President Trump has ordered the National Park Service to post signs outside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History warning visitors that its exhibits may not tell the truth about the country.
The order, signed July 24, directs the Interior Department to install temporary signage along the public sidewalks and walkways leading into the museum on the National Mall. The signs will tell visitors the exhibits inside "should be renovated" and point them toward what the White House calls accurate information about America's history, according to the text of the order posted on whitehouse.gov. One proposed line, drawn from a White House report on the museum, reads bluntly: "Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don't want you to love your country."
This is not a one-off gesture. It is the second act of a fight that started in March 2025, when Trump signed an executive order demanding the Smithsonian strip what he called "improper ideology" from its museums. The follow-through came July 4 this year, when the White House released a 162-page report titled "Saving America's Story," accusing the museum of "extreme political activism" and arguing that inside its walls, in the report's words, the Founders are "minimized, if not entirely excluded," while "traditional patriotic narratives are treated with suspicion, if not outright contempt."
The report does not deal in vague complaints. It names exhibits. "American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith" draws criticism for teaching visitors that Americans "inherited a belief in social hierarchy and institutions that perpetuated inequality." A companion Smithsonian venue, the National Museum of the American Latino, is cited for framing U.S. history around "colonization" and stolen land. The report also singles out the museum's LGBTQ+ history exhibit and a display marking the 50th anniversary of Title IX that focuses on transgender athletes. Two dozen items across Smithsonian properties made the White House's list of objectionable material, by multiple accounts of the report.
At the center of the dispute sits Anthea Hartig, the museum's director since 2018, whom the White House report singled out by name over past comments describing history as a "prime tool of social justice." That framing, conservatives argue, is precisely the problem: a taxpayer-funded institution meant to preserve the nation's story instead treating that story as raw material for an ideological project.
Two hours on the Hill
Hartig got her chance to answer for it July 21, when a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hauled her before Congress for a hearing titled "Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian's Efforts to Reshape the Past." She held her ground for two hours. "Our work is governed by the Smithsonian standards of scholarship, accuracy, independence, and nonpartisanship," Hartig told the panel, adding that "the museum does not take sides in America's political debates." She said the Smithsonian was still fact-checking the White House report but maintained it "does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum."
Republicans were not persuaded. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee put the question to her directly: "Do you love America?" It was a blunt moment in a hearing that Republicans used to argue the museum has drifted from its mission of preserving history into shaping it. House Democrats, for their part, cast the hearing as government overreach into independent scholarship, and a rebuttal from Democrats on the House Administration Committee accused the White House of cherry-picking quotes and misstating who actually controls the Smithsonian, which operates under a board of regents that includes members of Congress, not the executive branch alone.
That governance question is exactly why Trump reached for the sign order instead of a more direct lever. The Smithsonian is not a federal agency the president can simply command, and Congress, as Roll Call and other outlets have noted, has largely stayed on the sidelines of the fight even as the White House escalates. Posting warning signs on Park Service land outside the building is something the administration can do unilaterally, using authority over the National Mall grounds rather than the museum itself.
Whether that satisfies conservatives who want deeper change is another matter. The signs are temporary, by the order's own terms, meant to last only until the museum acts on the White House report's recommendations. That leaves the real fight still ahead: whether Smithsonian leadership overhauls the exhibits, whether Congress moves to attach conditions to the institution's roughly $1 billion in annual federal funding, and whether Hartig keeps her job. For now, visitors walking up to see the flag that inspired the national anthem or the original Star-Spangled Banner will pass a government sign first, telling them to be skeptical of what they're about to see.
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