In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.EXCLUSIVE — Just before fireworks on the Fourth of July, the White House unloaded a devastating report on the Smithsonian Institution, detailing how the nation’s museum complex denigrates the country and its heritage.The report, 129 pages long and buttressed by 522 footnotes, painstakingly demonstrates how the Smithsonian’s leaders have commandeered an institution entrusted to them to effect cultural transmission and perversely turned it into its opposite: a hothouse for anti-American activism.
We can begin to understand why we have politicians like Zohran Mamdani, Darializa Chevalier, and Melat Kiros. It’s not that our institutions failed to teach them and their voters to love America — they taught them to loathe America.Though the report by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council focuses on the National Museum of American History and its director of the past seven years, Anthea Hartig, it obviously aims much higher. It amounts to a full-range indictment of the entire 21-museum complex and its leadership, starting at the top with Secretary Lonnie Bunch III.Having read the report, it’s hard to see how the Board of Trustees, which governs the Smithsonian Institution and appoints its leader; Congress, which votes $1.08 billion a year to keep it running; or the American people, the intended targets of the indoctrination but also the ultimate paymasters, continue to put up with Bunch, Hartig, and the rest. No self-respecting people would rationally pay for their own cultural erasure.In fact, to make sure that the board — which includes Vice President J.D. Vance, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, several members of Congress, and other citizens — does the right thing, Congress should immediately call for hearings and set up investigations.The report lets the museum and its leadership do the talking. The NMAH’s didactics and wall texts, and Hartig herself, lay out for all to see what the Smithsonian’s new mission is.The report also includes graphic photos of sexually explicit exhibits that are accessible to children, not just of drag queens and naked bodies, but of bondage wear and kink gear, visuals that could easily scar young minds.The opposite of all this was promised to the American people when Smithsonian leadership came to Congress in the 1950s and 1960s to plead for the creation of the NMAH.According to a 1953 brochure, the United States should create the new museum because it would “place before millions who visit the Nation’s Capital each year a stimulating permanent exposition that commemorates our heritage of freedom.”Remington Kellogg, director of the U.S. National Museum, said at the MMAH’s opening in 1964 that it was intended to awaken “a clear understanding of the inspiring story of the United States — its origins, struggles, development, traditions, strength.” President Johnson himself promised at the opening ceremony that the museum would “foster patriotism.”Not anymore.Hartig, who pathetically acknowledges “the privilege and dominance of my whiteness,” sees in history not a faithful recounting of the past, but a “prime tool of social justice” to expiate such unearned advantages. This should obviously be very worrisome for someone who heads our national history museum, but she is explicit about seeing her role as a way to connect “research and scholarship to activism and advocacy.”Unlike Johnson and Kellogg before her, Hartig wants to “get out of the America First mentality” when telling history and move away from what she calls the “Anglo-centric” focus on the American Founding.Work continues on a pavilion for the America 250 celebration on the National Mall with the Smithsonian Castle in the background, Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
