Trump Goes to War With Smithsonian Museum for Teaching History

President Trump is once again attacking Smithsonian director Lonnie Bunch and the museum system, the latest development in his “war on wokeness.”

“The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic,” the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote in a report published the evening of July 4.

“As this report shows, confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country,” the report continued. “By the intention and at the direction of current Museum and Smithsonian leadership, has become subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”

From the Kennedy Center to Ivy League schools to the National Park Service, Trump has made a concerted effort to imbue cultural institutions with a more whitewashed version of American history that minimizes the injustices suffered by minority groups while ignoring the well-documented sins and valid critiques of the country’s founding fathers. This is all tied to his “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order signed upon his return to office.

“American history belongs to us all. Any attempt to erase history will fail. It lives in our very DNA,” former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote on X.

Last spring, the National Park Service briefly removed a picture of African American slave and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman from its webpage on the Underground Railroad, changed the words “enslaved African Americans” to “enslaved workers,” and removed a section that discussed Benjamin Franklin being a slave owner.

“There’s not one individual narrative that a president gets about our history,” Pennsylvania governor and presidential hopeful Josh Shapiro said in a CNN interview aired the day after Trump’s report. “And any president should want to make sure that that full history is shared, that the American people are able to draw their own conclusions.... If we understand where we came from, we’re going to have a better path forward.”

President Donald Trump may have revealed just how corrupt FIFA’s 2026 World Cup really is.

Just hours after top U.S. Soccer scorer Folarin Balogun received a red card and a minimum automatic one-game suspension, Trump urged FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review the decision, four people told The New York Times.

FIFA announced Sunday that it had reversed Balogun’s suspension, making him eligible to play against Belgium on Monday as the U.S. tries to advance to the quarterfinals. This is the first time since 1962 that a player has been allowed to appear in a game after receiving a suspension.

The unprecedented decision has sparked serious concerns of favoritism. Earlier this year, Infantino shocked his own top officials by cooking up the FIFA World Peace Prize, apparently to placate Trump after his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize crashed and burned.

It wasn’t just Trump who intervened—senior administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and World Cup task force director Andrew Giuliani worked quickly to engage lawyers to help U.S. Soccer mount an appeal.

When FIFA delivered its decision, the organization offered no explanation for why Balogun was exempt from his suspension, sparking widespread outrage.

The Royal Belgian Football Association released a statement Monday arguing that FIFA had failed to follow its own rules in processing an appeal, and was “investigating all potential options.” Shortly after, the federation announced it was challenging the decision.

The Europa League also released a statement saying the decision was “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable,” and that FIFA had “crossed a red line.”

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” the football club said.

Meanwhile, Trump celebrated the decision. “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.

The Trump administration seems to be living in an alternate reality when it comes to the president’s vanity projects.

Despite having to drain and fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool within weeks of insisting the renovation was complete, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum insisted to ABC News Sunday that the multimillion-dollar restoration was nonetheless a “big success.”

“And so when we look in context, President Trump set out to make D.C. safe and beautiful. He’s done that,” Burgum said. “The Reflecting Pool was part of the original design of the Lincoln Memorial.… It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day.”

Burgum then cited attempts by previous presidential administrations to remedy the pool’s leaks, including the Obama administration’s two-year, $34 million effort between 2010 and 2012. The difference now, according to Burgum, is a vast advancement in technology, such as “nanobubblers” that he claimed have completely rid the pool of algae, as well as an industrial liner that has stopped the pool from leaking.

Neither of those details, however, appear to be true. Within days of refilling the pool, the algal bloom that the Trump administration had spent $14.7 million to eradicate had returned, while the painted liner at the bottom had begun to slough off.

“So the Reflecting Pool has been a big success. And we’ve got 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward,” Burgum said.

“Well, you say it’s been a success, but the pool is going to be drained this week, isn’t it?” asked host George Stephanopoulos.

