Reposted from The Trump Administration
The Trump Administration’s Smithsonian Report: A Blueprint for Governmental Censorship “Saving America’s Story”
Our feature article is a must read for its analysis of the White House's latest cultural policy agenda - and the pithy quotes from our Founding Fathers that undercut its misleading and let's face it - erroneous arguments. Here are excerpts...
The White House Domestic Policy Council’s July 4, 2026 report, Saving America’s Story, is not a neutral audit of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History but rather a prosecutorial brief designed to declare the Smithsonian’s present leadership illegitimate and establish a political justification for intervention.
The report’s conclusion was written into its premise. The White House defines a successful historical museum as one that produces unity, pride, and affection for the nation. According to its point of view, this should be the goal of all Smithsonian museums.
In keeping with this pro-pablum policy, the report treats museum material that makes visitors feel uncomfortable as evidence of disunity and “ideological capture.” According to the report, historical accuracy is not determined by whether a museum’s presentation is rooted in historical evidence, but by whether the interpretation leaves visitors with the approved emotional response. Although the White house presently lacks authority to enter the American History Museum and change the museum’s exhibitions, its Executive Order 14416 directs the Secretary of the Interior and the National Park Service to put up temporary signage on the Smithsonian’s sidewalks regarding the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence; figures generally associated with the warm, patriotic feelings endorsed by the current administration.
Yet, the Founding Fathers had ideas of their own that might surprise the current administration – ideas about the value of free expression, education, and diversity. For instance, Thomas Jefferson’s Preamble to a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, Fall 1778, Papers 2:526—27
“…experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate... the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibited, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes… and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance . . .”
Regrettably, it is the word ‘disingenuous’ that most frequently comes to mind when reading the White House report. It states that museums should present “the good and the bad” while simultaneously insisting that the governing story must be one of national nobility, progress and redemption. Wrongdoing may be included, but only inside a narrative in which American founding principles are shown to have ultimately cured American injustice. The report’s rhetoric presents a fixed, incontrovertible narrative, oddly reminiscent at times of propaganda from the former Soviet Union. At the end of all human strife and the culmination of all social development, the outcome will be a sort of perfected Americanism. Russia’s answer was perfected Communism… and we all know how that ended.
Altogether this is a shoddy pretense of an analysis, from which actual analysis is missing. There is no methodological section explaining how displays were sampled, how interpretations were evaluated, which historians were consulted, whether temporary exhibitions were distinguished from permanent galleries, or whether the museum was invited to answer the report’s allegations. Instead, it compiles quotations, archived webpages, staff training documents, isolated labels and program descriptions into a case against the institution. It is an opposition-research dossier, not a professional museum assessment.
The report ultimately declares that the museum and Smithsonian leadership “cannot be trusted.” The administration has followed the report up with President Trump’s Executive Order 14416 in July 2026, “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution,” ordering that warnings be placed at the museum entrances stating that “that current leadership of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.” That is not analytical language. It is delegitimizing language alleging that presenting controversial subjects is evidence of disloyalty.
The contrast between today and President Trump’s first term is striking. During his February 2017 visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, President Trump praised the museum for honoring Black men and women’s contributions to national heritage and described it as a source of national pride.
The president’s second-term posture is completely different. The Saving America’s Story report is the follow-up to Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” of March 2025, which declared that federal historical sites should be “solemn and uplifting” monuments to American greatness.
Executive Order 14253 instructed Vice President JD Vance, through his position on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to remove what the administration called improper ideology. It instructed Vance and the Office of Management and Budget to work with Congress to stop money supporting exhibits that allegedly degraded shared values or divided Americans by race. Under its terms any historically serious account of Indian wars, slavery, segregation, or immigration exclusion could be accused of dividing Americans “based on race” or “degrading a national value.”
So, what are our most important "national values"? Let’s ask James Madison.
“In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects… Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788. Yale Law School, Avalon Project
The “Saving America’s Story” report is a skirmish in another battle that began with an August 12, 2025 White House letter to Secretary Bunch ordering a review of eight Smithsonian museums and compelling each museum to submit digital copies of past and future exhibition plans, copies of didactics and catalogs, labels, and social-media content... and for developing “narrative standards.” The stated goal was “alignment with American ideals,” but the process would enable an AI run-through to pick out keywords like ‘prejudice’ and other concepts too dangerous for public presentation. It also enabled assigning blame to specific people who approved a display or a signboard. Purposefully or not, it incentivized future self-censorship.
Our Feature Article is lengthy but well worth the time just for the Founders quotes, so follow the link below to access the whole. Meanwhile, we'll leave you with one more:
“Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness… To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways... by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority…”
George Washington, First Annual Address to Congress, January 8, 1790
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