“Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” a frightening executive order from President Donald Trump’s White House Thursday takes aim at the Smithsonian and threatens to pull federal funding for content that promotes “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
The threat to museums such as The National Museum of African-American History and Culture is real. But even more sinister is the administration’s rejection of race as a “social construct,” which is nothing short of an expression of a belief in racial purity and white supremacy.
Even more sinister is the administration’s rejection of race as a “social construct.”
One of the things that has Trump angry is “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” an exhibit at the American Art Museum that innovatively positions nearly 100 sculptures alongside statements about scientific racism. That’s the discredited belief that there are biologically distinct races of people, with some more superior than others. The exhibition examines how artists and art objects have assisted, reflected or challenged such racist thinking since the 18th century, but Trump, in his executive order expresses disappointment that the show “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct.”
Holding that race is not a biological reality is not a mere view. It’s a fact, and the rejection of that fact is a key component of white supremacist thinking. Trump’s executive order claims race-centered ideologies are detrimental to our shared culture but is silent on the fact that white supremacy, which his executive order promotes, has proved to be the greatest, most deadly identity politics of them all. See slavery. See the westward expansion of the United States and Manifest Destiny.
This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to overhaul the way we understand American history. On the heels of the Black Lives Matters protests following George Floyd’s murder, Trump issued an executive order to create the 1776 Commission, a team of conservative politicians, activists, and pundits (none of them professional historians) to develop a “patriotic education” that rescued American history from identity-driven revision that emphasizes critical thinking over patriotism.
The “1776 Report” was meant as a repudiation of the influential New York Times’ “1619 Project” that reoriented America’s founding myths through the lens of the Transatlantic slave trade. One of Trump’s final acts in office was the official release of that “1776 Report,” and one of President Joe Biden’s first acts in office was to rescind it through his own executive order.
Like the “1776 Report,” the current executive order targeting the Smithsonian is preoccupied with the nation’s founding. It charges Vice President JD Vance with undoing “false revisions” that have brought “negative light” to our founding principles and insists — falsely — that the U.S. has always been a vehicle for universal freedoms.
Like the “1776 Report,” the current executive order targeting the Smithsonian is preoccupied with the nation’s founding.
The administration demands that the Smithsonian – a sprawling network of 21 museums, research centers, an arboretum and a zoo — reflect its version of national identity by the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 2026. The Smithsonian is not entirely funded by the federal government, but enough of its budget relies on congressional appropriations that it’s always been vulnerable to political whims.
It’s hardly surprising that a backward-looking political movement that seeks to “make America great again” wants its version, and only its version, of the past on display at our country’s highly visible cultural institutions. While people have always disagreed over what happened in the past and how it impacts where we find ourselves today, the Smithsonian is an institution that has helped steer people away from mythologies.
The National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004, breaking new ground with its focus on the representation of national racial and ethnic minority experience. The NMAAHC finally opened in 2016 during the last months of President Barack Obama’s presidency, 13 years after president George W. Bush signed the legislation creating it. Though the late Rep. John Lewis introduced the bill to create the NMAAHC and Bush signed it into law, its existence should be credited to everyday people who pushed to see a truthful portrayal of themselves and their history in the nation’s highest institutions. But this is not all that Trump has in mind when he mentions “restoring truth and sanity.” It’s about rolling back social progress. The administration singling out the NMAAHC — incorrectly suggesting that it frames nuclear families, hard work, and individualism as “aspects of White culture” — is itself bizarre, but its underlying biologically essentialist take on society is even more troubling. It mentions the Smithsonian’s upcoming American Women’s History Museum, criticizing it for including nonbinary and trans women in its displays, saying that the museum should not “recognize men as women in any respect,” such as “male athletes participating in women’s sports.” Not satisfied with preventing trans women from playing women’s sports, the Trump administration appears to want to erase these communities from sight or even memory. The demand for more diverse and inclusive stories on the National Mall goes back generations. The demand for more diverse and inclusive stories on the National Mall goes back generations and the fight won’t stop with this executive action. As long as there are monuments, memorials, and exhibitions claiming to represent the public, the public will push back against those it finds to be misleading and offensive. In response to Trump’s administration scrubbing government websites of what it terms DEI content, the American Historical Association has condemned that “federal censorship of American history.” The question of “who owns history” has always been a political one mired in power struggles, and Thursday’s executive order reveals that the stakes of this struggle are greater than ever. This is not just about representations. It’s about knowledge itself and the use of the knowledge to justify inequality. There’s a reason people in Trump’s administration seem more bothered by the idea of equity than diversity or inclusion: They don’t seem to think we’re equal and they’re going after all content that suggests we are. They believe there is a natural order of human beings — a biologically rigid sytem of race — that puts them at the top. And they want to force our most celebrated historical institutions to back them up.
Robyn Autry
Robyn Autry is a sociology professor and director of the Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University. She is the author of “Desegregating the Past: The Public Life of Memory in the U.S. and South Africa.” 
