums for comment, specifically inquiring about any immediate actions the organization will take as a result of the executive order.

The mandate is the latest Trump directive aimed at tightening the administration’s grip over cultural institutions and undoing decades of hard-won achievements against racism, sexism, and other forms of hate. In January, Trump’s order to terminate Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEI) programs and initiatives led both the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution to shutter their diversity offices and scrub related terminology from their websites.

“First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present — now he’s trying to remove it from our history,” said Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas in an X post about the Smithsonian order. “Let me be perfectly clear — you cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future.”