On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order targeting funding for the Smithsonian facility’s programs, including what he characterizes as “divisible, racially ideology,” on his latest broadside against liberalism, which criticized Western culture and values.
The president said there have been “cooperative and extensive” efforts over the past decade by rewriting American history by replacing “objective facts” with “distorted stories driven by ideology rather than truth.” He said the story casts the US “establishment principles” into “negative light.”
Knock Rip via Wikimedia Commons
“The Smithsonian Association has been under the influence of divisive, racially ideologies in recent years,” Trump said in order. “This change promoted a narrative that portrayed American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive,” he pointed to a sculpture exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, which states that “the oceans, including the United States, use race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege and disenfranchisement.”
Order is Vice President JD Vance, Vice President serving on the Smithsonian Association’s board of directors, overseeing efforts to “eliminate inappropriate ideologies” from all areas of the institution, including museums, education, research centres and national zoos.
It sees Trump’s latest salvo against cultural pillars of society, such as universities and the arts, as a step away from his conservative sensibility. He had his own recently Install as Chairman John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts Center, which aims to overhaul programming, including the annual Kennedy Center Honorary Award Show. The government is also recently Forced Columbia University To make a set of policy changes Threat Ivy League schools have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
The executive order also suggests the return of statues and monuments of Confederate figures. George Floyd’s murder In 2020, Minneapolis was the rise of the Black Life Matter movement, which has been disliked by Trump and other conservatives.
The President has been in charge of the Secretary of the Interior since January 1, 2020, “determine whether public monuments, monuments, statues, markers or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction will be deleted or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, or includes certain historical events and diagrams, including certain historical events and diagrams.”
The order also calls for improvements to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall by July 4, 2026, in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Trump has picked out the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened near the White House in 2016, the Museum of Women’s History in Development, and the Museum of American Art for Criticism.
“The museums in our country’s capital should be a place for individuals to learn, and should not be exposed to the indoctrination and divisive narratives of ideological ideology that distort our shared history,” he said in order.
“There are no comments so far,” Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian Association’s chief spokesman, told her in an email late Thursday.
Under the order, Vance is to work with the White House Budget Office to ensure that future funding for the Smithsonian institutions is not spent on programs that share American values and divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies that conflict with federal law and policies. The President also wants to ensure that the Women’s History Museum praises women and “aware men as women.”
The Smithsonian Association is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It consists of 21 museums and the National Zoo. The 11 museums are located along Washington’s National Mall.
The agency was established by Parliament with funding from James Smithson, a British scientist who found “in Washington in the name of the Smithsonian Facility, a facility for increasing and dissemination of knowledge.”
