{"id":789,"date":"2026-06-22T20:46:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=789"},"modified":"2026-06-22T20:46:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:46:29","slug":"inside-trumps-plan-to-seize-the-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=789","title":{"rendered":"Inside Trump\u2019s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When President Trump<\/span> summoned Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for lunch at the White House on August 28 of last year, Bunch\u2019s advisers assumed that the end was near. Trump had spent months threatening the Smithsonian\u2019s independence; just nine days earlier, he\u2019d written on Truth Social that \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more What Will Happen to Birthright Citizenship?<\/a><\/p>\n

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, \u201cbad.\u201d Bunch is the founding director of the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of African American History and Culture and, as such, is one of the country\u2019s 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 \u201cwokeness\u201d from prominent institutions. In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order demanding the restoration of \u201ctruth and sanity\u201d to American history and directing Vice President Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian\u2019s Board of Regents, to reverse the spread of \u201cdivisive ideology\u201d in the museum system. Then, in May 2025, Trump attempted to fire the director of the Smithsonian\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Bunch\u2019s 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\u2019s putative leftism. At one meeting, Representative Carlos Gim\u00e9nez, a Republican from Miami who holds one of the three seats on the board reserved for members of the House, accused Bunch of sympathizing with Fidel Castro and demanded his resignation, a call that resulted in a rare rebuke from the chancellor of the board, Chief Justice John Roberts.<\/p>\n

It is Bunch\u2019s long-standing position that the Smithsonian, which was founded in 1846, should not leave a visitor with negative feelings about the United States. The collection of museums largely represents a celebration of American ingenuity, art, and innovation. Bunch believes that the Smithsonian\u2019s presentation of history should be comprehensive and complicated, as well as optimistic. His position would not have been considered particularly controversial before the rise of Trump; nor would Bunch have been considered anything but a mainstream historian. Like many historians, he argues that learning about negative aspects of American history does not undermine people\u2019s ability to understand the good the country has done. \u201cEvery day, I have somebody talk to me about how important it is to have complexity and nuance,\u201d he said at a meeting of the Organization of American Historians in April. \u201cHow they really understood something after they\u2019ve gone through a Smithsonian exhibition that they had no idea of.\u201d Bringing that complexity to life, he believes, is the mission of the institution, and he was ready to argue that point with Trump over a chicken-and-gravy lunch.<\/p>\n

But the anticipated showdown never came. Over the course of two and a half hours, Bunch was subjected to a charm offensive. The president treated Bunch warmly; much of their conversation had to do with White House decor. At one point, Trump showed Bunch four chandelier samples for the Oval Office; one was clear, the others white, silver, and gold. Trump asked which one he preferred. Bunch, who wasn\u2019t born yesterday, chose gold. Trump turned to an aide and said, \u201cSee? He agrees with me!\u201d Trump then asked Bunch to name the most important building in Washington. Trump\u2019s own answer was the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the White House\u2019s next-door office complex. Bunch mentioned that the building is famously ugly, at which point Trump called in aides to show Bunch renderings of the structure, repainted white. (The account of this lunch is based on conversations with White House and Smithsonian officials as well as people in close contact with Smithsonian leadership.)<\/p>\n

Bunch knew beforehand that one specific issue would be raised, either by Trump or his aides: the location of the space shuttle Discovery, which Texas\u2019s Republican senators want to move from the Smithsonian\u2019s National Air and Space Museum annex near Dulles International Airport to Houston. Senator John Cornyn had been lobbying for years to have the shuttle moved to Houston and, according to people familiar with his efforts, had more recently begun making the case to the White House that, among other things, the Smithsonian is too \u201cwoke\u201d to display the retired space vehicle. But Bunch came prepared with a nonpolitical rebuttal: Millions of tourists have visited the Discovery at the Smithsonian facility, and only a fraction of that number would see it in Houston. At which point Trump became seized by the subject of Dulles\u2019s appearance. Trump has criticized the modernist airport for being ugly and outdated. He told Bunch that Dulles should be \u201cknocked down,\u201d built again, and named after him. After a 10-minute digression about the airport\u2019s shortcomings, Trump took Bunch on a tour of the Cabinet Room. He didn\u2019t mention the space shuttle again. Nor did he mention the Smithsonian\u2019s understanding of American history.<\/p>\n

When the meeting was over, Bunch was relieved but flummoxed. The episode, he explained to an audience at UCLA in November, was \u201cthe most stressful lunch I\u2019ve ever had in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept waiting for the sword of Damocles to come take my head off,\u201d Bunch recounted.\u201cThere was no logic to the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since that lunch, the 73-year-old Bunch has continued to defend the Smithsonian, but he appears to be inching closer to leaving. His family, fearful of what continued public antagonism means for his well-being, wants him to retire. He has begun to talk more openly about the strain that Trump\u2019s interest has put on the Smithsonian. \u201cFor the Smithsonian, this is probably the most difficult time since the Civil War,\u201d he said at the gathering of historians.<\/p>\n

