Raskin proposes Smithsonian preserve and display Trump-era banners

A Democratic congressman wants posters and banners showing Donald Trump's face to end up in a museum.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from Maryland, introduced a bill on 7 October 2026 that would tell the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. — the United States' national museum group — to preserve and display Trump-era material, Axios reported.

The proposal is called the "Preserving and Remembering the History of Trump and other Tyrants Act," according to reports by Yahoo and Forbes. Raskin's office said its purpose is to preserve and document what it described as Trump propaganda and to educate future generations about resistance to corruption and authoritarianism.

The list of objects is specific. The bill directs Smithsonian officials to keep banners bearing the president's face that have been displayed outside certain federal agencies in Washington, D.C. It also covers banners and signs put up around the capital, plus still images and videos from the media.

It does not stop with official material. The bill also calls for collecting personal accounts from American citizens who resisted and opposed what the text describes as a rise in authoritarianism in the United States, according to Raskin's office.

Those objects would have a public home. The bill calls for a permanent exhibition in the National Museum of American History in Washington, built around the preserved artefacts.

Another section deals with signs outside that same museum. The bill would direct officials from the National Park Service, the federal agency that manages parks and monuments, to remove any signage erected near the museum without the consent of Congress.

That provision follows a claim by Raskin's office about a sign outside the museum. The office stated that the Department of the Interior, acting under orders from President Trump, produced signage warning visitors about curators' "personal, radical ideologies."

What makes this stand out is the method. Instead of calling for the banners to be taken down and discarded, the bill treats them as future museum objects, with provenance — the documented chain of ownership and display — intact.