Trump Orders Warning Signs Posted Outside the Smithsonian's American History Museum

President Trump on Friday ordered federal officials to install signage outside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History warning visitors that the history presented inside is "inaccurate," escalating a months-long campaign against the institution into physical intervention on the National Mall.

The directive instructs officials to place temporary signs along the walkways approaching the museum. The signs are to inform visitors of the findings of a White House report and direct them to other locations and resources "for accurate information regarding America's history." It is an unusual step even by the standards of this fight: rather than removing an exhibit or replacing a curator, the order interposes federal messaging between the public and the museum's front door.

The order rests on a 162-page White House report released July 4 titled "Saving America's Story." The report accuses the museum of adopting "an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens." It further contends that Smithsonian leadership treats American history as a "prime tool" to advance social justice and what the report calls the radical transformation of society.

Buried in that report was a specific recommendation the president has now moved toward implementing. It proposed posting signage above every entrance to the museum reading: "Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don't want you to love your country." Friday's order stops short of that exact language, directing instead that the temporary signs summarize the report's findings — but it adopts the mechanism the report proposed.

The Smithsonian, asked to respond, told CBS News it had no comment on the executive order.

The National Museum of American History draws millions of visitors a year and holds the Star-Spangled Banner, Lincoln's top hat and the lunch counter from the Greensboro sit-ins. It has been at the center of the administration's cultural agenda since a spring executive order directed a review of Smithsonian exhibits dealing with slavery, immigration and LGBTQ history. The institution occupies an awkward constitutional position in these fights: it is a trust instrumentality of the United States, governed by a Board of Regents that includes the chief justice, the vice president, members of Congress and private citizens — not a federal agency the White House can simply direct. That structure has historically insulated its curatorial decisions from any single administration, and it is one reason the fight has migrated from the galleries to the sidewalk outside them.

In response to the broader pressure campaign, hundreds of volunteers have begun walking through Smithsonian museums and national parks photographing and cataloging exhibit text, an effort organized under the name Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian to create an independent record of what the placards say now.