President Donald Trump is threatening to censor Smithsonian exhibits about race, gender and American history that he doesn't like, a move straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

WASHINGTON ― “Bullcrap.”

That’s what Howard, a retiree visiting the National Portrait Gallery, had to say when I told him about the art show that had just been withdrawn from exhibition there. He was sitting on a bench in the museum when I asked if he’d heard about it. He hadn’t. The more I told him about what happened, the more he just kept repeating, “Bullcrap.”

A day earlier, Amy Sherald, the artist behind the famous 2018 portrait of Michelle Obama, cancelled a solo show scheduled for September because, she said, the gallery told her she may have to remove a painting that could anger President Donald Trump. In a statement, the gallery said it “could not come to an agreement” with Sherald on how to present her show.

The painting, titled Trans Forming Liberty, features a Black, transgender woman posing as the Statue of Liberty. It’s precisely the kind of image that makes Trump squirm ― and that he’s been bullying the Smithsonian to keep out of its museums across Washington, DC. In a March executive order, Trump threatened to cut federal funding to the Smithsonian Institution, which encompasses 17 free DC-area museums and the national zoo, over exhibits that “divide Americans based on race” or “recognise men as women in any respect.”

Howard, who was in town from Aurora, Colorado, said he didn’t know about Trump’s efforts to censor exhibits throughout the Smithsonian as he walked around the Portrait Gallery on this afternoon in late July. He didn’t like it at all.

“More bullcrap,” he grumbled. “We are adults. We don’t need to be treated like children.”

Like everyone interviewed for this story, Howard requested to be identified only by his first name — he suggested the pseudonym “Wiseass” would also work — to preserve his anonymity. His family was sitting nearby when I asked for his thoughts on the cancelled exhibit. His wife, Andrea, moved in closer to hear about it, as did another woman waiting for a tour, Marcy.

“I certainly don’t like anybody telling me what I should and shouldn’t be looking at,” Andrea said. “On top of all of that, it’s also just like, trans people are not worth being in big museums like this? They should be represented.”

“I think it’s important that [the artist is] taking ownership,” said Marcy, who was visiting from Dallas. “She’s saying, ‘If you aren’t going to show my entire collection, then I have the right to take ownership and not show it.’”

Trump’s executive order, which directs Vice President JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian exhibits and programs, claims that censorship is necessary to stop the “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” But his definition of “divisive narratives” seems to be anything that talks about gender or race.

The executive order names specific exhibits Trump wants altered or gone: The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, which looks at how the US has “used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement,” and an unspecified upcoming exhibit that he claims celebrates “the exploits of male athletes participating in women’s sports.”

Asked for comment about Trump trying to erase art exhibits and history he doesn’t like, Lindsey Halligan, special assistant to the president, took issue with the question itself.

“The premise of your question to comment on ‘Trump trying to rewrite history or erase people in exhibits at the Smithsonian’ is deeply hypocritical,” Halligan said in a statement. “This administration stands for the preservation of American history without ideological distortion.”

Incredibly, she accused the artist behind Trans Forming Liberty of trying to censor history.

“There is one Statue of Liberty, a globally recognised symbol of freedom and unity that stands for all Americans, without the need to recast it through the lens of identity politics,” Halligan said. “Reimagining the Statue of Liberty with a politically charged reinterpretation does not preserve history ― it rewrites it. If anyone is attempting to erase or distort........

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