Anthea Hartig can’t figure out how to push a microphone button during a congressional hearing, how to define a woman, or whether history should be used for activism. But the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History insists that her love for the United States is “unconditional.”Except that Hartig equivocates on that one, too. Several times she pledged her love for America during two hearings by congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday, at which I was also a witness.The problem for Hartig is that, during her seven-year tenure as head of the history museum, she has also several times repeated that “loving America is very complicated.”
Confronted with her own past words, this is how Hartig tried to split the baby: “My personal belief is that loving America is not complicated. But as an historian, I can tell you that over time it has been very complicated for many people,” she said under grilling by chairman Bryan Steil (R–WI).And no, nobody believed that Hartig couldn’t figure out how to turn on the microphone, and had to fumble with the button with every single question, saying things like, “Whoops. Is that on?”It became evident very quickly during the first hearing on Monday that Hartig was just stalling for time, as each member gets only five minutes. At one point, Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH) ran out of patience and blurted out, “No, sorry, you don’t want to answer.”Running out the clock was also the reason she never answered any questions in a straightforward manner, first on Monday to the House oversight committee’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, and then on Tuesday to the House Committee on Administration.The congressional hearings were prompted by a devastating report issued on Independence Day by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, which richly details in 162 pages the anti-American agenda that Hartig’s museum pushes.In my own testimony, on both days, I pointed out how Hartig and other Smithsonian leaders use the deconstruction techniques of the postmoderns to tear down U.S. history.I said this: “Read the report and you will find that it is not just postmodernism that guides the Smithsonian’s leadership. They see the world in terms of power dynamics — who has dominance and how to wrest it from them by dismantling the American narrative. This is deeply Marxist and Gramscian.”I called on Congress to use whatever power it has to work with the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents and “clean house” by firing the entire leadership. I also called on them to fire Bunch and de-authorize the upcoming Latino museum, which will become yet another incubator of anti-American grievances if it’s ever built.Whether Hartig will go, I don’t know, but she did have two terrible days of hearings, particularly on the second day, when she was repeatedly asked questions she had no answers for.From left, Anthea Hartig, Director of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute, Mike Gonzalez, E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, Matthew Spalding, Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College, and David Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University, testify during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee hearing about the Smithsonian, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
