The director of the National Museum of American History told a California college audience that loving America is very complicated.
The White House spent a year investigating why – and what they found about the director is worse than anyone imagined.
What the Smithsonian Director said about America First on the record is the kind of statement careers end on.
Smithsonian Erased the Founding Fathers From the National Museum of American History
Congress approved the National Museum of American History in 1955 with a clear mission: place before visitors "a stimulating permanent exposition that commemorates our heritage of freedom and highlights the basic elements of our way of life."
Anthea Hartig became director in 2019 and immediately started dismantling that mission.
Her first move was rewriting the museum's mission statement to drop the phrase "make sense of the present" and replace it with language about creating "a more just and compassionate future."
That was just the beginning.
In her own words, history is "a prime tool of social justice" and her role is connecting "research and scholarship to activism and advocacy."
She stood before a University of California audience and told them the museum profession needed to figure out how to "problematize" the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Getting the museum "out of the 'America First' mentality" – that was the goal she put on the record.
This is the director of the National Museum of American History.
The White House Domestic Policy Council released its report on July 4 – the 250th birthday of the nation – titled "Saving America's Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage."
The conclusion was unambiguous: "The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America's story honestly."
What Over a Billion Dollars in Taxpayer Funding Is Buying at the Smithsonian
The museum pulls in over $1 billion annually from American taxpayers – $1,080,500,000 in appropriations for fiscal year 2026 alone – and none of it is funding exhibits on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or Washington's crossing of the Delaware.
The museum introduces Benjamin Franklin primarily through his connection to slavery.
The museum characterizes the Pledge of Allegiance as a tool for instilling "nationalist values."
Every exhibit at the museum – whatever the subject – must be connected to seven political priorities spelled out in the museum's Interpretive Plan, among them race, identity, gender, sexuality, and immigration.
Staff training materials frame objectivity, individualism, and a sense of urgency as characteristics of "whiteness."
The museum offered no July 4th programming in 2025 or 2026 – not a single special event to mark Independence Day during America's 250th anniversary year.
Meanwhile, Hartig told reporters she believed the museum's 250th anniversary exhibition was doing the work.
The White House disagreed – pointing out the museum still failed to create any exhibit dedicated to the founding era, the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, or the establishment of constitutional rule of law.
Trump Is Now Pushing Congress to Reform the Smithsonian and Defund the Activism
The White House made the legal framework explicit: the president has "a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian, and to urge the Chief Justice of the United States, as the Chancellor of the Smithsonian, as well as the Vice President, as a Regent of the Smithsonian and as President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, to take appropriate action to restore the integrity of the National Museum of American History."
Trump is building a legal case to demand Congress and the Chief Justice act – and using the museum's own director's words as the evidence.
Hartig said she wanted to reframe American history away from "America First."
The White House just handed that quote to every Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.
The Smithsonian responded to the report with its standard line – "For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship" – a statement repeated so many times it has become a reflex.
The report quotes Hartig's own words dozens of times, and no institution can claim nonpartisan scholarship while its director is on record calling history her "prime tool of social justice."
The money will follow the accountability – and the accountability just landed on Anthea Hartig's desk in 162 pages.
Sources:
- Eric Mack, "Smithsonian's National Museum of American History promotes 'extreme political activism,' WH report alleges," Fox News, July 5, 2026.
- Jeff Charles, "This Taxpayer-Funded Museum Erased the Founders and Imposed 'White Supremacy Culture' Training," Townhall, July 7, 2026.
- John Solomon, "Trump panel finds Smithsonian American history museum ideologically captured, engages in 'activism'," Just the News, July 6, 2026.
- White House Domestic Policy Council, "Saving America's Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage," July 4, 2026.