The conflict has largely disappeared from the news in recent months\u2014a partial reflection, perhaps, of Bunch\u2019s diplomatic finesse, as well as the general global and domestic chaos that is a feature of the Trump era. But as America approaches its 250th birthday, the Smithsonian is readying itself for the tensions over how it tells the story of the nation to resume, and potentially reach a climax.<\/p>\n

A conviction in the necessity of curatorial independence has motivated Bunch throughout what has surely been among the most contentious periods\u00a0 a Smithsonian secretary has ever faced. \u201cI tell people all the time, \u2018I\u2019m a nice guy, but poke me in the eye and I\u2019ll fight you forever,\u2019\u201d he said at a public event in March. \u201cSo the key here is not to fight just to fight. The key is to make sure you\u2019re just trying to protect an institution, to do the work we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s gotten the Smithsonian this far. What is uncertain is whether the institution is built to withstand an assault from a chief executive with designs on shaping history\u2014or whether it needs a charismatic executive of its own to survive.<\/p>\n

Bunch grew up<\/span> in the 1950s and \u201960s in Belleville, New Jersey, where he and his family were the only Black people. The biographies he was assigned in middle school looked like the town. So Bunch found histories of Black life in his grandfather\u2019s old trunk, which ultimately led him to Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. Du Bois.<\/p>\n

After earning his Ph.D. in history and stints as a curator and professor, Bunch became a curator at the Smithsonian\u2019s American-history museum in 1989. While assembling an exhibition on 19th-century America with a focus on the legacy of slavery, he traveled to plantations throughout the South, attempting to find one site that he might highlight as representative of the larger institution. He traversed Louisiana and Alabama and North Carolina, walking across land where exploited Black hands had harvested the sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco that would help build America\u2019s wealth. Ultimately, he found himself at a rice plantation established in the 1730s at the edge of the Sampit River, in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.<\/p>\n

There, Bunch encountered Princy Jenkins, a 90-something Black man who had been the plantation\u2019s caretaker and had once lived in one of its slave cabins with his formerly enslaved grandmother. Jenkins told Bunch bluntly: \u201cIf you are a historian, then your job better be to help people remember not just what they want to remember, but what they need to remember.\u201d The directive stayed with him. Bunch committed himself to ensuring that in his historical and curatorial work, he would not compromise on the truth, no matter how difficult it was to face.<\/p>\n

In 2001, Bunch left Washington to become the president of the Chicago Historical Society (today the Chicago History Museum), a move that he understood made a return to the Smithsonian unlikely. Two years after Bunch moved, however, Congress finally passed legislation that advocates had been pushing for over nearly 100 years: It would create a national African American museum. The relentless efforts of Representative John Lewis had finally made the idea a reality. In December 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law the National Museum of African American History and Culture Act. Now someone needed to create it.<\/p>\n

Bunch by then had become one of the most well-regarded historians and museum curators in the country. He was an obvious choice. When asked if he would be interested, he was flattered, but uncertain. There was \u201cno staff, no site, no architect, no building, no collections, and no money,\u201d he wrote in his memoir. It would take at least 10 years to open the museum\u2019s doors. \u201cIt carried the weight and the burden of history,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

But it was also an unprecedented chance to tell the story of his people, and in doing so, to tell the story of America. He didn\u2019t want to see someone else potentially squander the opportunity. It might take years off his life, he thought. But if he did it right, it would be worthwhile.<\/p>\n

As Bunch turned his attention to the new endeavor, he had to navigate tensions within the Black community about how to tell the story of Black American life. Some scholars and activists told him that the museum needed to \u201cout-Holocaust\u201d the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by focusing largely on \u201cwhat they did to us.\u201d But Bunch also heard from people who said that the new museum should focus on a more hopeful and inspiring message. He often recounts the story of meeting an elderly Black woman who thanked him for his work, hugged him, and whispered into his ear, \u201cWhatever you do, don\u2019t discuss slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunch took both viewpoints seriously, but he came to believe that slavery or no slavery <\/em>was a false choice. He understood that slavery was painful for many Black Americans to confront. These were people\u2019s ancestors: their great-grandparents, their grandparents, even their parents. (Ruth Bonner, the woman who would ring the bell to signal the opening of the museum, was the daughter of a man who had been born into slavery.) And yet he knew that the museum had a responsibility to present and contextualize the full history. \u201cAs a country, we cannot fully understand ourselves without embracing the nation\u2019s interdependency with slavery,\u201d Bunch wrote.<\/p>\n

