How the Smithsonian Lost America’s Plot

The Wall Street Journal ^ | July 8, 2026 5:58 pm ET | The Editorial Board

[E. Pluribus Unum]

One of the better causes of the second Trump Administration is its effort to purge the progressive political takeover of America’s national cultural institutions. A case in point is the new White House report on the bad historical turn taken by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

The press is attacking the report as an attempt to censor independent museum curation, but that’s not how we read it. The 162-page “Saving America’s Story,” produced by the White House Domestic Policy Council, lays out in persuasive detail how the museum offers a largely critical view of American history that “no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated.”

Instead, the museum offers the message, captured in one exhibit, that when they founded the U.S., “early leaders envisioned a country that promised opportunity and freedom—but only for some.”

The report isn’t a cheerleading document seeking to hide America’s warts. What it seeks is a history of the U.S. that doesn’t resemble the 1619 Project in its partisan bias.

The report’s examples show the degree to which progressives have captured the history museum. In one exhibit, the Pledge of Allegiance was described as a tool to “instill American nationalism through flag ceremonies.” Nationalism? That’s a needlessly pejorative edge. How about patriotism?

The museum also highlights the worst facts about the Founders. Benjamin Franklin is called a racist and anti-immigrant, and Alexander Hamilton owned slaves, while, the report says, “downplaying or completely excluding facts about their abolitionist efforts.”

One Smithsonian “didactic” about the Broadway musical “Hamilton” described Hamilton as “influential and flawed” without noting that he was a leading drafter of the Federalist Papers and helped George Washington win the Revolutionary War. The report notes what the museum doesn’t, which is that Hamilton “was a...”

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TOPICS: Culture/Society
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[ansel12]

That is a subscription publication, we can’t read the article.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"...........causes of the second Trump Administration is its effort to purge the progressive political takeover of America’s national cultural institutions.........."

I miss the Tea Party days where "We The People" ourselves engaged in our own causes and efforts to purge the progressive political takeover of America’s national cultural institutions.

Now, most people just sit around waiting for some politician to do it on their behalf.

[KingLudd]

I clearly remember in 1995 how the Smithsonian failed spectacularly in their mission (to increase and diffuse knowledge) by creating an ethical debate in the Enola Gay exhibition about dropping the bomb.

SI is no different than NPR, VOA, CPB, PBS. They all hate America.

[CFW]

“Smithsonian Museum Features Explicit And Trans Exhibits, White House Report Finds”

https://dailycaller.com/2026/07/08/white-house-report-smithsonian-american-history-museum-explicit-gender-content/

“One “Entertainment Nation” exhibit featured explicit content, including a magazine cover featuring nude young women and footage of drag queen performances, according to the report. Another exhibit had a “Girl Germs” magazine that showed two partially naked women embracing. The magazine was about female masturbation, the report read.

An exhibit titled “Illegal to be You: Gay History Beyond Stonewall” featured a sadomasochistic “crotch harness” while a “We Belong Here” exhibit featured a “chest binder” for a “trans nonbinary” skateboarder Leo Baker, according to the report.

A “Girlhood (It’s Complicated)” exhibit displayed a page from a six-year-old girl’s diary where she wrote about praying to God “every night for my penis to grow,” according to the report. Although Jennifer wrote, “I hope no body reads my diary,” her thoughts were on full display for visitors, an image shows. The exhibit did not refer to Jennifer as a girl.

The report noted that the NMAH “exhibits and educational materials present gender as fluid, treat biological males as girls or women, and fold contemporary advocacy for transgenderism into the Museum’s treatment of female childhood development, women’s history, and women’s sports.”

[PghBaldy]

Librarians and museum curators are similar. Both can be left-wing loons.

[Terry L Smith]

Communists come out and blame everybody for what they do.

[Reverend Wright]

This stuff all originates from the elite universities, especially the Ivy League.

The museums etc. are downstream of the universities.

You can’t change the antics of the monkey until the organ grinder is forced to reform.

And the Trump Admin has given the universities a total pass as long as they avoid “anti-semitism”.

[GaryCrow]

I went through the Smithsonian Natural History Museum about two years ago, before Trump ever brought the issue to light. It was really bad, the woke BS was over the top. Every display pivoted to slavery no matter what the topic. EVERYTHING was linked to slavery or civil rights in some manner. It was obvious the curators were obsessed with the subject and intended to propagandize it to the max. We cut short our visit because we were sick of the brainwashing.

On the same trip we went to Monticello and I was expecting the same all slavery/all the time treatment. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't go over the top with it. It was mentioned but not driven into the dirt. I think that was because Monticello is private and they don't want to offend their paying guests. The Smithsonian has no profit motive so they feel free to push their leftist agenda.