in effect
This is Executive Order 14253, signed March 27, 2025, and published in the Federal Register on April 3, 2025. It states the administration’s policy of removing what it calls “improper ideology” from federally funded museums, parks, and monuments, and directs several federal officials to carry that policy out. It focuses mainly on the Smithsonian Institution and sites managed by the Department of the Interior.
The order assigns specific tasks to named officials. The Vice President, acting through his seat on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, is directed to work to remove content the order deems improper from Smithsonian museums, research centers, and the National Zoo, and to seek new “citizen” members for the Board. The Vice President and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget are directed to work with Congress so that future Smithsonian funding bars spending on exhibits the order describes as dividing Americans by race or degrading shared values, and requires the planned American Women’s History Museum to “not recognize men as women in any respect.” The Secretary of the Interior is directed to fund infrastructure improvements at Independence National Historical Park, to be finished by July 4, 2026 (the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence), and to review whether monuments, memorials, statues, or markers under Interior’s control have been removed or altered since January 1, 2020, in ways the order considers a “false reconstruction” of history, and to reinstate or correct them as allowed by law. The order does not appropriate new money on its own; it says it depends on existing law and available funding.
The most directly affected bodies are the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, research centers, and the National Zoo, plus the Department of the Interior and the sites it manages, such as national parks and their monuments. Officials with specific duties include the Vice President, the OMB Director, and the Secretary of the Interior, with Congress involved through future funding decisions. The order also states that it creates no legal rights anyone can enforce in court against the government.