“We don’t know if we need to drain the whole thing or not because, you know, the cutting happened on the edge,” Burgum responded. “And of course, again, when you’re talking about 340,000 square feet of surface, even though there was, you know, damage done by vandals that was there, it is a small, small—99.99 percent of the pool bottom is perfect.”

Donald Trump had originally promised that the project would cost $1.8 million. Now, it seems the total project will cost far more than $15 million.

In another interview with CNN, Burgum again insisted—without evidence—that portions of the pool’s broken liner were caused by vandalism, echoing Trump’s explanation for the failing reno.

“It didn’t peel off. There was vandalism. There were box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There were people literally trying to destroy part of a monument, the Reflecting Pool,” Burgum told the network.

“There are photographs of a person or people cutting a 300- or 350-foot gash in the bottom of the Reflecting Pool?” pressed State of the Union host Dana Bash. The president initially announced late last month that the damage involved a 250-foot gash. The following day, the number escalated to 300, and then 350 feet the day after that.

“Dana, I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not—think, this is an industrial liner,” Burgum continued. “Every farmer and rancher in America that’s had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed-on liner knows that you literally—literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off. This is, like, a strong material.”

“The only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it,” Burgum said.

The sky is actually falling at the Great American State Fair.

The stage for Freedom 250’s July Fourth celebration fell apart during rehearsals Thursday, with a large component of the structure’s ceiling falling roughly two stories down and landing behind a group of dancers and musicians. Miraculously, no one appeared injured.

Online commenters were quick to flame the stage’s apparently dangerous construction.

“That’s what happens when you don’t consider merit in hiring,” wrote one X user.

“This is why you never let Trump select the subcontractor based on percentage of kickback,” commented another.

Even a lawmaker joined in on the roast.

“Feeling more and more like the Hunger Games,” wrote Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Practically every component of Trump’s wildly expensive plan to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary has turned out to be a dud. The $15 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed to rid the iconic monument of algae; a multi-week lineup of music acts had to be cancelled after practically every artist pulled themselves from the program; and a fleet of buses carrying a contemporary retelling of American history have failed to make a splash in their journey across the country.

The Great American State Fair was supposed to be the centerpiece of the celebration, yet even it is more of a potemkin village than a sincere homage. The booths, which offer space for each state to represent its heritage and culture (pet a replica of a bison at the North Dakota pavilion, or walk away with a bag of chips from Maine), are ideologically pitted against the seismic presence of the federal government and Trump’s authoritarian expansion (banners featuring Trump’s grim face flank the event, while a small-scale replica of his proposed “Triumphal Arc” sits center stage). As The Atlantic’s Kelsey Ables put it, “the president is bringing down the mood.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced Thursday that a grand jury had indicted former Olympic canoeist David Hearn on charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The indictment seems rather flawed, as Hearn, 67, maintains that all he did was dip his hand into the pool and touch a piece of peeling paint.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post the day after his arrest last month. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

At a press conference Thursday, a reporter asked Pirro why Hearn was being charged with a felony over something so small, and she struggled to explain.

“There was an effort, a violent effort, to rip up the sealant from the pool, and irrespective of whether or not we think that there is some situation that preceded it, we can state, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that he caused damage, and that damage is worth over a thousand dollars,” Pirro said.

When asked how she could prove that, Pirro said, “With an expert,” and urged the reporter who asked the question to come to the trial. The reporter incredulously asked if Hearn used his bare hands, to which Pirro affirmed yes, both hands. The reporter then asked if the pool wasn’t already damaged before.

“Oh, he damaged it. He damaged the pool. He damaged this pool,” Pirro repeated. When the reporter brought up videos showing that the pool’s paint was already peeling, Pirro said, “Well, good. I’m glad you got that evidence. Come on in the grand jury and you can testify.”

It all seems nuts, as the poor state of the pool, from algae growth to peeling paint, had been documented for quite some time before Hearn visited it. The paint had been peeling because hydrogen peroxide was dumped into the pool in a vain effort to kill algae growth. Hearn is clearly being made a scapegoat to satisfy President Donald Trump, who is blaming nonexistent vandals rather than admit he messed up the pool.