“We strive to be objective, and nonpartisan, and not based on any ideology.” So said Anthea M. Hartig, Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH), as she answered Congressman Brenden Gill’s question, “Would you say that the goal of history is to be objective?” The occasion was a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 21, 2026, held following the July 4 release by the White House Domestic Policy Council of Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage.  

Hartig’s answer sidestepped Gill’s question, but it answered the Domestic Policy Council, whose 162-page report charged that the “ideological capture” of the museum endangered America’s story. Hartig told Congress that the museum didn’t act on “any ideology.”

President Trump, for one, does not believe Hartig. On June 24, he issued Executive Order 14416, directing that temporary signs be placed outside the museum reading, “Warning Visitors About the Ideological Capture at the National Museum of American History.”

Words, of course, can be stretched. Hartig denies acting on any “ideology.” But President Trump, among others, sees an ideology in play. So what is an ideology? Webster’s Third International Dictionary supplies this: “a systematic scheme or coordinated body of ideas or concepts especially about human life or culture;” and this: “the integrated assertions, theories, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program;” and this: “an extremist sociopolitical program or philosophy constructed wholly or in part on factitious or hypothetical ideational bases.” 

These are all pertinent, but they leave a fog in which someone like Hartig can escape into ambiguity. “Systematic?” “Integrated?” “Extremists?” Who is to say? When critics of progressive views, such as the authors of Saving America’s Story, speak of “ideology,” generally they mean subordinating evidence, facts, and the pursuit of truth to some political goal. The late British philosopher Roger Scruton put it best: “it is a spell.” And it is used “to conjure away things that pose a threat to it.”   

A Legacy of Liars 

The spell that Hartig put on the Museum conjured away the evidence that American liberty has led to unprecedented achievement, justice, and prosperity. In place of those facts, it has presented the image of America as a place of systemic oppression and misery, with hope only in the prospect of “decolonization.”

Hartig saying that the museum didn’t act on “any ideology” is of a piece with other evasions we have heard from those in powerful positions. In 1998, Bill Clinton gave us, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ Is,” as a way of slipping out of his of previous grand jury testimony that there “is no improper relationship” between himself and Monica Lewinsky. He apparently managed this linguistic jujitsu without studying the works of Derrida or de Man, or any of the American academics who imported the European conceit that language has no definite meaning.

But that conceit fell on fertile American soil, and grew up to such recent monstrosities as Dr. Fauci’s triumphant declarations of outright lies about what “The Science” said about COVID-19 and the interventions needed to stop its spread. Neither wearing a mask nor standing six feet away prevents the transmission of a virus, but they are apparently excellent ways to cover dissembling. 

Dissembling appears to be one of Director Hartig’s chief talents. 

She and her staff made remarkable efforts to purge the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of exhibits that represented the United States in a favorable light, and made equally great efforts to install a narrative that embodies the grievances of the progressive left. The Domestic Policy Council, for example, notes that its report: 

reveals how the Museum’s Center for Restorative History cast illegal alien political activism in heroic terms, partnered with and interviewed deported illegal aliens, and designed official materials that included signs advocating for the abolition of the ‘287g’ program, which allows local law enforcement to partner with federal law enforcement to identify and deport criminal illegal aliens. (page 4)

Spelling It Out 

The indictment of the Museum, in its current form, is both broad and deeply detailed, documenting both omissions, impairments, and inversions.

Broad: 

the Museum purposely presents America as a problematic country irredeemably conceived, founded by deeply flawed men, and still operating today as an instrument of systemic racism and oppression. (page 2)

Deeply detailed:

Director Hartig ensured that NMAH played a central role in this initiative, co-hosting an event with current Smithsonian Under Secretary for Museums and Culture Kevin Gover (who receives over $515,000 in annual compensation, according to the Smithsonian’s 2023 tax filing) to discuss how museums can serve as engines for ‘social justice work.’ 

