Trump Plans ‘Warning Signs’ at Smithsonian Museums
The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to install roughly a dozen temporary “warning signs” on federal land outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., telling visitors that the nation’s premier cultural institutions are promoting a distorted account of American history.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum outlined the effort in a Sept. 3 letter to the top members of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Smithsonian funding, according to NPR. The signs would cost about $7,000 each, or roughly $84,000 in total, and their exact text has not been finalized, Burgum said.
The Administration’s Argument
Burgum wrote that a “commitment to public transparency” and “academic honesty” required the administration to advise visitors that “the leadership of the Smithsonian and NMAH 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.”
The letter lists a series of grievances against the National Museum of American History and its director, Anthea Hartig, including a claim that she once described history as “a prime tool of social justice,” an assertion that the museum seeks “to legitimize illegal immigration and open borders,” and a charge that some exhibits “present ideological viewpoints inconsistent with biology, including ideologies that sex is not binary.” It also states that “visitors should be aware of Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch’s history of invidious discrimination and anti-white animus.”
The signage plan rests on President Trump’s July 24 executive order, titled “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution” (Executive Order 14416). The order directs the Interior Secretary, acting through the National Park Service, to install temporary signage along the walkways the public uses to reach the museum, informing visitors of the findings of a White House Domestic Policy Council report and directing them to “accurate information regarding America’s history.” It also calls for exhibits or signage correcting what the order describes as inaccurate information presented inside the museum.
The signs would be placed on National Park Service-maintained land, not on Smithsonian property. The Smithsonian declined to comment on Burgum’s letter.
Background: A Long Pressure Campaign
The order follows a broader administration effort to reshape how federal institutions present American history. In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” and the White House sent letters to the Smithsonian in August and December of that year seeking internal reviews of its exhibitions and materials.
On July 4, 2026, the Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page report, “Saving America’s Story,” accusing the museum and its leadership of promoting “extreme political activism.” Hartig appeared before a House Oversight subcommittee on July 21 to rebut the report’s characterization, telling lawmakers that the museum “does not take sides in America’s political debates” and that the report “does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum.”
The hearing wrap-up published by the Republican-led committee said the museum had “bent the knee to left-wing activists,” while the panel’s chairman, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, pressed Hartig on whether certain exhibits were appropriate for children.
The administration has separately threatened to withhold federal support, including artifact loans, procurement assistance and discretionary grants, if Smithsonian leaders do not address its objections. The Smithsonian receives a mix of federal appropriations and private funds, but it is not an executive branch agency; it is governed by a Board of Regents that includes members of Congress, Vice President JD Vance and Chief Justice John Roberts.
Critics: A Politicization of Public History
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee, condemned the plan in a statement to NPR. “This is another step in a well-planned pressure campaign by the Trump Administration to undermine the integrity and independence of the Smithsonian Institution,” he said. “I’ll fight like hell to protect the Smithsonian’s independence so that the Institution can continue to tell all of America’s story for generations to come.”
Bunch, who announced on Sept. 8 that he would retire at the end of the year, told NPR the timing was not connected to the administration’s attacks. In July, he had responded forcefully to the White House report, writing to Smithsonian staff that “at the Smithsonian, our work is driven by scholarship, accuracy and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story.”
Hartig has defended the museum’s approach to historical interpretation. “When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don’t mean erasing it,” she said. “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.”
Museum defenders also point to a recent exhibition, “In Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness,” which opened in May 2026 with 250 objects, including Thomas Jefferson’s desk and the Star-Spangled Banner, to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, as evidence that the institution does not ignore the founding.
What to Watch
The warning-sign plan fits a pattern that extends beyond the Smithsonian. The administration previously moved to scrub National Park Service sites of signs casting the country in a “negative light,” and it has pursued proposals to renovate and rename the Kennedy Center and to build a triumphal arch in Washington.
According to The Atlantic, which obtained Burgum’s letter, the Park Service has a sense of the signs’ physical structure but agency staff still did not know what the signs would say or who was writing the text, an account attributed to an anonymous source.
Several questions remain open: when the signs will go up, what they will ultimately say, and whether Congress will intervene. With Bunch set to depart at year’s end, the Smithsonian faces a leadership transition at the very moment the fight over its independence is intensifying.