{"id":648677,"date":"2026-08-21T07:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/648677\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T07:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:38:20","slug":"smithsonian-museum-targeted-by-trump-administration-as-culture-war-plays-out-across-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/648677\/","title":{"rendered":"Smithsonian Museum targeted by Trump administration as culture war plays out across US \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a matter of weeks, visitors to the museum that tells the story of America will be encouraged by Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s administration to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.<\/p>\n

By presidential decree, temporary street signage in downtown Washington will direct passersby to a report that claims the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of American History (NMAH) has fallen victim to \u201cideological capture\u201d by overemphasising the legacy of slavery and conquest at the cost of celebrating the country\u2019s greatness. <\/p>\n

The planned placards are the latest salvo in a 250-year-old war over how to frame American history. The conflict has intensified in Trump\u2019s second presidency, as right-wing campaigners seek to wind back what they see as a \u201cwoke\u201d revolution supercharged by the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

Behind the crusade is Lindsey Halligan, a 37-year-old lawyer who first met Trump at one of his golf clubs, and who last year alerted the president \u2013 whom she described as \u201cnot much of a museum go-er\u201d \u2013 to curatorial choices across the Smithsonian\u2019s network of institutions.<\/p>\n

According to Halligan, who worked at the White House and briefly as a federal prosecutor in Virginia, artefacts are too often interpreted through the lens of race, gender or sexual identity.<\/p>\n

\"LindseyLindsey Halligan. Photograph: Nathan Howard\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pattern that\u2019s impossible to ignore,\u201d she told media personality Bill O\u2019Reilly recently. \u201cThe Smithsonian is not the same Smithsonian that you visited on your sixth-grade class trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Halligan\u2019s gripes include a 1950s Wurlitzer jukebox exhibit that \u201cbecame a lesson on white supremacy and segregation\u201d. The music machine, which featured rock\u2019n\u2019roll songs from African-American artists, appalled those who thought it might encourage racial integration, the museum noted.<\/p>\n

Trump last year echoed some of Halligan\u2019s concerns, declaring the Smithsonian \u201cOUT OF CONTROL\u201d, and claiming that \u201ceverything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been\u201d.<\/p>\n

The escalating conflict over the leadership of the Smithsonian is emblematic of a broader culture war playing out across the US. Republicans have restored Confederate names to military bases and sought to revive the reputations of Confederate generals, while Trump has stamped his personal brand on Washington\u2019s cultural hub, seizing control of the Kennedy Centre and attempting to attach his name to the building.<\/p>\n

But a 162-page report released last month by the White House, called Saving America\u2019s Story, opened up a new front against the Smithsonian, taking aim at \u201cthinly veiled anti-Americanism\u201d at the NMAH.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as seen from the Washington Monument earlier this month. Photograph: Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

It said the museum\u2019s founders wanted it to tell the \u201cinspiring story\u201d of the US, and that the cold war-era president Lyndon Johnson wanted it to \u201cfoster patriotism\u201d. The report criticised several exhibits, including those that allude to Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin owning slaves, that celebrate drag queens and that highlight the displacement and decimation of Native American tribes.<\/p>\n

The report concluded: \u201cMuseum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report horrified some professional historians. The document is \u201cpart of the anti \u2013 DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion], anti \u2018woke\u2019 agenda of the administration,\u201d said Beth English, the head of the Organization of American Historians. The OAH has decried the White House\u2019s \u201cfederal assault on history\u201d for seeking to \u201cturn back the clock\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re not careful, we will end up with what the great writer Toni Morrison called \u2018statist history\u2019,\u201d Yale historian David Blight warned lawmakers at a hearing on Capitol Hill last month. \u201cAnd it will create what she called \u2018sanctioned ignorance\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Matthew Spalding, a vice-president at the conservative Hillsdale College which partnered with the White House to tell the story of American history, said reform of the Smithsonian would merely mean a return to the \u201cliberal consensus of American history\u201d that told the story of the revolution in chronological order.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should talk about slavery, we should talk about the Indians \u2013 all of these things. But to understand those questions … you have got to give [visitors] something from which they can understand the context of that discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople arrive at the Smithsonian metro station before the Great American State Fair on the National Mall during a celebration of the USA’s 250th Independence Day last month. Photograph: Anna Rose Layden\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

While the White House has successfully exerted its control over historical plaques at national parks, which are managed by federal authorities, it has struggled to bring about change at the Smithsonian \u2013 hence the presidential order to install warning signs in Washington.<\/p>\n

Although it receives more than $1 billion in annual federal funding, the Smithsonian, established by Congress in 1846, is not directly controlled by the US government and is governed by a bipartisan board. Board members include the chief justice of the supreme court, vice-president JD Vance and members of Congress.<\/p>\n

The Smithsonian has faced political pressure before. In the early 1990s a proposed exhibition about the Enola Gay, the US bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was in effect cancelled following an outcry in Congress and led to the resignation of a senior Smithsonian official.<\/p>\n

But the institution\u2019s current leadership \u2013 in particular secretary Lonnie Bunch, the first black person to hold that role \u2013 has largely resisted the Trump administration\u2019s onslaught.<\/p>\n

Anthea Hartig, the NMAH\u2019s director, defended the institution in front of Congress last month. \u201cHistory is incredibly challenging … if we tell it in its richness, we absolutely have objects that can make people uncomfortable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On a visit this week to the museum\u2019s In Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness exhibition, the target of much White House wrath, the FT found that the wall texts and placards condemned by the recent report were unchanged.<\/p>\n

A Smithsonian tour guide explained how Thomas Jefferson owned \u201censlaved people\u201d and how George Washington rotated his slaves in and out of the free state of Pennsylvania \u2013 home to America\u2019s first elected government \u2013 to keep them in servitude.<\/p>\n

The Smithsonian declined to comment.<\/p>\n

In a statement to the FT, Vince Haley, the White House official behind the Smithsonian report, said \u201cvery few\u201d Americans wanted the history museum to be used as a tool of social justice or \u201cinstrument of ideological activism and advocacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added the institution should provide an \u201chonest and inspiring account of American history … telling the story of our founding fathers \u2013 who they were, what they did and what they built\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some resistance to the Trump administration has also emerged in Congress, where Republican senator Lisa Murkowski joined Democrat Jeff Merkley in challenging the White House\u2019s proposed signage.<\/p>\n

But Mike Gonzalez, a conservative author and senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, whose work has been cited by the White House, said he wants to win bipartisan support for making sure the Smithsonian is never again funded to be an \u201cincubator of grievances\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we continue making the case … that this is not a good way for a nation to conduct itself, then nobody\u2019s going to come in, of either party, and all of a sudden again put in exhibits that denigrate the country,\u201d said Gonzalez.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly foolish people will pay $1.1 billion for their own cultural erasure.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a matter of weeks, visitors to the museum that tells the story of America will be encouraged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,16142,356,13,14,6,12175,11,12,15,16,5,12159,7,8,107,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-648677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-democratic-party","tag-donald-trump","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-jd-vance","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-republican-party","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-us","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117132363431935585","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}