President Trump remains determined to install warning signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to alert the public that the institution, in his view, does not accurately present U.S. history.
In letters to two senators, the Interior Department outlined a plan for 12 temporary signs to be installed at a total cost of $84,000. The letters did not specify the dimensions or language of the signs, which were originally ordered in July, but it went into considerable detail about the kind of information they plan to convey.
In the letter to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, dated Sept. 3, Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said he was responding to questions about Mr. Trump’s March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order described a “revisionist movement” across the country that it said “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
Americans should enter the National Museum of American History “with relevant information about the curators’ interpretation of history and their stated goal of changing the viewpoints of visitors,” said the letter, which was earlier reported in The Atlantic on Tuesday. Instead, the letter argued, the museum and Smithsonian’s leaders “have altered the museum’s role from accurately and coherently telling America’s story to using the museum as a tool to advance personal, radical ideologies.”
“We believe the public should enter the museum fully equipped with the information needed,” the letter said, “to evaluate whether to invest their time viewing these exhibits and programming.”
The museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, has contested the thrust of a July 4 White House report that accused her of “radical activist ideology” and the museum of undermining “faith in American institutions.”
Though the letter said that the language of the signs had not been finalized and gave no installation timeline, it described some of the topics they were intended to address, all of which had been outlined in the White House report.
For example, the letter said the signs should “ensure parents bringing young children to the museum are equipped to protect the well-being of their children” regarding exhibits that “present ideological viewpoints inconsistent with biology, including ideologies that sex is not binary, that biological men can be women and that biological men should be permitted to compete in women’s sports.”
Mr. Burgum’s letter said a copy had also been sent to Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon.
In laying out a case for the signs, the letter was particularly critical of the Smithsonian’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch III, who announced his resignation last week.
“Visitors should be aware of Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch’s history of invidious discrimination and anti-white animus,” the letter said, citing a 2000 essay in which Bunch “described the museum profession as ‘awash in whiteness’; wrote that ‘the real issue is not money but the monochromatic nature of our institutions’; and stated, ‘until we change the tint and tone of our work force, we are just dancing around the edges of our greatest failure.’”
Mr. Bunch and the Smithsonian did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has written critically about the Smithsonian, welcomed progress on the signage in an interview. “It is in the interest of transparency that museum visitors be warned in advance of the ideological baggage that the Smithsonian leadership has heaved on these exhibits,” he said.
The letter also took aim at Ms. Hartig. “It is disheartening,” the letter said, that “Hartig has stated that history is ‘a prime tool of social justice’; that she views one of her roles as connecting ‘research and scholarship to activism and advocacy.’”
Mr. Trump originally ordered the signs just days after Republican legislators grilled Ms. Hartig in two congressional hearings, where she was accused of teaching “national self-loathing.”
Ms. Hartig, in those hearings, insisted that the report “does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum” while acknowledging that “there is always room for improvement.”
“When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don’t mean erasing it,” she continued. “We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story.”
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