Trump Signs Executive Order Ordering Smithsonian To Purge 'Improper Ideology' From Its Museums, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Nation's Largest Cultural Complex Was Acknowledging Country's Past

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump on Thursday signed Executive Order 14253, titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," directing the Smithsonian Institution to identify and remove what the order described as "improper ideology" from its 21 museums, the National Zoo, and 14 affiliated research and education centers. Vice President JD Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian Board of Regents by statute, was assigned operational responsibility for executing the directive.

The order singled out by name the Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition "The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture," characterizing as ideologically suspect any examination of how American sculpture has historically depicted race. The directive further instructed that no federal funds support "exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race, or promote ideologies inconsistent with Federal law," a standard the order declined to further define and which sources within the administration confirmed would be interpreted as needed.

The Smithsonian, chartered by an act of Congress in 1846 and governed by a 17-member Board of Regents structured to insulate it from any single branch of government, was advised that the new arrangement would proceed regardless. The Vice President's portfolio under the order includes oversight of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Latino, the National Portrait Gallery, and any programming addressing slavery, segregation, Japanese internment, the removal of Indigenous peoples, or other historical events that administration spokespersons declined to specify by name but which they confirmed they had in mind.

"They were saying terrible things about America in the museums, folks. Terrible. The worst things," the President told reporters at the signing. "Beautiful museums, the most beautiful in the world, the most beautiful, but they were filled with anti-American hate, and we are going to take care of it. We are going to make them beautiful again."

A senior administration official, asked whether removing references to historical events the United States actually undertook risked leaving the museums short on content, replied that there were "plenty of good things to put in instead," and listed six. The Smithsonian, for its part, was expected to comply on the institutional understanding that a body chartered to advance "the increase and diffusion of knowledge" would continue to do so within whichever portion of American knowledge the Vice President was prepared to authorize.

At press time, the Office of Management and Budget had begun line-item review of the Smithsonian's roughly $1 billion federal appropriation for materials inconsistent with the order, while curators at the American Art Museum's race-and-sculpture exhibition reportedly waited to learn whether American sculpture had in fact ever depicted race, or whether they had imagined it.