A House investigative panel is escalating its scrutiny of the Smithsonian Institution after discovering a museum exhibit that appeared to accuse the U.S. military of engaging in domicide, or the deliberate destruction of civilian homes to inflict human suffering.
According to Just The News, the demand came in a letter from House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee Chairman Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Rep. Brian Jack, R-Ga., marking the latest effort by the GOP-led Congress to confront what it views as woke, revisionist portrayals of American history at the nations flagship museum network. The lawmakers warned Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III that the Smithsonian has cultivated a scholarly community that supports insinuations that the deliberate destruction of homes to intentionally cause human suffering is intertwined with the military doctrine of the United States, a charge that goes well beyond legitimate historical debate and into ideological activism.
The letter, obtained by the outlet, leans heavily on findings from the Smithsonians own inspector general, who in June documented how a seemingly benign exhibit on New York architecture morphed into an indictment of U.S. military conduct. This exhibition was an installation at the Design Triennial, which was originally proposed to showcase 10 New York City buildings compressed into a single room, the lawmakers wrote, noting that what began as a neutral design concept was repurposed into a political statement.
This originally uncontroversial proposal was turned into a display of homes destroyed by American-made munitions in various military engagements against ISIS and other terrorist organizations, the letter continued, effectively recasting U.S. counterterrorism operations as an assault on civilians rather than a fight against jihadist killers. Organizers explained they wanted to portray American military doctrine and even Americas founding as being intertwined with domicide, defined as the massive and deliberate destruction of homes in order to cause human suffering, they added, a framing that aligns more with far-left academic rhetoric than with balanced historical scholarship.
The lawmakers further revealed that Smithsonian officials have defended such presentations as historically grounded, dismissing objections as a complicated matter rather than acknowledging ideological bias. We must meet our obligations of accuracy and relevance to the public we serve . We must do so without discouraging inquiry and the creativity of our scholarly community, the museum wrote to the inspector general, according to the letter, a response that critics say hides politicization behind the language of academic freedom.
Burchett and Jack are now demanding a broad set of records, including any documents reflecting attempts to weaken or bypass Directive 603, which was created to govern the institutions review of proposed sensitive exhibits with public interest. That directive, they stressed, is instrumental to preserving the Smithsonians reputation as a trusted source for Americans, a reputation conservatives argue is jeopardized when taxpayer-funded museums echo progressive narratives that cast the U.S. militaryand by extension the nations founding principlesin a falsely malign light.
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