As America approaches its 250th birthday, a fierce debate is erupting over who gets to tell the story of the nation’s past—and how much of that story should be told at all. With the country preparing for a major celebration on July 4, 2026, the Trump White House has taken steps that critics say threaten to sanitize the country’s complicated, often painful history in favor of a narrative focused solely on unity and progress.
On August 18, 2025, Levi Rickert, editor and publisher of Native News Online, sounded the alarm in an opinion piece. He revealed that the Trump administration had sent a letter to Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie G. Brunch III, demanding a full audit of content across the Smithsonian’s sprawling network of museums. The audit targets everything from exhibit texts and online materials to curatorial documents and grant records. The goal, according to the letter, is to highlight “unity, progress and enduring values,” while scrubbing away “divisive or partisan narratives.”
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)—with locations in New York City and Washington, D.C.—is among eight Smithsonian institutions under audit. For many, this move represents more than a bureaucratic review. Rickert argues that it could result in a sanitized version of Native American history, one that excludes the stories of mass deaths from disease, starvation, war, and the abuses suffered in Indian boarding schools. “Kill the Indian, save the man” was more than a slogan; it was policy, he writes, stressing that the consequences of such histories are still felt daily by Native people.
“The Smithsonian’s work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history. We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents,” the Smithsonian responded in a statement, according to Native News Online.
Rickert draws a stark comparison to George Orwell’s 1984, warning that the White House’s approach smacks of Orwellian historical revisionism: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped…”
Native voices, Rickert argues, have long been erased or suppressed. The NMAI was established to give Indigenous peoples their rightful place in the American story. To now demand that the museum soften or omit the legacy of colonization and its aftermath, he says, is to ask for “erasure through administrative policing of language.”
Professor Anton Treuer told Native News Online, “People only try to control the narrative in museums, public spaces, or the press when their enemy is the truth. The government’s micromanagement of such institutions is a direct assault on constitutionally protected freedom of speech and the diversity of experiences and histories that make America truly great.”
The controversy is not confined to Native history. In Boston on August 18, 2025, Massachusetts officials and Black community leaders staged a walking tour highlighting the city’s rich African American history. The tour included stops at the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial, the Embrace monument honoring Rev. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, and the African Meeting House—home to the Museum of African American History.
Senator Edward Markey joined nearly two dozen Black community leaders at the Shaw Memorial, a bronze monument commemorating one of the first Black regiments of the Civil War. “This was a controversial monument,” Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston, told the group. “Sixteen clear-faced Black people with guns in their hands.”
Markey didn’t mince words when speaking to reporters. “President Trump and his minions are not just rewriting policy,” he said. “They are trying to rewrite the history of the United States of America. [The administration] wants a climate of denial of the role of Black people, of brown people.”
Historians and museum leaders worry that political pressure could lead to the erasure of history involving slavery, the civil rights movement, and stories of gay and transgender Americans. Markey specifically criticized the Trump administration for instructing the National Park Service to remove references to anti-slavery leader Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad from its website, as well as mentions of transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument page. (The Tubman references were later restored after public outcry.)
Dr. Noelle Trent, president and CEO of the Museum of African American History, described the administration’s actions as “an erasure.” She explained, “Efforts to remove the uncomfortable and complex part of our collective history is an erasure. My colleagues and I deal with this threat every day.”
The museum’s financial future is also uncertain. After receiving a letter in April 2025 terminating a $500,000 federal grant, the museum saw the funding reinstated only after legal action by state attorneys general. But, as Trent noted, future federal support now comes with strings attached: “If we were to receive funds, we are now being asked to align ourselves with not only the executive orders and secretarial orders that exist at this moment but any more that will come after the duration of that particular agreement.”
Kyera Singleton, executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, echoed concerns about inequities in funding for smaller house museums and Black history sites. She noted that while her organization doesn’t rely directly on federal funds, it has been affected by cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The impact of the Trump administration’s approach extends beyond content oversight. Kristen Sykes, Northeast regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the National Park Service has lost about 24 percent of its employees since Trump took office. With a proposed $1 billion cut in Trump’s 2026 budget, hundreds of park units could close nationwide. “We’re already seeing huge impacts, with over 4,000 staff who’ve either been fired, retired, or been bought out,” Sykes told The Boston Globe.
Paris Jeffries reflected on the importance of monuments and parks: “This is why the Park Service matters, because memory needs a body, grass, and granite, a place where stories breathe and people can gather. Monuments are a city’s vocabulary.”
Rickert, meanwhile, pointed to the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976 as a time when the country celebrated its history with honesty, not revisionism. President Gerald Ford, he noted, did not sanitize the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, or Watergate during the festivities. Instead, Americans were allowed to reflect on their nation’s triumphs and failings alike. “Native Americans know the history of their ancestors, yet they enlist in the U.S. military more than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States,” Rickert wrote, emphasizing that true unity comes from honesty, not erasure.
As the 250th anniversary approaches, the battle over America’s story is heating up. Advocates for Native, Black, and other marginalized histories insist that justice and healing begin with truth. For them, the effort to control museum narratives is not about unity—it’s about power. And the stakes, they say, couldn’t be higher.
