“Dr. Hartig, are you America first? Do you love America?” So asked Representative Tim Burchett (Republican of Tennessee) of Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH), during a two-hour congressional hearing Tuesday over allegations that the institution has failed in its duty to preserve and present the nation’s story.
The hearing will likely carve out its own place in American history—not merely for the spectacle of the proceedings, which included questions like “When did you know you were a woman?” and “Was Mickey Mouse racist?” but for the ideological conflict at its core, one that prompted repeated comparisons to McCarthyism and the era’s House Un-American Activities Committee: Who draws the line between history and propaganda? How does changing what a nation remembers change the nation itself?
The witness lineup itself reflected the stakes of that debate: Hartig, who has led the NMAH since 2019; David Blight, a Yale historian and leading scholar of American historical memory; Matthew Spalding of conservative Christian college Hillsdale; and Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation.
Hartig, meanwhile, occupied the hottest seat in the House, as the Smithsonian has emerged under President Trump’s second administration as a proxy battleground in his broader campaign to reshape US cultural institutions. On July 4, the White House issued a 162-page report titled Saving America’s Story, accusing the Smithsonian of “extreme political activism,” and calling for sweeping changes to its programming and leadership. The report alleges that the museum “purposely presents America as a problematic country…defined by white supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and systemic injustice.
“The Smithsonian takes the concerns raised in the White House Domestic Policy Council’s report seriously, and as we continue to fact-check the report, we unwaveringly attest that it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum,” Hartig said.
Representative Melanie Stansbury (Democrat of New Mexico) opened the hearing with a direct rebuke of the report: “Calling out individual leaders [of the Smithsonian] by name—that is not policy. That is a political witch hunt.” She then announced the introduction of the Smithsonian Integrity and Historical Independence Act, which she said “bars any federal official, including those in the White House, from trying to interfere in the independent institutions of this country and the historic interpretation of our nation’s history, and it reasserts our congressional authority over this independent agency.”
The allegations in Saving America’s Story stem from a federal review of 19 Smithsonian museums initiated by the White House in August. The review examined texts and exhibitions for what the administration characterized as “anti-American ideology,” while future reviews are expected to scrutinize grants awarded to artists and museum collection displays. Historians and cultural organizations nationwide immediately decried the effort as government overreach, and the Smithsonian’s pushing back against the administration’s findings has drawn threats to its federal funding.
Exhibitions and scholarship addressing gender and sexual fluidity and queer American history—among the report’s major points of contention—became a flashpoint for conservative committee members during the hearing.
Representative Nancy Mace (Republican of South Carolina), in particular, repeatedly challenged Hartig over material in the museum’s “Girlhood, It’s Complicated” exhibition. “Can you tell me? Look me in the eye and tell me that that belongs in an exhibit for kids?” Mace asked, referring to a diary excerpt written by a 13-year-old about her apparent experience with body dysmorphia. The questioning then turned pointedly personal when Mace pressed Hartig on a display stating that “gender isn’t always revealed at birth,” asking the director, “When was your gender revealed?”
Hartig, meanwhile, defended the museum’s approach as “rigorous” and “fact-based,” saying it aimed to tell “the full and rich story of America” through “historical evidence, competing perspectives” and “enduring debates.”
Some conservative committee members also questioned the Smithsonian’s role in shaping America’s image abroad.
Representative David Rouzer (Republican of North Carolina) asked Hartig whether it would be better if “the rest of the world saw us as what we truly are,” a country that “led the world and inspired them to eliminate slavery, to eliminate all of the genocides that happen.”
Hartig, who had previously pushed back against suggestions that the museum neglects figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and American inventors, pointed to several exhibits that showcase American achievements. While Rouzer called for the Smithsonian to be “trumpeting the great and wonderful things that this country has done,” Blight offered a different vision of what it means to tell the American story. “Triumphalist history cannot tolerate nuance, ambiguity, complexity, but they are lifeblood for real historians,” he said.
Gonzalez, for his part, called for a total shakeup at the Smithsonian, arguing that reform under its current leadership would not suffice. “You do need to clean house at the Smithsonian. You have to replace the leadership,” he said.
Representative Kweisi Mfume (Democrat of Maryland), who spoke of growing up under segregation and drinking from a water fountain marked “colored,” closed the hearing with a personal reflection, his voice rising as static crackled through the microphone: “If you erase it, we will replace it. It’s that damn simple.”