At the event, Gover asked Dr. Mack, ‘Deborah, I mean, did you get into the museum business in order to be an agent of social change?’ Mack replied, 

Actually, absolutely! […] [G]iven a charge that basically said, you know, that an activist stance, an engaged community stance, a listening and collaborative stance would be totally appropriate, and that was the history that I brought to the museum, it’s been really excellent. It’s been great to bring on the next two generations of practitioners, of staff, across Smithsonian, to see them engage in this work in ways that actually reinforces their activism, their sense of equity, their sense of social justice, and in a sense that also tells them that when they come to Smithsonian, they can bring their total selves to Smithsonian. They can bring their histories and their aunties and their communities and their collections and their beliefs with them, and THAT is part of who we are. (page 64) 

The first exhibit debuted under Hartig’s leadership, All Work, No Pay: A History of Women’s Invisible Labor, framed homemaking as oppressive to all women but particularly to ‘African Americans, Latinas and other women of color.’ The exhibit proudly displayed a quote by Angela Davis, a famous Marxist feminist and former vice-presidential candidate of the U.S. Communist Party in 1980, who has called for the abolition of police, jails, prisons, ICE, and immigration detention facilities, and whose quote ‘You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time’ is prominently featured on the homepage of the Smithsonian’s ‘Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past’ initiative. (page 78) 

Indeed, unlike most Americans, NMAH believes that men can become women and pushes that ideology onto minors. For example, NMAH’s Girlhood exhibit framed Jazz Jennings, a biological male, as someone who ‘always knew [that] she ‘was a girl trapped inside a boy’s body,’’ dedicating an entire ‘A Girl’s Life’ display to discuss his ‘transgender’ experience. The display included statements such as, ‘I was a boy, when I was supposed to be a girl,’ ‘our culture’s definitions of girlhood … just don’t fit,’ ‘girls can be assigned male at birth,’ and ‘girlhood comes in many forms.’ (page 28) 

NMAH’s ‘We Belong Here’ exhibit highlights a chest binder that ‘trans nonbinary’ skateboarder Leo Baker used to make herself appear more like a man while skateboarding. (page 88)  

Omissions: 

no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution, such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. (page 2)

Impairments:  

In a June 2024 presentation to undergraduate and graduate history students, Hartig explained that NMAH made this change in order to help people ‘get out of the ‘America First’ mentality,’ adding that ‘it’s a big challenge, especially going into 2026, which will be the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.’ She stated:  

It’s hard to get out of the ‘America First’ mentality, and that’s—we didn’t talk much about that, but we wrestle—I wrestle—with that all the time. It’s just that, and why we changed our mission when I first came, you know, to be very future-facing but also to really think, you know, kind of what does it mean to show that full and rich complexity of the past. I think it’s a big challenge, especially going into 2026, which will be the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 25th year since 9/11, the fifth year since January 6th. 

As part of getting ‘out of the ‘America First’ mentality,’ Hartig explained that she believes that ‘the scope of U.S. history’ and the term ‘America’ should really include ‘the entirety of the Americas, not just our part of North America.’ (page 22) 

Inversions:

At a time when the Nation is marking the 250th anniversary of its Founding, the report shows that these omissions and inversions are not accidental. It documents how Museum leadership has openly stated that the 250th anniversary should be ‘problematized’—invoking a popular term of-art to ‘Critical Social Justice’ theorists that refers to the process of highlighting alleged ‘oppressions’ within a given subject to ‘deconstruct,’ disqualify, and discredit the prevailing narrative on that subject. (page 3)

Butterflies 

These excerpts from Saving America’s Story are perhaps enough to show that the document didn’t deal with airy generalities or ungrounded indictments. Rather, it collects hundreds of well-documented examples, backed by photographs, and contextualizing quotations from Hartig and other Museum officials. Hartig and her colleagues did not seek to disguise their intentions. They boldly declared their goal of transforming American society toward what they consider “social justice.” Roughly a third of the report deals with Hartig’s enthusiasm for illegal immigration, which is part of the program of “decolonizing” the Museum. It should be noted, however, that the Museum censors the term “illegal immigration”: 

