The Liberty Daily 
(The Daily Signal)—The secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie G. Bunch III, is stepping down, amid continued criticism from the White House about the direction of the Smithsonian museums.
“There is no place like the Smithsonian—it has been one of the great loves of my life, and I am extraordinarily proud of what we have accomplished together,” Bunch said in a statement. “I leave with pride and sadness, gratitude and joy, and with enormous confidence in the people who will carry this remarkable institution forward.”
Trump administration officials have raised concerns about the Smithsonian museums in recent weeks.
A July White House report charged that the National Museum of American History had become “subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”
Bunch criticized the report, calling it “not a fair characterization of the work” in a memo addressed to Smithsonian staffers.
Later in July, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring the Department of the Interior to post signage around the National Museum of American History about the White House report’s findings.
In August, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley sent a letter saying federal agencies could not “continue to support the Smithsonian under current leadership.”
“In addition to the more than $1 billion appropriated to the Smithsonian by Congress each year, the Smithsonian enjoys support from executive departments and agencies. Those executive departments and agencies cannot in good conscience continue to support the Smithsonian under current leadership by, for example, loaning artifacts for exhibits, enabling procurement processes and making discretionary grants,” Burgum and Haley wrote.
They also suggested that the institution may be involved in “significant violations of federal antidiscrimination law.”
“Indeed, the administration has recently uncovered evidence that the Smithsonian leadership’s institutional culture may have resulted in significant violations of Federal antidiscrimination law, including creating a hostile work environment and engaging in practices that classify individuals and allocate opportunities, funding and other benefits on the basis of race, ethnicity and other protected characteristics.”
The New York Times reported that Bunch “said it was not the pressure that had led to his departure.”
“I have to be honest, it has been stressful,” Bunch told the Times. “And at a certain point, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not look at my cellphone.”
Bunch will step down by the end of the year as secretary of the Smithsonian, reported the Times. The Board of Regents, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Vice President JD Vance, will appoint a new secretary to take over.
In a statement, Roberts praised Bunch for “his distinguished service for the past seven years in the Smithsonian’s top job.”
“Secretary Bunch has pursued excellence in the telling of our nation’s story,” Roberts added. “The Regents, and the Smithsonian, have benefited greatly from his wisdom, vision and leadership.”
“We can only hope that the next Secretary of the Smithsonian will not treat the Institution as a battleground for his culture wars,” Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal. “Instead, let’s hope that he or she takes seriously the mission of the national museum complex that he or she leads, that is to say to preserve and transmit America’s history, culture and art—in a word, heritage—to future generations.”
