Donald Trump personally ordered the National Zoo to purge divisive ideology.
Seventeen months later, Fox News found the zoo's DEI programs still running.
Programs dating back years before Trump's order survived it completely intact.
Trump Named the Zoo by Name in March 2025
Trump signed an executive order in March 2025.
The order carried a blunt title: "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History."
It directed Vice President JD Vance to strip "improper ideology" out of Smithsonian museums, research centers, and one specific animal park.
That park was the National Zoo.
Smithsonian leadership had already announced in January 2025 that it was shutting down its Office of Diversity, citing the administration's broader anti-DEI push.
The zoo's own website tells a different story.
Rainbow Ice Cakes and Gay Day Survived the Purge
The zoo still runs an annual event called International Family Equality Day.
Outside LGBTQ groups have a simpler name for it: Gay Day at the Zoo.
Zookeepers hand out rainbow-themed treats and ice cakes to the animals while local LGBTQ organizations set up booths across the park.
In 2024 the guest list included the DC Center for the LGBTQ Community, SMYAL, Rainbow Families and the Smithsonian Pride Alliance.
A youth chorus performed music built around queer identity.
None of it stopped after the executive order took effect.
Search "climate change" on the zoo's website and you get almost 400 hits.
One of them, a 2021 article by the zoo's own researchers, argues that gender equity is itself a form of climate action.
The zoo's Great Plains Science Program still lists "Inclusion" as a core value on its own site.
Zoo director Brandie Smith runs an institution that partners with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a group that says DEI is embedded in everything it does.
It also partners with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, whose gender policy calls for gender-responsive conservation work.
Board member Elliott Ferguson's zoo biography still highlights his DEI credentials as a selling point.
House Republicans Propose Cutting Smithsonian Funding by 11 Percent
Congress hands the Smithsonian roughly $1 billion a year, and that money covers 21 museums plus the National Zoo.
House Republicans are done treating that as a blank check.
Their fiscal 2027 proposal sets Smithsonian funding at about $961 million, an 11% cut from current levels.
Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News Digital the Smithsonian is "accountable to the taxpayers" and said tying its funding to requirements is the best way to force change.
Jason Hayes, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the zoo's real mission is getting crowded out by ideology.
He told Fox News Digital that once "science that is in question" starts running a taxpayer-funded zoo, problems follow.
Gabriella Hoffman of the Independent Women's Forum put it more bluntly.
She said activists have targeted zoos for years and warned that surrendering to them "will invite extinction, not longevity."
Her advice was simple: showcase animals, not activism.
The Zoo Bet Trump Would Forget His Own Order
Here's what actually fires me up about this one.
Trump didn't attack DEI in the abstract – he put the National Zoo's name in a presidential order.
Seventeen months of "compliance" later, the zoo still hands out rainbow ice cakes and calls it International Family Equality Day.
That's not bureaucratic lag.
That's an institution betting the order gets forgotten before the money gets cut.
Every dollar of that shrinking Smithsonian budget comes from the same taxpayers who elected a president to end exactly this kind of programming, and elected him twice.
The zoo's leadership didn't misunderstand the assignment.
They ignored it, and now Congress is the one holding the checkbook.
Sources:
- Andrew Mark Miller, "Gender equity, DEI, climate action: How the Smithsonian's woke push 'infiltrated' America's most beloved zoo," Fox News, August 27, 2026.
- "Smithsonian's taxpayer funds face chopping block as GOP demands accountability for 'woke' history," Fox News, August 7, 2026.
- "DEI, climate messaging continues at Smithsonian's National Zoo despite Trump crackdown," The Washington Times, August 27, 2026.
- "Trump orders crackdown on wrong 'ideology' at nation's top zoo," Yahoo News, March 28, 2025.
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