Trump orders signs be installed outside Smithsonian museum warning of ‘inaccurate information’

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the National Park Service to install temporary signage near the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, warning of what the administration views as “inaccurate information” presented in the institution’s exhibits. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the National Park Service to install temporary signage near the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, warning of what the administration views as “inaccurate information” presented in the institution’s exhibits.

The executive order demands that NPS, which controls the sidewalks outside of several Smithsonian museums along the National Mall, installs signs promoting a White House report that denigrated exhibits at the National Museum of American History.

The order says the signage “shall notify visitors that the Museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings” in the report and directs them to “locations and resources for accurate information” about the country’s history.

It does not describe what those alternate resources should be.

The report, published July 4 by the White House Domestic Policy Council, accused the Smithsonian of advancing “radical,” left-wing ideologies at the museum and “an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of attempting to leverage the museum to re-write the history presented in its exhibits to favor a conservative worldview.

“President Trump is fighting back to restore one of the Nation’s greatest civic treasures to its founding mission and purpose and reestablish truth in the Nation’s historical narrative,” the White House said in a fact sheet on the order.

Friday’s order was the latest effort by the Trump administration to re-write aspects of the nation’s history presented in some of the country’s most prestigious museums and galleries.

It follows a March 2025 executive order in which the White House sought to combat what it called “historical revisions” that cast the country’s history in a negative light.

While the National Park Service falls under the purview of the Department of the Interior, the Smithsonian is an independent agency that is meant to operate outside the control of the executive branch.

But the government controls much of the museum system’s funding and U.S. Vice President JD Vance sits on its board.

Smithsonian leaders have said the institution will maintain its autonomy despite the administration’s repeated attempts to intervene with its exhibits and personnel decisions.

The Smithsonian declined to comment on Friday’s order.