'Everyone Is So Scared': Inside The Smithsonian As Trump Attacks Art, History

A culture of fear has taken hold at the prestigious D.C. museums as White House officials “ensure alignment” with Trump’s preferred version of American history.

WASHINGTON — Staff are censoring content they fear could upset President Donald Trump. Volunteers are angry and mulling quitting, even as they work for free. Employees are repeatedly warned not to talk to the press.

And the message from on high is that if you care about the Smithsonian Institution and its 17 museums in Washington, D.C., and if you care about your colleagues keeping their jobs or keeping your own, you’ll keep your mouth shut about the chilling effects of Trump’s efforts to erase art and rewrite American history in the ways that he wants.

This is how some Smithsonian workers describe their jobs lately, the result of an escalating push by Trump and the White House to control the Smithsonian, a nearly 180-year-old collection of free museums at the center of many tourists’ trips to the nation’s capital. Paranoia jumped on Tuesday, when White House officials laid out detailed plans for carrying out Trump’s wishes to eliminate exhibits featuring “improper ideology.”

If the Smithsonian doesn’t go along with the White House-directed censorship, which Trump claims is necessary to stop the “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” the president is threatening to cut the Smithsonian’s federal funding, which accounts for about two-thirds of its annual revenue.

But his definition of “divisive narratives” seems to be anything related to gender or race, and his mandate has left Smithsonian workers with two terrible options: censor exhibits to Trump’s liking to keep your job and ensure your museum keeps getting federal money, or hold firm in defending history and artistic freedom knowing you could lose your job and trigger major funding cuts to a museum you care about.