Staff are self-censoring art and history content they fear could upset Trump.

Volunteers are angry and mulling quitting. (They work for free!)

Workers repeatedly told not to speak to press.

The Smithsonian's strategy is to lay low and ride out this storm, except Trump is already forcing changes.

August 14, 2025 - 17:17 UTC

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They are. My friends who work there are not and keep getting into arguments with their colleagues over it.
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A volunteer at one Smithsonian museum said colleagues often air their concerns in break rooms about what Trump is doing to the museums, and “the 1930s” is a common refrain, referring to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.
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And the Smithsonian is right across the mall from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Not a peep out of them afaik.
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A few people saved a lot of museum collections for posterity in the 1930s using some creative temporary geographic archiving.

It is, tragically, not the wrong refrain to have top of mind.
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“It’s an impossible position to put us in,” said one museum worker. “We can’t be political with our content, but they have politicized everything. We need to prove we’re not partisan by following this very partisan directive."

"What are we supposed to do?"
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