Trump executive order targets the Smithsonian over 'divisive, race-centered ideology'

President Trump accused the Smithsonian Institution of propagating “divisive, race-based ideology” and issued an enforcement bid Thursday demanding an extremity to national backing for exhibitions and programs based connected radical themes that “divide Americans.”

The order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” directs Vice President JD Vance to region “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s 19 museums and the National Zoo successful Washington, D.C.

Trump’s bid besides seeks to reconstruct Department of the Interior nationalist monuments and statues that were removed oregon changed “to perpetuate a mendacious reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the worth of definite humanities events oregon figures, oregon see immoderate different improper partisan ideology.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is directed to look astatine each “monuments, memorials, statues and markers” that were removed oregon changed since Jan. 1, 2020. The bulk of nationalist monuments successful question honored Confederate leaders and were seen arsenic violative celebrations of the nation’s racist past. They were taken down aft the radical justness protests pursuing the execution of George Floyd by a Minnesota constabulary officer.

The opening of Trump’s bid claims “a concerted and wide effort” to rewrite American history, “replacing nonsubjective facts with a distorted communicative driven by ideology alternatively than truth.”

Several existent exhibitions are listed successful the bid arsenic grounds of the communicative the bid seeks to eradicate, including a existent amusement astatine the Smithsonian American Art Museum titled “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” which, according to the museum’s website, “examines for the archetypal clip the ways successful which sculpture has shaped and reflected attitudes and understandings astir contention successful the United States.”

It’s unclear whether the Trump medication intends connected censoring, for example, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture’s exhibitions related to the past of slavery successful America oregon the accomplishments of Mary McLeod Bethune, who established a schoolhouse for Black girls during an epoch erstwhile they were not allowed to be the aforesaid campuses arsenic achromatic children.

Thursday’s enforcement bid besides cited an upcoming grounds astatine the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, which the bid said volition observe “the exploits of antheral athletes participating successful women’s sports” — an evident effort to framework the inclusion of radical who are nonbinary oregon transgender.

The Smithsonian Institution, American Art Museum and American Women’s History Museum person not yet responded to The Times’ requests for comment.

The bid said Vance would enactment with Russell Vought, Trump’s manager of the Office of Management and Budget, to marque definite that aboriginal appropriations made done Congress “prohibit expenditure connected exhibits oregon programs that degrade shared American values, disagreement Americans based connected race, oregon beforehand programs oregon ideologies inconsistent with national instrumentality and policy.”

This is not the archetypal clip a Trump enforcement bid has affected the Smithsonian. In January, 1 of Trump’s archetypal enforcement orders efficaciously banned immoderate notation of diversity, equity and inclusion, prompting the Smithsonian to shutter its diverseness offices.

In mid-February, Trump engineered the takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by dismissing committee members appointed by erstwhile President Biden and getting himself named chairman.