Fight at the museum

Nina Heller, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 22, 2026

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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers went for a Smithsonian sequel this week, as a top museum official and a nearly identical group of witnesses appeared for their second congressional hearing.

Republicans have thrust the National Museum of American History into the spotlight and accused it of rewriting history two days in a row, first at the House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee on Tuesday, and then at the House Administration Committee on Wednesday.

“The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates,” the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, said at Wednesday’s hearing.

Complaining of “woke” ideology at the museum, Republicans closely echoed a report released earlier this month by the White House Domestic Policy Council as President Donald Trump looks to shape the content of America’s cultural institutions. Meanwhile, Democrats on the House Administration panel pointed to their own report, a 16-page rebuttal they issued this week.

“We have seen this before. The Soviet Union airbrushed, purged officials out of photographs until they vanished. The Tiananmen Square massacre appears nowhere in Chinese textbooks and is scrubbed from its internet,” said House Administration ranking member Joseph D. Morelle, D-N.Y., arguing the president shouldn’t try to dictate what appears in museums.

Wednesday’s hearing provided fewer viral moments than the one day before, though Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., brought a similar colorful poster to highlight museum content she found sexually explicit, like an exhibit featuring the drag queen RuPaul.

“It’s unacceptable that American tax dollars are supporting divisive work,” House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said at the hearing.

Hartig, a historian who has served as the American history museum’s director since 2019 and is the first woman to hold the position, once again fielded questions about what role political activism and social justice should play in the Smithsonian and her own political views.

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, doubled down on his calls from Tuesday for new leadership at the Smithsonian and urged Congress to “deauthorize” a new museum honoring Latinos that it has already approved.

According to an aide familiar with the planning, the DOGE subpanel, which is chaired by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., did not coordinate its hearing with the House Administration Committee. The latter panel has jurisdiction when it comes to oversight of the Smithsonian and last held an oversight hearing with Secretary Lonnie Bunch in 2023.

“I knew when this report came out that we were planning to do a hearing,” Steil said in an interview, referring to the “Saving America’s Story” report issued by the White House. “I think it’s actually great that Tim Burchett held his hearing. I thought that many members of the committee on Oversight actually did a great job highlighting some of the challenges that exist at the Smithsonian.”

Steil said that he last visited the National Museum of American History “a handful” of months ago.

“Broadly, there’s very good things in the Smithsonian. It’s not to say that everything in the Smithsonian is bad, but I think that there’s clearly a lack of proper oversight occurring at the Smithsonian,” he said.

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