The Trump Administration’s Effort to Rewrite American History — and Its Consequences

Sign for Stonewall National Monument. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Kidfly182.

Chuck Schumer, leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus, spoke on February 15 at a rally at Christopher Park, announcing that he would push for legislation to designate the pride flag as congressionally authorized so it could be flown at federal sites without risk of government interference. This came just days after a large Pride flag was removed from the historic site — which commemorates the birth of the LGBTQ+ rights movement — after the federal government issued a directive on January 21 prohibiting the National Park Service (NPS) from flying non-agency flags.

This move to take down the flag is only the Trump administration’s “latest attempt to rewrite history,” Schumer said in a February 10 statement.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which aims to reframe how U.S. history is presented in federal institutions. In the order, Trump argues that there has been a “revisionist movement” in the U.S. over the past decade, in which “objective facts” were being replaced by “a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” Trump claims that this “widespread effort to rewrite history” portrays the country as racist, sexist, and oppressive, which undermines the country’s achievements and casts its founding principles in a negative light.

The National Park Service, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, took one of its first actions aligned with the order in July 2025 when it removed sticky notes used by Park Service employees to annotate an exhibit at Muir Woods National Monument in California. The notes presented a fuller picture of the monument’s history, emphasizing the significance of the Indigenous peoples who originally cared for the land and the women who helped create Muir Woods in 1908, while also pointing to the problematic aspects of the “influential, philanthropic white men” who are often credited with preserving the site.

Around this time, many other federal institutions, including Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina and Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, had their content flagged for review, most of which addressed climate change, Native American history, or Black Americans’ struggle for equality.

More recently, in January 2026, the NPS took down an exhibit at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall in the President’s House — the site of America’s first executive mansion — which depicted President George Washington’s treatment of his enslaved workers.

After this occurred, the City of Philadelphia sued both the DOI and the NPS, and on February 16, Judge Cynthia M. Rufe granted the city a preliminary injunction—a temporary court order issued before a final trial decision to prevent further damage during an ongoing lawsuit. Her order required the Trump administration to restore the displays until the lawsuit issues its final ruling and prohibited the NPS and DOI from making any changes without the City of Philadelphia’s mutual agreement.

“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance Is Strength,’ this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Rufe wrote in her 40-page opinion. “It does not.”

These actions taken by the NPS were denounced by the National Parks Conservation Association in an October statement, in which they argue national parks are mandated by law to represent an honest view of the country, including its “darkest chapters.”

“Pretending that the bad stuff never happened is not going to make it go away,” said Alan Spears, NPCA’s director of cultural resources, in an interview with The Associated Press. “We need to be able to talk about these things if we’re going to have any hope of bringing people together.”

Trump’s executive order also seeks to bar the Smithsonian Institution from dedicating spending toward exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”

The Smithsonian — which is considered a government establishment but operates as a separate entity — recently replaced a portrait of Trump in the National Portrait Gallery’s “America’s Presidents” exhibit, removing wall text that referred to Trump’s two impeachments in the process.

Trump also sent two letters to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, one in August and another in December, after a delay in compliance, requesting that the museum submit certain documentation regarding the museum’s current and planned exhibitions and programming for a “comprehensive internal review.” In a January email to Smithsonian staffers, Bunch wrote that the museum would turn over materials requested by the White House for review on a “rolling basis.”

The American Historical Association — the largest organization for historians in the U.S. — wrote a statement in August in response to Trump’s executive order, endorsing the idea of an independent Smithsonian Institution that “belongs to all the American people.”

“Historians practice our craft with integrity,” the AHA wrote. “Political interference into professional curatorial practices and museum and educational content places at risk the integrity and accuracy of historical interpretation and stands to erode public trust in our shared institutions.”

Nine days into his second presidential term, Trump also signed the executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which aims to promote “patriotic education” while slashing federal funding for schools teaching based on gender ideology, discriminatory equity ideology, or other “anti-American” concepts.

The AHA and the Organization of American Historians released a joint statement in February 2025, criticizing the executive order for “grossly” mischaracterizing history education nationwide.

“We reject the premise that it is ‘anti-American’ or ‘subversive’ to learn the full history of the United States with its rich and dramatic contradictions, challenges, and conflicts alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities,” the statement read.

PEN America, a non-profit free expression advocacy group, wrote in a January 2025 press release that similar policies at the district and state level have already proven to have a “chilling effect,” where teachers are prohibited from discussing gender and sexual orientation, “critical race theory,” and “divisive concepts.”

As of spring 2024, before Trump’s federal order, 20 states had enacted restrictions on classroom discussion of these topics. The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, responded to this with a survey, which indicated that 54% of teachers and principals believe legal limits should not be imposed on classroom conversations regarding racism and sexism. Additionally, just 3% of the teachers surveyed said these limitations had a positive effect on learning.

Although U.S. public schools receive only about 14% of federal funding, PEN America wrote in the press release that there remains a fear that it will be used to dictate what students can or cannot learn.

“This executive order will incite a climate of fear in public schools across the country and risks pushing diverse viewpoints, identities, and histories out of the classroom,” wrote Jonathan Friedman, Sy Syms managing director of US Free Expression Programs at PEN America. “In short, this order claims to undo indoctrination, but in fact enforces its own ideological conformity on public schools.”

A February 27 Facebook post from Mark Kelly, a U.S. senator from Arizona, features a collage of 12 headlines from major news organizations that demonstrate the various ways the Trump Administration has limited citizens’ free speech, including an Associated Press story about a lawsuit arguing that the NPS is “erasing history.”

As Kelly argues in the post, the administration’s erasure of parts of American history, restrictions on journalists’ First Amendment rights, and punishment of public figures who criticize the government are all part of a broader effort to “silence voices it doesn’t like.”

“Our democracy has held for 250 years because Americans are willing to stand up for it,” he wrote. “Free speech belongs to the American people, and no president gets to change that.”