The Trump administration has issued a dangerous ultimatum to the Smithsonian Institution: hand over internal records about museum content, exhibitions, and programming — or risk losing federal funding.

This is not oversight.
This is a power grab.

Under the guise of “restoring truth,” the White House is demanding access to wall text from galleries, exhibit budgets, future programming plans, and even the internal deliberations of museum staff — including from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of American History, and other pillars of public knowledge.

The goal is clear: to reshape what stories get told — and silence those that don’t fit the administration’s political narrative.

President Trump’s executive order openly accuses the Smithsonian of promoting "anti-American" views. His team is now pressuring the institution to comply with these ideological demands by threatening its budget and attempting to stack its Board of Regents with loyalists.

This is an assault on the independence of one of our most treasured public institutions — and a direct threat to academic freedom, curatorial integrity, and historical truth.

We cannot let the Smithsonian — or any museum — become a propaganda arm of the executive branch.

We are calling on:

• Congress to protect the Smithsonian’s independence and block political manipulation of its funding or governance
• The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to halt any efforts to withhold funds in violation of congressional intent
• The Board of Regents to resist efforts to reshape the board into a partisan tool.

Museums must be free to tell the full story — even when it’s uncomfortable, complicated, or inconvenient for those in power.

Sign this petition to demand an end to the Smithsonian records grab and to defend the right of every American to learn from history, not be shielded from it.