Burgum and Haley tell the Smithsonian's governing body that agencies may cease artifact loans, procurement and grants unless its leadership changes
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and White House Domestic Policy Council director Vince Haley wrote to the Smithsonian's governing body on 28 August 2026 that government agencies cannot "in good conscience" support the institution and may cease "loaning artifacts for exhibits, enabling procurement processes and making discretionary grants", and that the appropriate response must address the Smithsonian's executive leadership and institutional ideology.
What happened
The letter, dated August 28 and recently made public, cites a White House report that claimed the institution was promoting "extreme political activism" at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Burgum and Haley wrote that because the concerns arise from executive leadership and institutional ideology at the Smithsonian, the appropriate response must likewise address executive leadership and institutional ideology. They also wrote that the administration has "recently uncovered evidence" that the Smithsonian's "institutional culture may have resulted in significant violations of Federal antidiscrimination law", without providing examples. The officials asked the Smithsonian's Board of Regents to meet with them in person to discuss the White House's findings, which were released on July 4.
Why it matters
The letter attaches a condition to interagency cooperation the government already conducts with the Smithsonian — artifact loans, procurement, discretionary grants — and the condition it names is a change in the institution's executive leadership. That is the mechanism this indicator follows: support the executive branch controls, held back to obtain a change in who runs an institution and what it displays, rather than ordered outright. The tracker reads the instrument here, not the merits of the exhibits at issue.