Today there will be a hearing directed at the claimed “wokeness” of the Smithsonian Institution. A report came out late on July 4, 2026 that the National Museum of American History (NMAH) “fails fails in the basic task of illuminating our heritage.” I was last at the museum a little over a year ago and found the opposite to be the case. I went into the military halls and found everything from a ship from the Revolutionary Navy to America’s recent wars in the Middle East. In the music section there was the Star Spangled, the blues, Rock and Roll, and dozens of other music styles.
I won’t comment on the new report. I will just present some of its indictment of the Smithsonian. Next week we will examine its unfounded claims.
This report by the Domestic Policy Council demonstrates that NMAH fails in the basic task of illuminating our heritage. Our central finding is not that the Museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope. Rather, it is that Museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens. As this report shows, confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.
Anthea Hartig, NMAH’s director since 2019, has explicitly stated that she sees history as a “prime tool of social justice” and one of her roles as connecting “research and scholarship to activism and advocacy.”
The report identifies a broad pattern: the Founders are minimized, if not entirely excluded; traditional patriotic narratives are treated with suspicion, if not outright contempt; and the basic symbols and stories that once helped unify Americans are presented not as reasons for gratitude and inspiration, but as objects to be inherently questioned, dismantled, “problematized,” and reinterpreted to achieve ideological ends.
It also explains why the Museum’s special In Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness programming for America’s 250th anniversary fails to actually celebrate America’s Founders or Founding, and why Independence Day itself went unmarked by any special programming at NMAH in 2025 and 2026, despite the Museum being open.32 Taken together, these choices reinforce the conclusion that the Museum is not merely neglecting America’s central story. It is intentionally withholding and subverting it.
As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: “Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.”
…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 and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic. By the intention and at the direction of current Museum and Smithsonian leadership, NMAH has become subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.
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