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A major review published on 4 July has found gender ideology exhibits, explicit content aimed at children, and the Pilgrims framed as “colonisers” inside a taxpayer-funded museum built to teach American history.

A prominent American history museum in Washington, D.C. operates on “an intellectual framework rooted in Marxism,” according to a report released this week, with no major exhibit dedicated to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or the nation’s Founders as America marks its 250th anniversary.

The National Museum of American History (NMAH) is the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum on the National Mall in the US capital. It receives more than US$1 billion a year in federal funding and is overseen by a Board of Regents that includes the Chief Justice of the United States.

Released on 4 July by and authored by the Domestic Policy Council, the report states the museum is “a clear and institutionalised example of intersectional critical theory,” which it defines as a framework that “seeks to radically transform society” by identifying “overlapping systems of oppression”.

It notes that the museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, has described her own approach in similar terms, stating in June 2024: “History as a practice… is for me a prime tool of social justice.”

The report follows President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” signed 27 March 2026. The order directed federal agencies to withhold funding from Smithsonian exhibits and programs that “degrade shared American values” or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law.

A spokesperson for the Smithsonian issued a response to the report, stating: “For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so.”

Founders Absent, Pilgrims Recast as Colonisers

The museum’s founding charter, set between 1953 and 1964, called for a “stimulating permanent exposition that commemorates our heritage of freedom”. President Lyndon Johnson, at its dedication, said the museum would preserve “the ripe fruit of America’s historical harvest” for the nation’s children.

Visitors today will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founders, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, Puritans, or Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, according to the report. Founders including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton are introduced chiefly through their connection to slavery, with their roles in founding the Republic minimised, the report states.

There was no Independence Day programming at the museum in 2025 or 2026, despite the museum being open, and no special Flag Day ceremonies, according to the report.

An exhibit titled Upending 1620: Where Do We Begin? reframes the Christian Pilgrims as colonisers rather than the nation’s founders. It seeks to demonstrate that “not every passenger aboard the Mayflower was fleeing religious persecution,” and recasts Thanksgiving as a “National Day of Mourning”. The exhibit urges visitors to “reexamine these stories” of Plymouth, which it says is “cemented in many minds as the birthplace of the United States”.

The museum’s own 250th anniversary programming, titled In Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness, does not celebrate America’s Founders or Founding, the report states.

Hartig on ‘Dismantling’ and ‘Revolutions’

The report traces the shift to Hartig’s tenure, which began in 2019. Days after George Floyd’s death in 2020, the museum’s website stated: “At the National Museum of American History, we work to reframe the traditional celebratory narrative of U.S. history.” In a 2022 presentation, Hartig said NMAH was working with other Smithsonian museums to “dismantle” the “narrative lockdown that many of us have inherited”.

The museum’s Interpretive Plan states its focus on “cross-cultural encounters, revolutions and resistances, turning points and points that failed to turn” is designed so that visitors “will recognise themselves as change-makers” and be “empowered to pursue a ‘just and compassionate future’.”

Hartig has said she was personally “propped up” by “the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeoisie”. She has said the museum’s mission statement was rewritten to help visitors “get out of the ‘America First’ mentality”, calling the aim “a big challenge, especially going into 2026”.

Among Hartig’s stated favourite museum objects is a cane belonging to Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, which she said “disrupts and complicates and re-centres global revolutions” and moves the narrative “away from a relatively ethno- and Anglo-centric” account of America’s founding.

The report also documents a longstanding NMAH staff reading group built around a “Museums as a Site for Social Action Toolkit,” which frames objectivity, individualism, “a sense of urgency” and “worship of the written word” as traits of “white supremacy culture” requiring institutional correction.

A separate exhibit, All Work, No Pay: A History of Women’s Invisible Labor, prominently displayed a quote from Angela Davis, a self-described Marxist and the US Communist Party’s 1980 vice-presidential candidate: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

Content Aimed at Children

The report raises separate concerns about material displayed in exhibits frequented by families. The Girlhood (It’s Complicated) exhibit describes biological male Jazz Jennings as “a girl trapped inside a boy’s body” and states that “girls can be assigned male at birth”. A companion curriculum for high school teachers, Becoming US, instructs educators to ask people “who are gender fluid which pronouns they prefer” and to avoid the term “Gender Identity Disorder,” calling it “outdated”.

The same exhibit displays diary pages from a six-year-old biological female, describing fear of “getting boobs” and the words: “I pray to God every night for my penis to grow. I know now it won’t but I still pray.”

Separately, the Entertainment Nation exhibit — frequented by families — has played drag performance videos on repeat and displayed a magazine cover with images of nude women, the report states. Another museum display includes a chrome and rubber harness designed for sadomasochistic sexual activity.

NMAH’s Centre for Restorative History sent staff across the country and into Mexico to “celebrate, interview, and partner with” deported illegal immigrants and activists who campaigned to remove a North Carolina sheriff after he assisted federal authorities in deporting nearly 300 criminal illegal immigrants in 2017, including convicted rapists and drug traffickers, the report states.

Museum materials produced for that project called for the abolition of the federal “287(g)” program, which allows local police to partner with immigration authorities. The Becoming US curriculum, which the report says reaches classrooms nationally, instructs teachers to avoid the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant”, and states “there is no single American culture, language, or narrative”.

Interpretive Framework Applied Across Exhibits

The report states that NMAH’s Interpretive Plan directs staff to tie “whatever the topic” back to seven fixed themes — race and identity, gender and sexuality, climate change, immigration, economic inequality, technological change, and nationalism and globalism — describing this as the museum’s “commitment to relevance”.

The report concludes that NMAH “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic”. It recommends an entrance label reading: “Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.”

The White House has not indicated whether Congress will act on the report’s recommendations, though Executive Order 14253 already directs federal agencies to withhold funding from exhibits found to breach its standards.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.