Trump executive order on Smithsonian targets funding for ‘improper ideology’
Donald Trump has ordered an overhaul to the Smithsonian Institution, claiming he will “eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the world’s largest museum, education and research complex.
In an executive order issued on Thursday, the president said there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”.
The order directs JD Vance, the vice-president, to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.
It also directs Vance to ensure that the American Women’s History Museum does not “recognize men as women in any respect”.
In language that reflected Republican talking points often heard on rightwing news channels, Trump claimed the US had witnessed an effort to “rewrite history”.
“Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed,” the president said.
Trump’s order pointed to an exhibit at the American Art Museum, titled: The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture.
Trump said the exhibit “claims that the United States has ‘used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement’”.
He added that the exhibit “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct”. Trump complained that the exhibit uses the phrase: “Race is a human invention.”
Trump also appeared to suggest that Confederate-era names and statues, many of which have been removed in recent years, could be reissued to parks and memorials.
“The Order also directs the Secretary of the Interior restore federal parks, monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties 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,” Trump said.
The Smithsonian Institution was established with funds from James Smithson, a British scientist who left his estate to the US to found “at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge”.
On Thursday, Trump also created the “DC safe and beautiful task force” by executive order. It will be chaired by Stephen Miller, the US homeland security adviser.
According to the order, the task force will coordinate with local officials on such matters as enforcing federal immigration law, including deporting people living illegally in the city, boosting law enforcement presence, and increasing the speed and lowering the cost of processing applications to carry concealed weapons.