Creating a Becoming US educational curriculum that instructs high school teachers to avoid using the terms ‘illegal alien,’ ‘illegal immigrant,’ ‘illegal, illegals’ and teach the next generation of American voters that illegal aliens are essential to America’s culture, economy, and society, and therefore should become U.S. citizens—stating, (a) ‘There is no single American culture, language, or narrative’; (b) ‘Migrants have both been active citizens and have been denied access to the benefits and responsibilities of citzenship throughout American history’; and (c) ‘Xenophobia, forced migration, and deportation have affected individuals’ participation in democracy.’ (page 17) 

Hartig has explained that one of her favorite objects in the Museum’s collection is: 

The ‘homemade and hand-painted butterfly wings … collected from a young Nebraskan activist who was marching on Capitol Hill in 2018’ because ‘Monarch wings are an important symbol to undocumented organizers as their annual journey across the North American continent speaks to the migration, survival, and transformation of many Immigrants.’ (page 23) 

Such forthrightness, of course, vanished when Director Hartig answered Congressman Gill’s question about ideology, saying, “We strive to be objective, and nonpartisan, and not based on any ideology.” The Museum’s actual exhibits and its public statements about its goals flatly contradict that statement, unless Hartig entertains some very peculiar ideas about objectivity, nonpartisanship, and ideology.  

The Vanishing Act 

Even before the publication of Saving America’s Story, Museum officials had begun to dissemble about their political motives. The report documents at some length a 2021 Hartig initiative titled the “Decolonization/Restorative History Plan.” That plan, in Hartig’s words at the time, was to “address the harm that we’ve done as the Smithsonian.” What “harm?” Failing to serve “communities that have experienced historical harm and exclusion.” Judging by the documents produced under the authority of the Decolonization Plan, it went ahead. A Center was created, and staff was assigned to it. A document was published that explained: 

‘Examples of historically harmed communities in the United States are BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color); LGBTQ+ people (who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more); people with disabilities; working-class people; people from regions without equal access to education and museums; and people who have intersecting identities within these communities.’ According to NMAH, the root cause of these harms is ‘systemic oppression.’ (page 27) 

This seems straightforward, but the White House committee working on the report received a letter from the Smithsonian dated April 20, 2026:  

Asserting that ‘No Decolonization/Restorative History Plan exists. While the 2020 NMAH Strategic Plan called for one, efforts to produce that plan were disbanded as such a plan was not prudent or possible. Likewise, the Decolonization Working Group no longer exists. Similarly, there is also no New Collections Interpretive Decolonization Plan, nor has there ever been one.’ (footnote 113, page 136) 

Perhaps this can be excused as bureaucratic stumbling, but it looks a good bit like a falsehood intended to cover a flagrant misuse of the Museum’s authority and public funds.  

Shall we leave it at that? Director Hartig did not cover herself in glory by stonewalling the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Nor did Dr. Fauci burnish his reputation by taking the Fifth before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. One might say that these current and former government officials exemplify why so many Americans have little trust in the women and men who hold public authority. No doubt that is unfair to many honorable people in public service, but it is a lingering impression that among those who blatantly use their positions to aggrandize themselves, usurp power, and seek to impose their ideology on the American people, there is also contempt for public accountability.  

They can usually count on the liberal press to excuse them and a portion of the public to admire them all the more for “resisting.” The doctrine of “by any means necessary” serves as the rationale for misleading and false testimony. But that is an acid doctrine that dissolves the rule of law. Those seeking “social justice” ought to realize that they vitiate their own cause when they resort to misdirection.  

One might hope that the sheer weight of evidence would shame figures such as Hartig and Fauci, but that isn’t the way the world works. Miscreants more often stick proudly to their lies as a perverse kind of honor. Think of someone like Alger Hiss going to his death still denying he was a secret agent of Stalin despite mountains of evidence, some of it directly from the Soviet archives. Fidelity to a lie may be the only trust they know how to keep.  

But the rest of us can take stock. We can support the efforts to restore the National Museum of American History to an accurate portrayal of the American past. And we can recognize that this is one step in the larger effort to take pseudo-history and “decolonizing” ideology out of the nation’s schools. 

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