White House report targets Smithsonian over LGBTQ+ and drag exhibits

A new White House report criticizes the Smithsonian Institution’s management of the National Museum of American History, focusing in part on exhibits and materials that reference drag performers, LGBTQ+ figures and other marginalized communities.

The Domestic Policy Council report, titled “Saving America’s Story,” says the museum has been “captured” by what it calls an “intellectual framework rooted in Marxism” and accuses it of using that framework to “radically transform society by revealing and challenging alleged ‘overlapping systems of oppression.’”

Among the specific targets are costumes from the Broadway musical Hamilton, a video the report says includes drag queens and presents sexually suggestive material to children, and a cover of the 1990s feminist zine Girl Germs that shows two nude women embracing.

The report also criticizes the museum for presenting stories about marginalized communities. It argues those exhibits come at the expense of material that would inspire young people with more history about straight white men.

The Organization of American Historians rejected the report as an example of executive overreach linked to President Donald Trump’s political agenda.

“The National Museum of American History interprets America’s history through its vast collection; this report’s objective is to punish it for doing that in a way that makes U.S. history accessible to and reflective of all Americans,” an OAH statement reads. “The report is only the latest chapter in a broader, systematic campaign that now targets an institution that was never meant to answer to any single administration. As OAH has stated previously, no president has the authority to dictate the content of the Smithsonian’s exhibitions.”

The report takes aim at Smithsonian leadership for creating its Center for Restorative History, which aimed to include “BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color); LGBTQ+ people (who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more) and people who have intersecting identities within these communities.”

It suggests that approach privileges “virtually every group but straight, white Americans.”

Elsewhere, the report accuses Smithsonian leaders of “Pro-Abortion Activism.” It does so even though the museum’s abortion exhibits explicitly show both supporters and opponents of abortion rights. It also objects to a personal statement by Museum Director Anthea Hartig condemning the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Much of the criticism is directed at Hamilton, the Tony Award-winning musical about Alexander Hamilton. The report faults a didactic in the museum’s “Entertainment Nation” exhibit for describing him as an “influential and flawed founding father” and says it likely reflected his ownership of slaves, although the report offers no citation for that claim.

It also argues that the show omits Hamilton’s key role in America’s founding and early development. The musical itself does not mention Hamilton owning slaves, a point historians have debated, though Hamilton was also a critic of slavery.

The criticism extends to other parts of the same exhibit, including references to “a bisexual blues singer, a lesbian actress, a sexually-liberated film star, an LGBTQ ‘icon,’ a lesbian TV star, a gay major league baseball player, and a queer women’s soccer player.”

The dispute is the latest in a broader fight over how federal institutions present U.S. history and which communities get centered in those narratives. For LGBTQ people, those questions can shape whether their histories are treated as integral to the national story or as additions to be minimized or removed.