Trump pressures Smithsonian to align with his view of history

Donald J. Trump’s pressure campaign against the Smithsonian turned a fight over museum exhibits into a battle over who gets to define American history. In March 2025, his Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” attacked a “divisive, race-centered ideology” at the institution and directed Vice President J.D. Vance, a Smithsonian regent, to work to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from museums, education programs, research centers and even the National Zoo.

The Smithsonian is not a presidential agency that can simply be ordered around. Congress created it in 1846 as “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge,” and its governance still runs through a 17-member Board of Regents that includes the vice president, the chief justice of the United States, senators, representatives and citizen regents. The institution is an independent trust instrumentality of the United States, but just under two-thirds of its annual budget comes from federal appropriations.

That leverage lands on Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s 14th secretary, who took office on June 16, 2019. Bunch is the first African American and the first historian to hold the job, and he oversees 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers and education units. Before becoming secretary, he founded the National Museum of African American History and Culture, a museum that opened in 2016 after Bunch began the project with one staff member, no collections, no funding and no site.

The administration later launched a “comprehensive internal review” of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions to ensure they aligned with Trump’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives and restore confidence in shared cultural institutions. The Smithsonian was also preparing for the United States’ 250th anniversary in 2026, a milestone Bunch says should rest on expertise and scholarship rather than politics.