Washington Post no paywall – The president may not like how the museum and research institution tells the American story — but Americans do. “On March 27, President Donald Trump issued the executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the Smithsonian of “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” A close reading of the executive order, however, suggests the goal isn’t just editing or censoring specific exhibitions or content. Wrapped up with the assault on the Smithsonian is a call for restoring or replacing monuments and memorials, including those taken down after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. And that is key to understanding the administration’s larger, more destructive agenda. And that sets up an existential crisis for the Smithsonian and the most explicit test so far of whether American cultural institutions will succumb to authoritarian oversight. The idea that American history is polyphonic and unflinching, a warts-and-all story relevant to all Americans, is so deeply embedded in the Smithsonian that it is hard to imagine how it could comply with Trump’s demands. So, while the crisis is grave and the pressure extraordinary, this may also mark a turning point in the Trump culture wars…”