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President Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday evening promising to eliminate "improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology" from the Smithsonian Institution's museums and restore "monuments, memorials, statues, markers" that have been removed over the past five years.
The "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" order directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate what he finds "improper" from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
The institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846. The order comes as the institution has been expanding over decades to include a wider, richer and more diverse telling of the nation's history.
"Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth," the executive order says. "This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light."
Trump's order calls the museum's evolving approach a reconstruction of history that is "inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed."
"Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology," the order says.
And it takes specific aim at one of the newest editions to the Smithsonian's portfolio of 21 museums - the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 under the leadership of historian Lonnie G. Bunch III, who became its 14th and first African American secretary in 2019.
The order alleges that the museum "has proclaimed that ‘hard work,' ‘individualism,' and ‘the nuclear family' are aspects of ‘White culture.'"
The Smithsonian is governed by a Board of Regents, which is made up of nine citizens, six members of Congress, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Vance.
Vance, the executive order states, will work with Trump's executive staff "to effectuate the policies of this order through his role" and will work with Congress and the Office of Management and Budget to withhold funding for exhibits that he decides "degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race."
The order also prohibits any transgender women from being included in the forthcoming American Women's History Museum.
Restoring any monuments or memorials removed since Jan. 1, 2020, is also part of the executive order. That was the start of an American reckoning with the way Confederate icons were honored in public spaces. Numerous statues and memorials were removed or relocated by local governments.