The Budget Lever: How Federal Funding Gives Washington Control Over America's Museums
The White House has ordered the Smithsonian Institution to reshape its historical narratives around "unity, progress, and enduring values" ahead of America's 250th anniversary in 2026, according to The Conversation. The directive to Secretary Lonnie Bunch III exposes a structural vulnerability that has existed since the institution's founding: the world's largest museum complex, designed in 1846 as "an entity independent from the US government," depends on federal appropriations for most of its funding, per The Conversation. That dependency has transformed the Smithsonian's 21 museums, 21 libraries, and 14 research centers into a pressure point for presidents seeking to control how America remembers itself.
President Trump signed an executive order in March titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," which vowed to remove "improper, divisive or anti-American ideology" from the institution, according to WBUR. The order declared that the Smithsonian, "once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement... has in recent years come under the influence of a divisive race-centered ideology." A White House article titled "President Trump is Right about the Smithsonian" provided more than 20 examples of alleged "woke" ideology, per The Conversation. The enforcement mechanism is already in place: Vice President Vance sits on the Smithsonian's 17-person Board of Regents, and the institution's governing board includes both the vice president and the Supreme Court chief justice, according to WBUR and The Conversation.
A Fifty-Year Pattern of Presidential Pressure
The current confrontation follows a documented pattern of executive branch interference in museum curation. In 1972, President Richard Nixon's team walled off an exhibition called "The Right to Vote" at the Museum of History and Technology because it was deemed too controversial for his inauguration ball, according to The Conversation. The exhibit simply disappeared from view when it conflicted with the political moment. This established an early precedent: when presidents want exhibitions gone, exhibitions go.
The more instructive case came in 1991, when the National Museum of American Art mounted "The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920." The exhibition examined how 19th-century paintings romanticized westward expansion while obscuring violence against Indigenous peoples. Daniel Boorstin, the former Librarian of Congress, wrote in the visitor's book: "A perverse, historically inaccurate destructive exhibit! No credit to the Smithsonian!" according to The Conversation. The backlash escalated from the guest book to Capitol Hill. The Senate Committee on Appropriations held hearings from 1990 to 1992 regarding the exhibition, and a group of senators led by Ted Stevens threatened to reduce the Smithsonian's funding, per The Conversation. The message was explicit: curate differently or lose your budget.
The Enforcement Architecture
The Trump administration has constructed a more formalized enforcement system than previous presidents. Task Force 250 was established and would be chaired by the president and housed in the Department of Defense, according to The Conversation. The placement is notable: cultural programming for America's 250th anniversary will be overseen not by the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Smithsonian itself, but by the Pentagon. The task force's key priorities include development of a "national garden of American heroes" and protection of monuments from vandalism, per The Conversation. This frames historical interpretation as a matter of national security rather than scholarly inquiry.
The executive order's language creates deliberately vague standards that encourage self-censorship. It claims the Smithsonian's "shift has prompted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive," according to WBUR. But the order does not define which narratives qualify as acceptable or which cross into the forbidden territory of "divisive race-centered ideology." Curators facing this ambiguity must guess where the line falls, knowing their institution's funding depends on guessing correctly. The 2020 controversy provides a case study: a graphic appeared on the website of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in summer 2020 that was cited as an example of divisive ideology, per WBUR.
The Structural Trap
Lonnie Bunch has been the Smithsonian Secretary since 2019, according to WBUR. He became the first African American to lead an institution now being ordered to present narratives emphasizing "unity" over the complex history his own museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was built to examine. The Smithsonian operates 21 museums, including the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of American History, and the American Natural History Museum, per WBUR. It is custodian for more than 157 million items, according to The Conversation. All of this depends on congressional appropriations that can be threatened whenever an exhibition displeases the party in power.
The institution was founded in 1848 with a bequest from an Englishman, according to WBUR, specifically structured to operate independently. But independence requires financial autonomy. Most of the Smithsonian's funding comes through federal appropriations, per The Conversation. This creates a fundamental contradiction: an institution designed to be independent but structured to be dependent. Every budget cycle becomes a potential leverage point. Every controversial exhibition becomes a funding risk.
The 250th Anniversary as Deadline
The White House letter to Bunch explicitly tied its demands to the approaching anniversary. "As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation's founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story," the letter stated, according to The Conversation. The 2026 semiquincentennial marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, per The Conversation. This creates a hard deadline for compliance: exhibitions must be revised, programming must be approved, and narratives must be reshaped before the celebration begins.
Trump has long been a participant in culture wars, including denouncing "cancel culture" at a 2020 Fourth of July event at Mt. Rushmore, according to The Conversation. He created the 1776 Commission in his first term focused on patriotic education, per WBUR. The Smithsonian directive represents the institutionalization of that project: moving from commission reports to direct control over the nation's primary cultural repositories. Most of the Smithsonian's museums are located in Washington on the National Mall, according to WBUR, making them the most visited historical institutions in the country and the default destination for school field trips seeking to understand American history.
What Happens When National Memory Is Politically Vetted
The mechanism now visible at the Smithsonian could expand to other federally funded cultural institutions. The pattern established across fifty years shows how it works: controversial exhibition appears, political backlash follows, funding threats emerge, institution capitulates. The difference in 2026 is the formalization: an executive order establishing standards, a task force housed in the Defense Department to enforce them, and a vice president sitting directly on the governing board to monitor compliance. The Smithsonian's 178-year-old design flaw, independence without financial autonomy, has become the tool for reshaping what Americans are permitted to learn about themselves in their national museums.