President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the National Park Service to put in short-term signage close to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, warning of what the administration views as “inaccurate information” introduced within the establishment’s displays.
The executive order calls for that NPS, which controls the sidewalks outside of a number of Smithsonian museums alongside the National Mall, installs signs selling a White House report that denigrated displays on the National Museum of American History.
The order says the signage “shall notify visitors that the Museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings” within the report and directs them to “locations and resources for accurate information” in regards to the nation’s historical past.
It doesn’t describe what these alternate sources ought to be.
The report, published July 4 by the White House Domestic Policy Council, accused the Smithsonian of advancing “radical,” left-wing ideologies on the museum and “an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
Critics have accused the Trump administration of making an attempt to leverage the museum to re-write the historical past introduced in its displays to favor a conservative worldview.
“President Trump is fighting back to restore one of the Nation’s greatest civic treasures to its founding mission and purpose and reestablish truth in the Nation’s historical narrative,” the White House stated in a truth sheet on the order.
Friday’s order was the newest effort by the Trump administration to re-write points of the nation’s historical past introduced in some of the nation’s most prestigious museums and galleries.
It follows a March 2025 govt order wherein the White House sought to fight what it referred to as “historical revisions” that forged the nation’s historical past in a unfavorable gentle.
While the National Park Service falls beneath the purview of the Department of the Interior, the Smithsonian is an impartial company that’s meant to function outside the management of the chief department.
But the federal government controls a lot of the museum system’s funding and Vice President JD Vance sits on its board.
Smithsonian leaders have stated the establishment will keep its autonomy regardless of the administration’s repeated makes an attempt to intervene with its displays and personnel choices.
The Smithsonian declined to touch upon Friday’s order.