By Isabella Torregiani
11:40pm PDT, Jul 23, 2025
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Senator
Jim Banks has introduced the "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History Act" — a new bill aimed at banning "wokeness" and "divisive narratives" from the Smithsonian Institution.
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The legislation backs an executive order issued earlier this year by President Donald Trump. According to Jim Banks, it's designed to protect national museums from what he describes as activist's "rewriting" our past. "This bill puts President Trump's order into law to ensure our national museums celebrate our values, our heroes and what makes America great," he said. If passed, the bill will block future Smithsonian projects that "degrade shared American values" and call for the restoration of monuments and memorials that were removed or changed for ideological reasons.
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Since the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Smithsonian has adopted a number of "woke" policies that have angered conservatives, such as removing a graphic from the National Museum of African American History and Culture that suggested traits like "objective, rational, linear thinking," "quantitative emphasis" and the idea of "hard work before play" were associated with "white" traits. The museum issued an apology when it removed the display.
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President Donald Trump's administration has previously raised concerns about various museum exhibits including the National Museum of American History's Entertainment Nation, which named Star Wars as a source of optimism following America's "loss in Vietnam and revelations about Richard Nixon's dirty-tricks presidency." Another exhibit that drew scrutiny was "The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the American Art Museum," which explores how societies, including the U.S., have used race to maintain "systems of power, privilege and disenfranchisement."
