A White House report reveals the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has been pushing explicit sexual content and gender ideology on families and children — on the taxpayer's dime.
The 162-page report, released July 4 by the White House Domestic Policy Council, details how museum leadership abandoned any pretense of shared American heritage and instead adopted an ideological framework designed to, in the report's words, "divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens." This is a public institution blocks from the Capitol, funded by your taxes, captured by activists who decided their job was to reframe the American story rather than preserve it.
The exhibits read like a parody of woke excess, except they're real and your family could walk through them tomorrow. The "Entertainment Nation" exhibit featured a magazine cover of nude young women and drag queen performance footage. A "Girl Germs" magazine on display showed two partially naked women embracing; the publication was about female masturbation. The "Illegal to Be You: Gay History Beyond Stonewall" exhibit featured a sadomasochistic "crotch harness." A "We Belong Here" exhibit displayed a "chest binder" belonging to a "trans nonbinary" skateboarder named Leo Baker.
Most disturbing: the "Girlhood (It's Complicated)" exhibit displayed a page from a six-year-old girl's diary in which she wrote about praying "every night for my penis to grow." The child, identified as Jennifer, also wrote, "I hope no body reads my diary." The museum ignored her wish and put it on public display — and declined to refer to her as a girl.
The museum's "Becoming US" education program glossary refuses to define what a biological female is, instead instructing that "a child may feel they are a girl some days and a boy on others" and that it is "best to ask people who are gender fluid which pronouns they prefer."
NMAH Director Anthea Hartig has made her ideological commitments plain. In a May 2020 press release, she stated that "we work to reframe the traditional celebratory narrative of U.S. history for visitors." In a 2024 speech, Hartig veered into abortion activism, declaring that "a future without federally protected reproductive health care rights is not informed, just, or compassionate."
The Daily Caller covered the report's findings in full. Salon, which covers culture and institutional accountability, has not reported on the Smithsonian report — a telling omission from an outlet that positions itself as a watchdog over public institutions.
The core finding of the White House report cuts to the heart of the problem: museum leadership no longer treats the American story as "a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument." A public museum exists to preserve the nation's heritage for the people who fund it. Instead, the people running it decided their job was to lecture those same people — and their children — on gender ideology and sexual politics.
The question now is whether anyone at the Smithsonian will be held accountable, or whether this report becomes another document filed away while the exhibits stay exactly as they are.
