President Donald Trump signed an executive order behind closed doors on Thursday directing federal agencies and the Smithsonian to eliminate what the order calls “divisive” and “anti-American” content from museums and national parks, sources familiar with the order told ABC News.
The order — called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” — directed the vice president and the secretary of Interior to restore federal parks, monuments, memorials and statues “that have been improperly removed or changed in the last five years to perpetuate a false revision of history or improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.”
In this Dec. 18, 2023, file photo, workers prepare a Confederate Memorial for removal in Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Va.
Kevin Wolf/AP, FILE
The order also directed Vice President JD Vance, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate what it claims are improper, divisive or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian — an institution consisting of 21 museums and 14 education and research centers — as well as the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
The White House said in the full text of the executive order that over the past decade, a rewriting of history has cast American milestones in a “negative light” and therefore directs museums to remove some historical context relating to race and gender.
It added that future funds for the organization will be banned for exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law.”
Furthermore, it banned the forthcoming American Women’s History Museum from recognizing transgender women “in any respect.”
The order said that the exhibits and programs that it seeks to remove undermine the nation’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” by casting its success “as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Examples given by the order include an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum called “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” which the order claimed “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct” and exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that the order said “proclaimed that ‘hard work,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘the nuclear family’ are aspects of ‘White culture.'”
It’s the latest in a series of executive actions by the president to roll back diversify, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government.
ABC News has reached out to the Smithsonian for comment.
