The White House announced on Tuesday a sweeping review of content at the Smithsonian museums, another flex by President Donald Trump in his effort to rewrite American history to align with his own version of it.

The vetting process will include scouring wall text, websites, and social media for LGBTQ+ and other “woke” content in an assessment of “tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals,” according to a letter sent by administration officials to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III.

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Smithsonian museums have 120 days to adjust content that the administration finds problematic, “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”

The administration has already stripped National Park Service histories of references to the LGBTQ+ community.

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The announcement is just the latest attack on the Congressionally chartered and ostensibly independent institution, which is nonetheless funded almost entirely by the federal government.

Trump laid out his revanchist vision of American history in March, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

The order claimed that the Smithsonian had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” and that it promoted “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

Last month, bills were introduced by Trump’s allies in the House and Senate that would codify the executive order into law.

Museum staff and curators can expect on-the-ground oversight within the next 30 days, the letter stated, including walk-throughs of current exhibitions by administration officials.

Among the institution’s dozens of facilities, eight museums are the first targets of Trump’s content crackdown, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of American History, and the National Portrait Gallery.

The National Portrait Gallery has already been a casualty in the president’s war on “woke.” Even after the Smithsonian shut down its diversity office in March, following Trump’s diktat banning DEI efforts across the federal government, the president went after the Gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, whom he accused of partisanship and being “a strong supporter of DEI.” She resigned in May after Trump attempted to fire her, an authority he doesn’t have under the Smithsonian’s charter.

In July, artist Amy Sherald withdrew her planned exhibition at the Gallery after officials at the museum attempted to remove her provocative painting “Trans Forming Liberty” from the show. The large portrait depicts a Black trans woman in a blue gown holding a torch sprouting flowers in a pose reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty.

Also in July, The Washington Post reported that a temporary placard containing references to Trump had been removed from an impeachment exhibit at the National Museum of American History, as part of an internal Smithsonian content review prompted by Trump’s earlier attacks on the institution.

The museum later updated the display to restore context about Trump’s two impeachments, following outcry from members of the public and several Democratic leaders.

The Smithsonian has long been a target of the president’s allies in Congress. In 2023, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) excoriated Secretary Bunch in a hearing, claiming “sexual material” in a virtual drag queen story hour hosted by the American Art Museum was evidence of “the targeting of children” by the Smithsonian.

A GOP press release on the hearing went further, calling drag “the Left’s indoctrination of our children.” 

The administration’s latest salvo in the culture wars directs the Smithsonian to provide materials within 30 days, including catalogs and programs for all current exhibitions, digital files of all placards and gallery labels, and proposals for exhibitions over the next three years, a period coinciding with the president’s final departure from the White House.

In addition to rewriting history at the Smithsonian museums, Trump has taken over Washington’s Kennedy Center as the chair of the Kennedy Center Board, where he’s putting his own garish stamp on culture in the nation’s capital.

On a Wednesday visit to the arts center, he announced he’ll be hosting the Kennedy Center Honors himself this December, inducting a new class of honorees including Rocky star Sylvester Stallone, the metal band Kiss, and country music artist George Strait. He rejected other potential honorees as “woke.”

He floated the idea of making himself an honoree at next year’s ceremony.

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