Inside Trump’s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian

When President Trump summoned Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for lunch at the White House on August 28 of last year, Bunch’s advisers assumed that the end was near. Trump had spent months threatening the Smithsonian’s independence; just nine days earlier, he’d written on Truth Social that “the Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”It stood to be a tough visit, and not only because Bunch, the first Black leader of the Smithsonian, takes the widely held position that slavery was, in fact, “bad.” Bunch is the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and, as such, is one of the country’s leading and most visible advocates for the commemoration and celebration of Black history. From the start of the second Trump administration, the entire Smithsonian had been a target of those on the MAGA right who are preoccupied with expunging what they understand to be “wokeness” from prominent institutions. In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order demanding the restoration of “truth and sanity” to American history and directing Vice President Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to reverse the spread of “divisive ideology” in the museum system. Then, in May 2025, Trump attempted to fire the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, igniting a two-week standoff. It did not seem to matter to him that the Smithsonian, though partially funded by the federal government, is meant to be independent.Bunch’s staff assumed that he would come under sustained attack from the president. He was already contending with regents who wanted to fire him for the Smithsonian’s putative leftism. At one meeting, Representative Carlos Giménez, a Republican from Miami who holds one of the three seats on the board reserved for members of the House, accused Bunch of sym