WASHINGTON, United States — President Donald Trump has ordered federal officials to place warning signs on the approaches to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, escalating his campaign to change how publicly funded institutions present the country’s past.
The temporary notices will stand on sidewalks and walkways controlled by the National Park Service rather than inside the museum.
They are to tell visitors that some displays require revision and direct them towards material the administration considers historically accurate.
Trump issued the executive order on Friday, July 24, 2026, after a White House review accused Smithsonian officials of allowing political activism to displace scholarship and national commemoration.
The order did not provide an installation date or specify the final wording of the signs.
Administration Takes Its Case to Museum Visitors
The directive gives the Department of the Interior responsibility for creating and installing the notices in consultation with the White House Domestic Policy Council.
It also authorises temporary outdoor exhibits intended to challenge information presented within the museum.
Trump said the intervention was necessary because the museum had not sufficiently honoured the 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence during the United States’ 250th anniversary year.
The arrangement allows the administration to address visitors before they enter a Smithsonian building whose internal management is not directly controlled by the president.
Trump said the museum’s current leaders “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.”
He also instructed officials at the Interior Department, Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration to identify ways of encouraging changes at the Smithsonian through laws, contracts, funding requirements and other federal powers.
The Smithsonian did not comment immediately on the new order.
White House Report Targets Museum Leadership
The order follows a 162-page report released by the Domestic Policy Council on July 4.
Titled Saving America’s Story, the document examined the museum’s leadership, internal planning materials, exhibitions and educational programmes.
It accused the institution of presenting the United States principally through injustice, oppression and social conflict while giving insufficient attention to the country’s founding principles and achievements.
The report described the museum’s approach as a form of ideological capture and said its leadership had moved away from presenting American history as a common national inheritance.
It recommended that visitors encounter a label declaring that exhibits had been prepared by people who “don’t want you to love your country.”
The executive order stopped short of requiring that precise sentence. Instead, it directed officials to summarise the report’s conclusions and guide visitors towards alternative resources.
The White House also argued that taxpayers were entitled to greater influence over the institution because Congress provides more than $1 billion towards its annual operations.
The Smithsonian receives additional income from donations, grants, commercial activities and investments.
Smithsonian Leaders Reject the Criticism
Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, rejected the White House report’s depiction of the museum before Trump issued the new order.
“While there will always be room for improvement, this report is not a fair characterization of the work and totality of the National Museum of American History,” Bunch said in a memorandum to employees.
Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director, also defended its methods during testimony before a House oversight subcommittee this week.
Hartig said the museum follows standards of accuracy, scholarship, independence and political neutrality.
She told lawmakers that visitors encounter objects including the Star-Spangled Banner, the Greensboro lunch counter, First Ladies’ gowns and exhibitions about military service and American invention.
She said the museum’s purpose was not to command a particular emotional response from visitors.
At its best, Hartig said, the institution produces “patriotism, not instructed, but inspired.”
The House hearing exposed the political divide surrounding the museum.
Republican members and conservative witnesses accused its curators of treating exhibitions as instruments of social change.
Hartig maintained that the institution preserves evidence and allows the public to draw conclusions from it.
An Institution Outside Direct White House Control
The Smithsonian occupies an unusual place within the United States government.
Congress created it in 1846 to advance and spread knowledge.
It is governed by a Board of Regents and operates separately from the executive branch, although it receives federal appropriations and many of its employees are federal workers.
Its vast network comprises 21 museums and galleries, the National Zoo and research facilities.
The National Museum of American History is among its most prominent sites on the National Mall.
Because the president cannot simply rewrite exhibitions inside the building, the order relies on land managed by the National Park Service around the museum.
It also seeks to use federal spending and administrative authority to press Smithsonian leaders for changes without formally placing the institution under White House control.
The American Historical Association said such pressure threatened the Smithsonian’s ability to operate independently.
It argued that historical scholarship must include the country’s conflicts and shortcomings alongside its achievements.
The organisation said an honest account of the United States could accommodate national pride while also examining slavery, racial discrimination, the treatment of Indigenous peoples and other contested parts of the country’s history.
A Wider Fight Over American History
Trump’s dispute with the Smithsonian began before the latest report.
In March 2025, he signed an order instructing his administration to remove what he described as divisive or anti-American ideology from monuments, museums and historical sites.
The White House later began reviewing Smithsonian exhibitions, online material and educational programmes.
The administration has presented those actions as an effort to restore national pride and ensure that museums emphasise the country’s progress, founders and institutions.
Historians and civil-rights organisations have argued that the campaign risks replacing complex evidence with an officially preferred narrative and reducing attention to experiences that do not fit a celebratory account.
The dispute has become particularly visible during the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Trump has made the commemoration a major theme of his second administration, while the Smithsonian has organised exhibitions intended to explore both the ideals proclaimed in 1776 and the continuing arguments over who has fully benefited from them.
The signs outside the museum will place those competing visions beside one another: the exhibitions selected by Smithsonian curators inside the building and the administration’s objections on the pavement outside.
