The president has no direct role in appointing regents. But in the executive order, Mr. Trump called for Mr. Vance to work with the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, both Republicans, “to seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.”
Who pays for the Smithsonian?
The Smithsonian’s annual budget of just over $1 billion is paid for with a mix of federal money, appropriated by Congress, and private fund-raising. Last September, the institution began a $2.5 billion fund-raising campaign, set to culminate with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July 2026.
The Smithsonian’s budget is set by Congress, not the executive branch. But Mr. Trump has recently sought to gut some programs funded by Congress, which has invited court challenges. He could also call for eliminating spending in future budgets, but Congress would have to approve that step for it to go into effect.
Have politics affected the Smithsonian before?
In 1994, the Smithsonian received strong criticism over a planned exhibition about the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Some veterans groups and members of Congress assailed it as disrespectful to veterans, by paying what they saw as too much attention to the Japanese victims and to the postwar arms race.
The museum revised the script, but the full exhibition, timed to the 50th anniversary of the bombing, was ultimately canceled. A simpler display, which included the fuselage of the Enola Gay with only a brief text with basic facts and a description of the plane’s restoration, went up later, stirring another round of protest from those who thought it erased the human impact.
Have there been more recent controversies?
In 2023, some Republican Latino members of Congress threatened to withhold funding for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino, a new museum still in the development phase. They cited concerns that an inaugural exhibition in a temporary gallery gave “an erroneous and unbalanced” image of Latinos, portraying them only as victims of oppression.
