Daily Kos85%
Democrats expose Trump’s bigoted plot to erase history at Smithsonian 74%
By Oliver Willis93%
7/21/2026, 11:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Ad Hominem, Confirmation Bias, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 49.9% saturation with 255 hits. Analysis detected 1,418 faulty-reasoning hits from 511 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 65.9% and a BS Rank of 74% (5,614 of 21,176 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 73.50% of the article peer group.
House Democrats released a report on Tuesday, timed to coincide with a Republican hearing attacking the Smithsonian network of museums, that called out President Donald Trump’s attempt to mangle the representation of American history at the globally respected institution.
The report was released by the Democratic members of the Committee on House Administration, which has oversight of the Smithsonian.
Democrats said their report, titled “The White House Campaign to Seize Control of the Smithsonian and Rewrite American History” was meant as a rebuttal to the White House’s report on the issue, which was released two weeks ago.
“President Trump is abusing the power of the White House to pressure one of America’s most respected cultural institutions into political obedience,” said New York Rep.
Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat on the committee, in a statement.
“The Smithsonian was established as an independent institution precisely so no president could dictate how our nation’s story is told.
Committee Democrats will continue defending that independence because no president gets to edit the American story,” he continued.
The Trump administration’s report was rolled out on social media.
It highlighted bigoted complaints that museum exhibits acknowledged the existence of LGBTQ+ life, referenced the influence anti-Black racism has had over American culture, and discussed contradictions between the Founding Fathers’ call for liberty and their enslavement of Black people.
Underlining the white supremacy motivating the administration’s effort, the White House social media account described exhibits on diversity as “degeneracy,” a term that Germany’s Nazi Party often used to demean Jewish culture.
The Democratic report also picked apart the Republican report for being a sloppy exercise.
The Democrats noted that Trump’s document alleged that Smithsonian National Museum of American History had “no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era” but then references in the same report “remarkable artifacts like the desk Thomas Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s uniform.”
The Republican report also claims that the museum failed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, but the Democrats point out the same report references multiple museum exhibits specifically tied to the nation’s 250th birthday.
The Democrats also noted that in multiple instances where the Trump report uses quotations to make its point, “most quotations are materially different from what the Report presents.”
Underscoring the inherent bigotry of the Trump report, congressional Republicans used a hearing on Tuesday to echo the White House’s take on the Smithsonian.
Republican Rep.
Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who has made a name for herself as a transphobe, fumed that there are exhibits featuring world-famous drag performer RuPaul, precisely the sort of major cultural figure traditionally included in a museum focused on American culture and history.
At the hearing, Democrats spoke out in defense of the museum and accurate portrayals of American life in an American history museum.
“The Smithsonian Institution does not belong to the president.
It does not belong to a political party.
It belongs to the American people,” said Democratic Rep.
Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico.
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