Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, successfully highlighted how woke the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History has become under the leadership of Anthea Hartig.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to get some answers on the Smithsonian Institution’s approach to issues of race.
The hearing came following the release of a White House report earlier this month titled “Saving America’s Story.”
“Our central finding is not that the Museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope. Rather, it is that Museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens,” the report read.
“This ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country,” it added.
On Tuesday, Gill began his questioning of Hartig, asking, “Would you say that the goal of history is to be objective?”
“I think that there are many goals of history,” the director responded, already starting to launch into academia la-la land rhetoric.
Have you ever been to the National Museum of American History?
Gill interjected before she went too far afield: “Is objectivity one of the goals of history?”
“We strive to be objective and non-partisan and not based on any ideology,” Hartig answered, apparently trying to counter the main findings of the White House report.
“So it’s one of the goals,” Gill asserted, based on her response.
He held up a document he said was part of the MASS Action Toolkit (short for Museum As Site for Social Action), backed by the Smithsonian.
“As part of this white supremacy document that your organization has promoted, objectivity is a core and defining aspect of white supremacy culture. Do you think it is the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?” Gill asked.
Hartig’s immediate response was to ask which document. The lawmaker restated what he was holding, prompting her to look down and begin writing something with a green marker.
For a long, awkward 15 seconds or so, the director said nothing besides looking off into the air and mumbling.
Gill then intervened, querying, “Ma’am, is this a difficult question?”
Finally, Hartig answered, “No, I’m just thinking about the MASS Action Toolkit. We didn’t develop it.”
So that’s her answer — “We didn’t develop it” — but Gill rightly pointed out the museum promoted it under her watch.
Who cares who wrote it up?
It’s like the 1619 Project curriculum: The New York Times developed it, but many school districts latched on to it and taught it to students as gospel truth.
I recently argued during a Western Journal podcast about the 2026 edition of my book “We Hold These Truths” that the founders actually took the first steps in the modern era to begin ending the institution of slavery, which had gone on in world history for thousands of years.
The U.S. at the founding was not behind the power curve of the abolition movement; we were on the front side of it with the emancipation of slaves in the northern states during and immediately following the Revolutionary War.
The founders also banned slavery in the Northwest Territory in 1787 — preventing slavery from spreading to the future states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin — and made provision in the Constitution for ending the African slave trade, but not sooner than 1808 as a compromise with the Southern states.
In March 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed the legislation into law so it could take effect on the earliest possible date, Jan. 1, 1808. The U.S. later fought the Civil War in the 1860s, which resulted in the emancipation of all the slaves, making it among the first nations in the world to do so.
Gill continued his line of questioning, asking, “Is Mickey Mouse racist?”
She answered confidently, “Mickey Mouse is not racist.”
Gill then noted that a Smithsonian exhibit tied Mickey to minstrelsy, i.e., actors using blackface to represent Africans on stage.
Hartig then tried to explain that Mickey Mouse’s “historical trajectory of the origins of Mickey Mouse tie directly to…”
Gill interjected, “So Mickey Mouse is rooted in racism, is that your testimony?”
“No, sir, it’s rooted in minstrelsy,” the director answered.
The lawmaker was successfully putting the spotlight on how silly wokeness can be, and then took one more pass at it, questioning Hartig whether it’s important to be “polite.”
She replied that it was.
“That’s interesting, because the same MASS Action Toolkit that your organization has been promoting references politeness as a characteristic of white supremacy culture,” Gill said.
“Ma’am, are you a white supremacist?” the lawmaker asked.
Hartig responded, “No sir,” and she again looked down and began writing something with her green marker.
Needless to say, the director, in her Tuesday testimony, manifested the exact kind of woke, ivory tower persona that the White House report found disconcerting.
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