By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has targeted U.S. cultural and historical institutions – from museums to monuments to national parks – to remove what he calls “anti-American” ideology.
His declarations and executive orders have led to the dismantling of slavery exhibits, the restoration of Confederate statues and other moves that civil rights advocates say could reverse decades of social progress.
Here are some actions Trump has taken to reshape American historical sites and cultural bodies since returning to the White House:
MARCH 2025 EXECUTIVE ORDER TARGETS IDEOLOGY, HISTORY
Trump signed an executive order just weeks after taking office targeting what he said was the spread of “anti-American ideology” at the Smithsonian Institution and calling for the ideology’s removal from the vast museum and research complex, a premier exhibition space for U.S. history and culture.
The order also directed the Interior Department to restore federal parks, monuments and memorials that had been “removed or changed in the last years to perpetuate a false revision of history.”
TRUMP COMMENTS ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND SLAVERY
Last August, Trump decried in a social media post what he said was an excessive focus on “how bad slavery was.” In a January interview with the New York Times, he said civil rights protections hurt white people, when asked about policies that followed from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The NAACP, the largest U.S. civil rights group, said Trump’s remarks were laying the groundwork to roll back social progress. Racial justice group Black Lives Matter said Trump’s remarks showed he wanted to deny the atrocities of slavery.
REVIEW OF NATIONAL PARKS’ SIGNAGE
Following Trump’s March 2025 executive order, the U.S. Interior Department said all national parks’ interpretive signage – the plaques and panels that explain sites and events – was under review as the Trump administration attempted to reshape public spaces and museums.
U.S. National Park Service staff subsequently removed a slavery exhibit on January 22 from a Philadelphia historic site where George Washington once lived. The exhibit included a reference to Washington’s ownership of enslaved people. In mid-February, a U.S. federal judge in Pennsylvania ordered the National Park Service to reinstall the slavery exhibit, a decision that NPS complied with.
The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have also ordered national parks to remove dozens of signs and displays related to slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans by settlers.
Civil rights groups say such moves undermine the acknowledgment of critical phases of American history. “Stripping enslaved people’s stories from museum exhibits, monuments, and digital archives is not neutrality – it is erasure,” the NAACP said.
REINSTALLING STATUES TAKEN DOWN IN 2020 PROTESTS
The National Park Service said last August it would reinstall a statue of Confederate General Albert Pike that had been toppled and vandalized in 2020 during racial justice protests after George Floyd’s murder.
The Trump administration said on March 18 that it will display in Washington a statue of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an enslaver, that was taken down in Delaware in 2020 amid racial justice protests.
On March 22, Trump said the White House installed on its grounds a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. That statue was a reconstruction of one that was dumped into Baltimore’s harbor by protesters in 2020 who challenged heroic portrayals of Columbus, saying they downplayed or ignored his cruelty toward indigenous people of the Americas.
THE SMITHSONIAN COMES UNDER PRESSURE
Trump harshly criticized the Smithsonian in a social media post last year, saying it would face the same process as colleges and universities whose funding came under threat for policies that displeased the Trump administration.
The 180-year-old Smithsonian, which includes 21 museums and galleries and the National Zoo, receives most of its budget from the U.S. Congress but is independent of the government in decision-making.
The White House launched an internal review of some Smithsonian museums last year, saying it would assess the tone and historical framing of exhibition text, websites, educational materials and digital content. The Smithsonian said it would engage “constructively.”
KENNEDY CENTER DECRIED AS TOO LIBERAL, RENAMED BY BOARD
Trump named himself chairman of the Kennedy Center and filled its board with allies last year. In December, the institution’s board voted to rename it the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Trump has previously criticized the institution as too liberal.
Many groups and artists have since withdrawn from the center, citing the Republican leader’s takeover. Democrats, noting that the center’s name was established by Congress, have said Trump’s rebranding has no force of law. John F. Kennedy’s family denounced the renaming as undermining the slain president’s legacy.
Trump said on February 1 he planned to close the center for two years for reconstruction starting in July.
OTHER AGENCIES, CULTURAL BODIES AND INTERNATIONAL ENTITIES
The Trump administration announced last April that the Environmental Protection Agency would close a one-room museum at its headquarters on the agency’s history, citing cost cuts.
Last May, Trump attacked historian Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, calling her partisan. She announced the following month that she would step down. Late last year, the White House fired several members of the National Council on the Humanities.
Internationally, Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from dozens of global and U.N. entities, including cultural and refugee agencies, saying they do not benefit the country.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Kat Stafford, Edmund Klamann and Michael Perry)
