Ranking Member Morelle's Opening Statement at Smithsonian Hearing

Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here this morning. Let's not kid ourselves. We're here for one single reason, because the President of the United States believes he is entitled to determine what is true about America's past. He is not. To understand what is happening at the Smithsonian Institution, we need to step back, because this is not where it started. The President has spent his term reaching into the institutions that keep our national memory, trying to bend them to his will. He fired the Archivist of the United States, the keeper of the nation's records, without a stated reason. He fired the Librarian of Congress, claiming she put, quote, inappropriate books in children's hands, at a research library that doesn't even lend books to the public. He purged the Kennedy Center's board, made himself chairman, and renamed it for himself until a court deemed it illegal. He ordered exhibits about the horrors of slavery, the horrors of slavery, people owning other people as property, and stripped them from the national parks. Each time, the same move. Take a best-in-class institution, built to serve the public, and corrupt it into one that serves him. The Smithsonian is just the latest in that long line. In March of 2025, he issued a directive ordering the Vice President to remove improper ideology from the Smithsonian. And this month, his White House issued a hyper-partisan report portraying a museum beloved by millions of Americans who come as annual visitors into one that he says hates America. Perhaps some actual history would be useful here. Actual history. The Smithsonian is not part of the executive branch. Congress created it in 1846. Its 17-member Board of Regents is chaired by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The President can neither appoint nor remove a single regent. The Organization of American Historians called the report that the White House produced an effort to coerce the Smithsonian into telling an inaccurate story that fits the President's political agenda. They're absolutely right. When Orwell wrote, whoever controls the past controls the future, he meant it as a warning. The President took it as a mission statement. We have seen this before. The Soviet Union airbrushed, purged officials out of photographs until they vanished. The Tiananmen Square massacre appears nowhere in China's textbooks and is scrubbed from its internet. In Hungary, the recently ousted Viktor Orban, the man Vice President Vance called a model for the United States, dictated the history taught in its schools. And we don't need to look abroad. We don't even need to leave this room. This committee has developed a pattern. Donald Trump reaches a conclusion unmoored from reality. The majority concocts a record to match, and he uses that record as proof that Congress agreed. Take January 6th. Last Congress, this committee told the country the real wrongdoing wasn't the attack. It was the investigation. A month later, the President pardoned nearly 1,600 people, including those convicted of assaulting police officers. Today, the White House website cites this committee's report on a page blaming Capitol Police for the violence occurred during an effort to have an insurrection and stop the peaceful transfer of power in the United States. It's shocking. It's beyond shocking. Or take elections. This committee built a record on voter fraud that virtually does not exist, witnesses without evidence, findings without proof, which the President uses to undermine confidence in elections with claims that crumble each day in our courts. Which brings us to today. Once again, this committee is attempting to put the congressional stamp of approval on one man's manufactured grievances. In reality, the Smithsonian already has the safeguards the President claims to be imposing. A year ago, the Board of Regents reaffirmed the Smithsonian would remain, quote, free from political or partisan influence, end quote. The Secretary issued a binding policy requiring all exhibits to be grounded in scholarship, balanced, and nonpartisan. The White House report never mentions that. Before we appoint Donald Trump the de facto curator of American history, remember, this is a man who looked at the world's preeminent museum complex and concluded its problem is dwelling too much on, I quote again, how bad slavery was. Really, Mr. President? The owning of other people as property? And you're concerned that we're going to talk about how bad that was? That's the problem? A president who still cannot admit that he lost the 2020 election, a president whose White House issued a self-contradictory report claiming the founders were erased from a museum displaying Jefferson's desk, Washington's uniform, and the star-spangled banner. A report that condemns exhibits about people, I quote, foreign to the United States, then names those foreigners Mexican-Americans, Filipino-Americans, in other words, Americans. The Smithsonian is where a free nation tells its full story, triumphs and struggles. The story belongs to no president. It does not need saving from the historians who tell it. It needs saving from the ignorant, ill-informed man on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. And with that, Mr. Chair, before I yield back, I would ask unanimous consent to enter the following into the record. A copy of the report issued yesterday by the committee Democrats responding to the White House report, a series of objects currently on display in the American History Museum's 250th anniversary exhibit, including a 2024 Trump campaign MAGA hat, a pro-gun rights button for the National Rifle Association, and an anti-abortion sign from a rally in Washington, D.C. I'd also enter into the record a photo from the American History Museum gift shop taken yesterday featuring various busts of President Trump and multiple books written by or about President Trump, a statement from the Organization of American Historians condemning the White House report, a statement from the American Alliance of Museums about Smithsonian independence, and finally, an NBC News article dated August 19th, 2025, titled, says, The Smithsonian focuses too much on how bad slavery was. I'd ask unanimous consent to enter those into the record. And with that, sir, I yield back.