(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Facing sharp scrutiny from the Trump administration over perceived left-wing bias, the Smithsonian Institution said Friday that it had temporarily removed a display on President Donald Trump’s two politically motivated impeachments.
The ultimate fate of the display remained uncertain for the foreseeable future, although a Smithsonian spokesperson maintained that the National Museum for American History’s exhibit on the American presidency eventually “will include all impeachments,” the Associated Press reported.
Smithsonian spokesman Phillip Zimmerman said the decision to restore the exhibit to its previous 2008 state stemmed from a need to update some of the details following a review in July of the museum’s “legacy content.”
The temporary installation on Trump that was added in September 2021 “was intended to be a short-term measure to address current events at the time,” he said.
The exhibit left intact displays on Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, the two other presidents who have been impeached, as well as a display on the forced resignation of Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal.
House Democrats, led by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, first impeached Trump in late 2019 amid claims that he had pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate the corruption of top political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
However, Joe Biden’s decision to issue a blanket pardon for his son in December 2024, prior to leaving the presidency, appeared to validate the longstanding concerns over Hunter’s illicit influence-peddling while on the board of the energy company Burisma.
Pelosi again led the charge to impeach Trump for inciting an “insurrection” following the U.S. Capitol uprising on Jan. 6, 2021.
Although Democrat majorities in the House advanced both impeachments, Trump was acquitted both times in the Senate.
Since regaining control of the White House in his landslide 2024 victory, Trump has been eager to settle scores within Washington, D.C.’s permanent bureaucracy and elsewhere.
He directly addressed the Smithsonian’s perceived bias in a March executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which tasked Vice President Vice President J.D. Vance with ensuring that no funding went to “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
The Smithsonian’s announcement on Friday came as another publicly funded nonprofit under fire for its political bias announced that it was closing shop.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which bankrolled outlets like NPR and PBS through its congressional grants, announced its closure following Congress’s passage of the Rescissions Act last month, which clawed back some $9 billion in partisan public funding and spending excesses.
BREAKING: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down citing loss of federal funding. pic.twitter.com/JmmJ92J9NG
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) August 1, 2025
CPB stood to lose $1.1 billion from the rollback, according to NPR.
Leftists lashed out following the legislation’s passage, insisting—despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary—that it was nonpartisan and that its programming performed a critical service to the public interest.
“Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities—all will bear the harm of this vote,” said Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and CEO, in a statement responding to the cuts.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
