Liberty Exposé: History Revised
Giulia Botan
Like any family, the United States of America has had its own fair share of triumphs and tragedies. Often the triumphs take center stage, we remember them fondly while relegating our tragedies to a dark and secluded place that we hope will never see the light of day. Although preferable, such wishful thinking is far from realistic, as neither can exist without the other. Whether a household of three or a nation of 340,000,000, no family can fully understand its own story without reflecting on the good, the bad, and the ugly.
You’d be hard pressed to find any family that doesn’t have a few proverbial skeletons in the closet. But familial history, American or otherwise, is a poor teacher when its pages are torn asunder or rewritten in order to spare our feelings. Truth is unable to set us free when overshadowed by idealized revisions or convenient omissions. Only when history is fully exposed, in all its glory and shame, are we able to truly appreciate the distance America has traveled on its journey to the 21st century.
America has never been perfect, but perfection is a moving target, an ideal constantly strived after. Simply because America has often fallen short of its ideals doesn’t mean those ideals were a failure, or that the historical walls of America must be whitewashed of all past sins and transgressions in order to preserve our patriotism. Genuine national pride should be strong enough to withstand an honest accounting of its past. Right?
The Trump administration is not so convinced. Through Executive Order 14253, the federal government has undertaken the task of “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” by revamping (or rewriting) the content of national landmarks, monuments, and museums, as President Trump asserts these displays have created an un-American historical narrative “reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” A nation should never be portrayed solely by its historical failures, but no administration should ever appoint itself the editor of our collective American story.
Politicizing The Past
Established in March of 2025, Executive Order 14253 was spearheaded by Trump to combat a “revisionist movement” allegedly attempting to “rewrite American history and force our nation to adopt a factually baseless ideology aimed at diminishing American achievement.” Mobilizing the federal government, Trump’s Executive Order aimed to “restore Federal sites dedicated to history” across America, ranging from the “Smithsonian Institution and public monuments”, to exhibits across the entirety of the National Parks System.
Ranking at the top of the Executive Order’s targeted list are a cascade of museums owned and operated by the Smithsonian Institution, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Trump asserted that the NMAAHC and other Smithsonian staples have promulgated “divisive, race-centered ideology” along with “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” The administration issued a letter to the Smithsonian in 2025, outlying their intentions for a widespread review of museum content and exhibits ahead of America’s 250th anniversary. Future funding for the Smithsonian would be contingent on the organization eliminating programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.” A recent report issued by the Domestic Policy Council asserted that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) has adopted a hardline, ideological stance 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.”
Beyond beloved Smithsonian museums, the purview of Executive Order 14253 has upturned exhibits across America’s national parks and landmarks. The Department of the Interior was ordered to review every property within its jurisdiction, ensuring no monument or landmark reflected “partisan ideology” or presented a “false reconstruction of American history”. Instead, Department of the Interior displays and signage throughout America must adhere to a strict “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”
Perhaps many Americans might share little objection to such an executively ordered endeavor. After all, no civic-minded citizen would wish for future generations to believe their nation is inherently evil or irredeemably oppressive. It’s easy to understand how conservatives have vehemently rejected such a narrowly depicted caricature of their country. But rejecting one seemingly skewed version of history doesn’t justify replacing it with an equally exclusive counterpart curated by the federal government.
A recent report issued by the Domestic Policy Council asserted that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) has adopted a hardline, ideological stance 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.” Recommendations within the report are arguably just as divisive, discouraging and dispiriting, as they amount to no less than the erasure of “the conflict, struggle, and diversity—the complexity—that have always defined the American experience.” Critics rightfully protest that Trump’s initiative against the Smithsonian is “an attempt to turn back the clock”, depicting American history as an idealized and inaccurate “history of White Christian men”. A history where “immigrants, women, workers, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people” are completely unrepresented and “America’s rich and complex history will be reduced to shallow, superficial, and simple-minded stories.”
The administration’s crusade against America’s uncomfortable truths resulted in the destruction of a slavery exhibit at the President’s House in Philadelphia that educated American’s on George Washington’s involvement with the vile trade. Furthermore, recent findings from the Center for American Progress analyzed a leaked database from the Department of the Interior. Their findings indicated that Executive Order 14253 initiatives have amounted to little more than the outright censorship of American history across “more than one-third of U.S. national parks.” The database leak flagged numerous exhibits that were not lockstep with the historical narrative favored by the Trump administration, mainly because they discussed America’s troubled relationship with “Native American history, slavery, the climate crisis and the civil rights movement and Black history.” The Trump-backed censorship fell most heavily on “Black history, which made up nearly half of the total number of parks flagged—82 out of 171.”
The American Story
While critics and advocacy groups continue to campaign against Executive Order 14253, some conservatives applaud Trump’s efforts to eliminate pervasive elements of “anti-American ideology” that “makes Americans feel ashamed of their past.” But these efforts hardly constitute a true win for conservatives, or any Americans across the political spectrum, considering 2026 polls from the Pew Research Center found “59% of Americans say the country’s best years are behind us” and that “two-thirds of U.S. adults think that by 2050 the country will have become more politically divided.” Replacing perceived left-wing historical revisionism with a skewed and incomplete picture of American history, sealed by a government-approved stamp of patriotism will only exacerbate the divide between citizens.
Truths, no matter how uncomfortable, are truths nonetheless. Discussing them doesn’t disparage America or constitute an attack on our nation’s history, it educates current and future generations of citizens on how much their nation has actually achieved. Sure, there was plenty of stumbling, setbacks, and unfortunate realities we had to overcome along the way, but all were instrumental in shaping an America 250 years in the making. The brilliant rays of emancipation would never shine without overcoming the darkness of slavery, nor would we as a nation be able to celebrate the victories of the Civil Rights Movement without acknowledging the injustices of Jim Crow, or appreciate the endurance of the American Experiment without remembering the many times it has failed to live up to its founding ideals.
Besides, when did conservatives and the Republican Party become the constables of censorship? Much less the backers of potential federal overreach and the influence of Washington? Conservatives lamented against censorship during the Biden administration, and responding in turn with a curated censorship of their own is seldom in the best interests of the American people.
Our nation’s history is rich, complex, and at many times, deeply unsettling. But without these myriad of glories and grievances, the American story would be hardly worth telling.
