FIRST ON FOX: House Republicans are threatening the Smithsonian’s federal funding amid GOP outrage over the museum system’s presentation of American history.
“The Smithsonian is accountable to the taxpayers. So defunding them in certain ways, or tying their funds to requirements, I think is probably the best way to ensure that we bring the Smithsonian back to its required mandate,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., told Fox News Digital. “And that is to tell the truth about the American story, and to tell about the exceptionalism of this country and its people.”
Congress allocates roughly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to the Smithsonian Institution every year, which oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo. It also receives private funding.
But Republicans have heaped scrutiny in recent weeks on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, accusing its curators of long painting an overly critical and “woke” picture of the country’s past while ignoring its triumphs.
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Clyde, who is on the House Appropriations Committee — which is one of two panels on Capitol Hill tasked with mapping out how Congress spends part of the yearly budget — suggested that using the legislative branch’s power of the purse could compel museum curators to change that.
“We can tie funding to specific requirements, and I think that might be the most effective way to go — saying that… ‘You have to highlight the exceptionalism. You have highlighted the good things that [the Founding Fathers have] done. You know, there’s no perfect country because there’s not a perfect person. But we are the best there is on the planet Earth,” Clyde said.
Another House Appropriations Committee member, Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., told Fox News Digital, “The Smithsonian’s role is to teach historic facts, not to put our country under a political kaleidoscope of woke ideology.”
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“As Congressional Appropriators, it is our duty to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used responsibly. If the Smithsonian is unable and unwilling to have an objective view of our Nation’s history, House Republicans will have to act,” Cline said.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, a third House appropriator, told Fox News Digital that stricter guardrails on Smithsonian funding are “justified.”
“Congress has the responsibility to ensure those funds are used to celebrate and preserve Amrican history, not distort it,” Cloud said.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order late last month directing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to utilize existing avenues “to restore trust in the Smithsonian Institution,” including installing “temporary exhibits or signage on [federally owned] sidewalks, walkways, and land used by the public that corrects inaccurate information presented in the Museum.”
The issue came before Congress in July when Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, led a hearing where Republicans accused the National Museum of American History of promoting a politicized agenda on issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, at the expense of accurate teachings.
The Committee on House Administration, led by Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., led a similar hearing scrutinizing the Smithsonian’s teachings.
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Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Republicans of trying to “whitewash” controversial moments in history while erasing the struggles and contributions of the country’s minority populations.
“They want to rewrite the history of this country and take away the resources and leadership of people who have fought, marched and served this country for generations,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said during Gill’s hearing. “We refuse to let historians, artists, scholars, and people who love these institutions with their entire hearts to be punished by an administration that is trying to exercise…political control, and rewrite American history.”
The House and Senate are both working through proposals to fund the government for fiscal year (FY) 2027, which begins on Oct. 1. The House proposal would allocate roughly $961 million to the Smithsonian Institution, an 11% reduction from the current level.
But there’s still a long way to go before both chambers strike a deal, with time for House conservatives to push for new guardrails or even less funding.
Fox News Digital reached out to the House Appropriations Committee for comment.
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