Smithsonian under fire from House Republicans for telling history through ‘radical left-wing narratives’ 

House Republicans joined the White House in criticizing the Smithsonian for using taxpayer funds to “promote a politicized agenda,” including a museum display that characterized Mickey Mouse as racist.

A congressional hearing this week marked the latest escalation in the federal government’s scrutiny of the museums, after President Donald Trump last year accused the Smithsonian of using a “divisive, race-centered ideology” to present American values as inherently oppressive. 

Federal lawmakers probe the Smithsonian

Lawmakers on the House’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency sharply questioned the director of the National Museum of American History, Anthea Hartig, at a congressional hearing Tuesday.

“The Museum has strayed from the original purpose for which it exists and receives federal taxpayer support,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tennessee, the committee’s chairman. “It’s become infected by a woke ideology that’s seeped into its public displays, educational materials, and planning documents.”

He added that the museum’s telling of history is an “ongoing power struggle between oppressors and the oppressed” and cited museum curricula that recommends teachers avoid the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” while encouraging terms such as “gender non-conforming.”

Rep. Brandon Gill pressed Hartig over several museum exhibits and toolkits the Smithsonian has promoted. 

“Is it important to be polite?” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, asked Hartig. “Yes sir,” she replied.

“The same mass action toolkit that your organization has been promoting references politeness as a defining characteristic of white supremacy culture,” he said. “Are you a white supremacist?”

In another round of questioning, Gill asked, “Is Mickey Mouse racist?”

“According to the Smithsonian Institution, one of your exhibits referenced Mickey Mouse as representing ‘vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy.’” 

Gill’s exchange with Hartig echoed broader criticism from the hearing’s witnesses, who argued the Smithsonian has prioritized political messaging over historical accuracy. 

“Teaching lessons about American wickedness is now the mission of the Smithsonian,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez said. “This is not why Americans entrusted these institutions to them.”

The museum should “tell the story of a nation and a people driven to overcome injustice and live up to its heritage,” Dean of Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government Matthew Spalding testified. “A story of imperfection, but also overwhelming accomplishment of tragedies, but also great triumphs of hardship, but also heroism.”

For her part, Hartig defended the museum and said it “does not take sides in America’s political debates.” 

“We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all of its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions,” she said.

White House report finds ‘extreme political activism’ in Smithsonian museum 

The congressional hearing came on the heels of a bombshell report released by the White House Domestic Policy Council on July 4, which found that “ideological capture” had moved the National Museum of American History’s mission “away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

“In the Museum’s current telling, the country is, above all, defined by white supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and systemic injustice,” the report found. “To the extent that there is a story told at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, it is not one of ‘the victory of freedom and genius of our country’ but one of regret, tragedy, and shame.”

The report followed an executive order from Trump in March 2025 in which he pledged to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness,” prompting an extensive White House review. Heartlander News reached out to the White House for comment about the hearing.

Heartlander News did its own investigation into several Smithsonian museums last year, finding displays that referred to the “myth of American exceptionalism” and signs indicating that using white marble for sculpture is a form of white supremacy, as well as a number of overtly political books sold in the gift shops.