Is America’s most famous museum rewriting history and science? What Trump wants left out of its slavery exhibits and false human origins claims is raising national concern.



The Smithsonian Institution has come under fire regarding its presentation on slavery, as well as its recent claim that humans are only 1.2% genetically different from chimpanzees. U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the Smithsonian Institution on Tuesday, arguing that the museum has focused too much on slavery and not enough on the "brightness" of America.

"The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. "This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the 'HOTTEST' Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums."

The president also called for his administration to ensure that exhibits would ensure that institutions would exhibit "tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals" within 120 days, The New York Times reported.

Meanwhile, Geologist Casey Luskin, an advocate of Intelligent Design, accused the Smithsonian's Hall of Human Origins of promoting an inaccurate claim that humans and chimpanzees are about "98.8% genetically similar" with "only about a 1–2% difference," The Christian Post reported.

Luskin, who holds a Ph.D. in geology and is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, wrote an op-ed for the New York Post refuting the Smithsonian's claim by citing a study published in the journal Nature in April, which found that there is a 15% genetic difference between humans and apes, contradicting the museum's claims.

"This argument for human evolution based upon the claim that we are only 1% genetically different is wrong," he told host Andrew McDiarmid on the Discovery Institute podcast "ID The Future" on August 11.

He argued, "We are far more than 1% genetically different."

"The percent genetic similarity between humans and chimps really doesn't tell you anything about whether we share a common ancestor because those genetic similarities … could also be the result of common design," said Luskin.

Luskin also shot down the Smithsonian claim that "the ancient species Sahelanthropus tchadensis was an 'early human' that walked on two legs," when the Nature study noted that "Sahelanthropus was an ape," and many features "link the specimen with chimpanzees, gorillas or both, to the exclusion of hominids."'

Overall, Luskin noted that the museum's inaccuracies occur on the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial, a case about the outlawing of teaching human evolution in public schools that resulted in the teaching of Darwin's theory.

"How ironic that 100 years later, the nation's premier science museum is obscuring scientifically objective and accurate data on the very same subject," he said.

"To fail to correct this exhibit is to use taxpayer money to miseducate the public about a question of profound scientific, sociological, and philosophical importance," he concluded.

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