The Trump administration has intensified pressure on the Smithsonian Institution, setting a deadline for compliance with a review of its content and plans to align with the president's executive order "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." According to reports in the New York Times and the Guardian, Smithsonian staff are already engaging in self-censorship, including removing the word "unjust" from a proposed exhibition label about the internment of Japanese Americans, fearing it might appear partisan. This comes after Trump called for purging "anti-American ideology" from the institution's 19 museums in 2025.
This matters because the Smithsonian is one of the most prominent cultural institutions in the United States, and its treatment of historical events sets a precedent for how American history is presented to the public. The removal of accurate, descriptive language like "unjust" from exhibits about a federally mandated apology and reparations program—the Civil Liberties Act of 1988—raises concerns about political interference in historical scholarship and the erosion of factual narratives. The internal self-censorship described by staff suggests a chilling effect on museum professionals, threatening the integrity of public history at a time when debates over historical memory are highly polarized.