Exclusive – Interior SEC. Burgum Requests Changes to Smithsonian After Trump Admin Discovers DEI in Museums

The Trump administration is moving to restore the Smithsonian Institution to its original mission of preserving the United States of America’s “precious cultural inheritance,” instead of advancing a “divisive, ideological agenda” with a new letter to the museum system’s Board of Regents.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sent the letter on Friday, alerting the board that his department is working to execute President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, titled “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution.”

The publicly-funded museum system’s annual budget has been over $1 billion in recent years, with most of it coming from federal appropriations. However, the White House recently proposed an 11 percent funding cut to $961.3 million for fiscal year 2027. The submitted budget would be the lowest amount of taxpayer money the institution would receive since 2020.

The proposal came after a White House review of the Smithsonian’s programs, including the alleged advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agendas. The review culminated in a report sharing examples of troublesome exhibits in several different Smithsonian museums, with the administration arguing that they “focus excessively on oppression rather than American achievements.”

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, who made more than $4.4 million from his salary and benefits from 2020 to 2024, has explicitly stated that DEI “must be at the center” of the institution.

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Burgum wrote, “As outlined in Executive Order, titled ‘Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution,’ the administration has concluded that action is necessary to restore the Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian or Institution) to the mission originally entrusted to it by Congress and the American people.”

“As you are aware, it is the executive branch’s responsibility to ensure that taxpayer funds and the support the Smithsonian receives from executive departments and agencies are used to preserve America’s precious cultural inheritance, not advance a divisive, ideological agenda,” the Interior secretary explained. “In 1846, Congress established the Smithsonian as a trust instrumentality of the United States and vested its governance in the Board of Regents. As an entity created to be the Nation’s foremost steward of American history and culture, the Smithsonian bears a responsibility to preserve and present the American story faithfully, accurately, coherently and in a manner worthy of the public trust.”

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The museum has also adopted a plan that tells employees to, “whatever the topic,” tie everything to “the core issues of our time, namely, “race and identity,” “gender and sexuality,” “environmental change,” immigration and migrations, “economic inequality,” “technological change” and “nationalism and globalism, stating that “To do anything less is to shirk our commitment to relevance.”

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