White House Report Targets Smithsonian Museum Over Expansive View of U.S. History
A 162-page report released on July 4 by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council has put the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History under unusually direct political scrutiny. Issued as the country marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the document does more than list grievances. It sketches a preferred version of American history — one that is more explicitly patriotic, Christian-centered, and anchored in traditional ideas of nation and identity.
The report accuses the museum of advancing “radical, activist ideology” by presenting histories that include Indigenous and Black Americans, immigrants, women, and transgender people. It argues that the institution has “denigrated and displaced whites, males, Christians and Americans,” and complains that race is emphasized in areas where the authors say it has little historical relevance.
Among the report’s most pointed claims is the assertion that the museum fails to provide a sufficiently celebratory account of the Founding Fathers, Christianity, and the nation’s origins. It says the museum does not adequately acknowledge “the central and positive role Christianity played in the founding and flourishing of America,” and objects to descriptions of European colonization that frame it in terms of religious fervor rather than missionary purpose. The document also presses for a different account of slavery, one that highlights colonial inheritance from global and European slaving systems while emphasizing the founders’ role in ending the institution — a framing that overlooks the fact that most of Europe abolished slavery before the United States did.
The report also takes aim at contemporary exhibitions. It cites Corazón y Vida: Lowriding Culture and How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories, suggesting that the museum presents immigrant communities as foreign rather than as part of American life. A footnote reveals that the exhibitions in question focus on Mexican American, Chicano, Filipino American, and Filipino culture. The report also repeatedly references Girlhood (It’s Complicated), a 2020-23 exhibition that included a pair of monarch butterfly wings worn by young immigrants brought to the United States as children without documentation. NMAH director Anthea M. Hartig has identified that display as one of her favorites.
The report’s language is revealing not only for what it condemns, but for what it seeks to restore: a narrower civic narrative in which Christianity, the Founders, and conventional gender roles occupy the center. In that sense, the museum has become a proxy for a larger struggle over who gets to define American history in federally funded institutions.
