America's Museum: Now With More Fetish Gear Than Ever

A House hearing finds the Smithsonian has room for BDSM, DEI, and LGBTQ displays—but not George Washington

The first and last time I visited the Smithsonian Museum was in 1983, as part of a whirlwind eighth-grade class trip to D.C. I remember seeing the original Star-Spangled Banner, a Sesame Street exhibit, and some stuff about cars. My memory may be fuzzy, but I’d bet my last dime there were no bondage displays or choose-your-own-gender adventures.

I guess a lot’s changed over at “America’s Attic” in the last 40-plus years.

Congress figured that out before I did. This week, the House Oversight subcommittee held a hearing titled “Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian’s Efforts to Reshape the Past,” which is a very official and unsubtle way of saying, “What the hell are you people doing over there, anyway?”

The subcommittee—part of the House Oversight’s Delivering on Government Efficiency panel, led by Rep. Tim Burchett—hauled in Smithsonian director Dr. Anthea Hartig to answer that question and more. And while congressional hearings have gotten increasingly circuslike in recent years, this week’s spectacle should have come with clown shoes and juggling pins—somehow managing to cram BDSM, Mickey Mouse, the Founding Fathers, white supremacy, “Latina Power merch,” abortion, body dysmorphia, radical race politics, and transgender activism into a single afternoon. Even the Ringling brothers might have called it a little over the top.

Republicans’ basic argument wasn’t exactly complicated: if taxpayers are footing roughly two-thirds of the Smithsonian’s bill, it’s not crazy to ask why the nation’s history museum feels less like a celebration of our past and more like a semester-long seminar on Why America Is Irredeemably Awful.

The timing wasn’t random. Earlier this month, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page report titled Saving America’s Story, arguing that the Smithsonian has drifted from reflecting America’s history to reimagining it through the trendy filter of oppression, identity politics, and social justice. Among other things, the report revealed that every single museum exhibit, no matter the topic, must be linked to at least one of seven “core issues of the day:”

• race and identity

• gender and sexuality

• environmental change

• immigration and migrations

• economic inequality

• technological change

• nationalism and globalism

If Rachel Maddow were a musician, that lineup would essentially be her Greatest Hits album. But sure, the Smithsonian is an entirely nonpartisan organization with zero political agenda. Okay.

“The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates,” Hartig testified, explaining that the goal is simply to broaden the story by including voices that have been overlooked. Which would have been comforting—if lawmakers hadn’t then spent the next several hours pulling up exhibits with all the political neutrality of a Pride parade float.

Rep. Nancy Mace displayed images from exhibits featuring sexually graphic material—including photos of nude young women and “a chrome and rubber crotch harness designed for sadomasochism”—and asked a fairly obvious question: is this really appropriate for kids visiting the National Museum of American History? Dancing around the question like Muhammad Ali in his prime, Hartig explained that some exhibits are temporary, some aren’t designed for children, and parents should ultimately decide what their kids see.

Yes, Ms. Hartig, they should. They also shouldn’t stumble across a fetish exhibit in a federally funded history museum and find themselves having to have the world’s most awkward conversation, in public, with their eight-year-olds.

Mace wasn’t done. She zeroed in on the “Girlhood (It’s Complicated)” exhibit, which ran from 2020 to 2023 and featured a diary from a 13-year-old wrestling with body dysmorphia and gender confusion. The exhibit also informed visitors—children included—that “gender isn’t always revealed at birth.” The congresswoman demanded to know whether that belonged in a family museum. When Hartig deflected, Mace cut through the fog with a question so direct it required a PhD to dodge: “When was your gender revealed?”

And that was just the warm-up. An extra-spicy Rep. Brandon Gill raised concerns about materials tied to the MASS Action Toolkit—a widely used framework that suggests traits like “objectivity,” “individualism,” and even “being polite” are features of “white supremacy culture.” You read that correctly: the Smithsonian’s apparatus apparently includes training materials that teach museum staff—and by extension, the public—that being polite and objective might mean you’re a closet Neo-Nazi bigot.

Hartig was quick to explain that the Smithsonian didn’t create the toolkit—which would be like a bank robber insisting he didn’t build the shotgun he’s waving in the teller’s face. If you’re using a weapon, its origin story is sort of irrelevant.

Things got especially awkward in the gift shop. Rep. Brandon Gill pointed to merchandise like “Latina Power” mugs and tote bags sold through Smithsonian channels, questioning whether a taxpayer-supported museum should be in the business of pushing identity-based slogans at all. What he didn’t ask—and I would have—was if identity pride is so important to the institution, where are the I ♥ THE CONSTITUTION hoodies? The ABE LINCOLN FAN CLUB tees? The MAGA hats? The DON’T TREAD ON ME stickers? Where’s the line for inclusivity anyway? And why is it always somewhere just above patriot?

In reality, this wasn’t about the merch. It was about the fact that an institution created to chronicle America’s past has quietly become another activist institution promoting left-wing messaging—including support for abortion and replacing the traditional Flag Day celebration with Pride Month programming—masquerading as cultural preservation.

But the deeper rot, the thing that should genuinely anger any American who walks through those doors expecting to see their country’s story, is what’s missing. The White House report found that the National Museum of American History—the United States of America’s official recordkeeper—had no exhibit on George Washington. Or Thomas Jefferson. Or Alexander Hamilton. Or the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, or the Second Continental Congress. The museum only scrambled to open a 250th anniversary exhibit this past May after the criticism started rolling in. That’s not expanding the narrative. That’s erasing the main characters and calling it “inclusion.”

The report also flagged educational programming designed to “indoctrinate” teachers and students, illegal-alien activism dressed up as historical inquiry, and a pervasive DEI framework that appears to govern everything from what goes on the walls to who gets hired to curate it. Adding new voices is one thing. Firing the original cast and replacing them with a blue-haired HR-mandated sensitivity band is something else entirely.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that America should pretend drag shows, identity politics, climate protests, or debates over gender never existed. They did. They do. They’re part of our heritage, just like slavery, segregation, Japanese internment, and Kamala Harris as an actual presidential contender are. But do we really have to pretend that every chapter of our existence deserves equal billing on the highlight reel?

Unsurprisingly, critics denounced the White House report and subsequent hearing as an attempt to force Trump’s politics onto a treasured national institution. But that objection only makes sense if you believe the Smithsonian has been politically neutral all along. Judging by the exhibits Congress presented this week, that’s a pretty hard case to make.

The Smithsonian can insist the shift is simply a broader, more inclusive telling of American history. But when lawmakers have to ask why a family gallery features BDSM imagery, why educational materials flirt with labeling politeness as oppression, why a 13-year-old’s private gender confusion journal is presented as educational content for children, and why identity politics gets more exhibition space in “America’s Museum” than the Founding Fathers themselves, it’s not unreasonable for taxpayers to wonder whether the Smithsonian is preserving history—or trying to rewrite it.