Trump’s order casts a long shadow over the Smithsonian, which, while not a federal agency, is a trust instrumentality of the U.S. government and operates under the guidance of a Board of Regents

President Trump signed an executive order last week aimed at "restoring truth and sanity to American history" through an overhaul of the Smithsonian Institution and historical sites around the U.S.

In the executive order issued late last week, Trump criticized what he saw as “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” that replaces “objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”