White House wants to end 'distorted narrative' at Smithsonian

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order, titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," aimed at reversing previous administrations' interventions in the museum narratives of the Smithsonian Institution.

The White House is seeking to reinstate facts and truths in the institution's museums that the government believes were intervened in by the ideology and the "distorted narrative" of the "revisionist movement" of American history.

The order puts Vice President J.D Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to "remove improper ideology" from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.

Through the executive order, funding for some of the Smithsonian's programs could be terminated.

The executive order asserts that the institution "has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive." It asserts that the institution has focused its narratives on elements that divide American society, such as race.

By way of example, the order notes that the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the Smithsonian's newest additions, depicts hard work, individualism and the nuclear family as "aspects of 'White culture.'"

This is not the first time the White House has used such terms. When Donald Trump signed an executive order to promote English as the only official language of the federal government, he assured that his intention was to unite American society around this language.