Government officials are threatening to pull funding from the Smithsonian Institution unless it meets their demands and turns over documents related to its museums’ exhibits and programming.
The Trump administration’s assault on diversity and historical fact is still active at the Smithsonian. The government has demanded the removal of exhibits that examine the history of racial, ethnic and gender inequality on the grounds that they are anti-American. Among other examples, Trump has publicly complained that the National Museum of African American History and Culture focuses too much on “how bad slavery was.”
In a letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch sent on Thursday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley accuse Bunch’s team of failing to meet a Sept. 11 deadline to turn over documents for the administration to review. The letter also says Bunch has not ensured that all of the institution’s museums are adhering to the White House’s mandated worldview ahead of next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.
“We wish to be assured that none of the leadership of the Smithsonian museums is confused about the fact that the United States has been among the greatest forces for good in the history of the world,” Vought and Haley wrote. “The American people will have no patience for any museum that is diffident about America’s founding or otherwise uncomfortable conveying a positive view of American history, one which is justifiably proud of our country’s accomplishments and record.”
The letter identifies documents the administration says it has yet to receive and threatens to slash the organization’s funding if it doesn’t comply by a deadline of “January 13, 2025” (presumably a typo).
“Current wall texts and didactics, exhibition proposals and budgets, object checklists for upcoming programming, internal governance manuals, and chain-of-command records for content approval are not obscure archival requests,” they add. Although the letter frames this effort to censor the federally funded museums as a priority of “the American people,” a broad majority of Americans oppose the administration’s efforts to commandeer these museums, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this year. That poll, taken in April after Trump issued an executive order on “improper” ideology, found that 66% of Americans don’t think the president should control the country’s premier cultural institutions, like national museums and theaters. There’s simply no evidence of a broad national appetite for historical revisionism and intellectual censorship, no matter how many angst-ridden posts and letters the president and his allies send out.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
