US donald trump JD Vance

Trump has instructed JD Vance to ‘remove improper ideology’ from the Smithsonian and the National Zoo – 18 stunned responses

Oonagh Keating. Updated March 31st, 2025

With 21 museums and 14 centres for education and research, as well as the National Zoo, the globally respected Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest complex of its kind.

Unfortunately for the people who run it, the 30 million visitors it attracts annually and the educators around the world who access its resources, it has now fallen under the scrutiny of Donald Trump, who has charged his VP, JD Vance, with removing ‘improper ideology’ from the Smithsonian’s museums, centres – and the zoo.

We presume they’ll be ordering the keepers to make sure the pandas are all white, and to remove all female animals under the accusation of being there because of DEI. Perhaps they’ve discovered the giraffes are immigrants.

According to an executive order with the title ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’ –

“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.

This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

We’re pretty sure there’s a ‘divisive, race-centred ideology’ in play here, but it’s not the Smithsonian that’s under its influence.

Here are some things people have been saying.

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