In March 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at what his administration described as an increasingly anti-American presentation of the nation’s history. The order directed federal museums and historical sites to emphasize America’s extraordinary heritage, its progress toward a more perfect union, and its contributions to liberty and prosperity. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting people to encounter their history with a degree of pride and respect, and I do believe that many institutions have moved beyond a basic criticism of some of America’s failures to a place of using these shortcomings to define America as a whole, viewing our history in an oppressor versus oppressed narrative framework, and teaching this to the younger generation as if it were absolute truth.