The museum would capture the reality of the violence, subjugation, and exploitation Black Americans experienced while also making clear that they were and are not singularly defined by that experience. \u201cI wanted to build a museum,\u201d Bunch has said, \u201cwhere you\u2019d cry as you pondered the pain of slavery or segregation\u2014but I also wanted you to find joy, I wanted you to tap your toes to Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunch ensured that the museum would not be understood as a partisan endeavor. He built relationships with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and when it opened in 2016\u2014less than two months before Trump\u2019s first electoral victory\u2014tens of thousands of people attended the festivities. At the dedication, President Barack Obama spoke of how the museum demonstrates \u201cthat our glory derives not just from our most obvious triumphs, but how we\u2019ve wrested triumph from tragedy.\u201d President Bush praised Bunch for his persistence and determination to bring the museum to life. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to understand this project would not and could not have happened without his drive, his energy, and his optimism,\u201d Bush said. (Bunch doubts that he would be able to garner such public support from Republicans today; when he talks with Republican elected officials now, they tell him, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to stand firm, but I can\u2019t say anything.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Trump visited the museum exactly once, during Black History Month in 2017. The president was accompanied by incoming Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, Senator Tim Scott, and the conservative activist Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and a vocal Trump supporter. Trump\u2019s team told Bunch that the president did not want to see anything \u201cdifficult.\u201d Bunch decided to show Trump the area of the museum that explores the slave trade.<\/p>\n

Read more The Man Who Couldn\u2019t Do It<\/a><\/p>\n

In a section of the museum\u2019s history gallery that explores the role the Dutch played, Bunch writes in his memoir, Trump turned to him and said, \u201cYou know, they love me in the Netherlands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I could say,\u201d Bunch recounted in his memoir, \u201cwas let\u2019s continue walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that initial trip,<\/span> which Trump told Bunch he had enjoyed, the president took little interest in the Smithsonian during his first term, even when, in 2019, Bunch became secretary of the entire Smithsonian system, overseeing 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, and several research and education centers. But in recent years, the MAGA movement has become fixated on combatting what Trump\u2019s \u201ctruth and sanity\u201d executive order describes as \u201ca concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation\u2019s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.\u201d The second Trump administration has taken a particularly antagonistic posture toward established institutions with deep ranks of expertise, which has made the Smithsonian a natural political target.<\/p>\n

Still, although the Smithsonian receives nearly two-thirds of its funding from the federal government, the institution ostensibly preserves some measure of independence through its Board of Regents, keeping it insulated from political winds and top-down directives. The board has the power to hire the institution\u2019s secretary\u2014and to dismiss them.<\/p>\n

Citizen members of the Board of Regents are themselves selected for six-year terms by other members of the board, and cannot serve more than two terms. All nominees must be approved by Congress and then signed off on by the president. (Unlike at the Kennedy Center, which Trump took over in the early weeks of his second term, the president does not directly appoint members of the board.) will have reached that two-term limit by the end of this year. Two more were for a second term but have yet to be approved by Congress.<\/p>\n

The current and looming vacancies, and the need for congressional and presidential approval, raise the possibility that Trump could attempt to install new board members who are loyal to his agenda. (Trump\u2019s March 2025 executive order said that the White House would work with officials \u201cto seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.\u201d) In April, The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>reported that the regents had agreed on nominations for some of the replacements, but the House committee responsible for reviewing and vetting the nominees before they move to the full legislature for approval had yet to receive the names under consideration\u2014intrigue that suggests some manner of strategy, although it\u2019s far from clear whose. from board meetings earlier this year show that the regents have voted to give existing members additional duties because of the current and expected vacancies.<\/p>\n

Throughout this presidential term, Bunch has remained loyal to Princy Jenkins\u2019s admonition: showing the public not just what they want<\/em> to remember, but what they need<\/em> to remember. After the public release of the March 2025 executive order, Bunch sent an internal memo to Smithsonian staff. \u201cWe remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research and the arts to all Americans,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections and objects, rooted in expertise and accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunch\u2019s background as a historian and former museum curator make him unique among Smithsonian secretaries, which has helped inspire loyalty among the curatorial staff. \u201cHaving come up the ranks, he knows what it is to do the job,\u201d Timothy Anne Burnside, a curator of music and performing arts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, told me. During his tenure as the museum\u2019s director, it was not uncommon for Bunch to pop into meetings to both encourage and challenge staffers, some told me. And today, he has high expectations for the quality and rigor of curators\u2019 work across the system.<\/p>\n

Shanita Brackett, the current acting director of NMAAHC, told me that she appreciates the example Bunch has set during this difficult period. \u201cWhat he\u2019s taught us over the last 14 months is not to be afraid, not to run,\u201d Brackett said. \u201cWhen you see it, you can embody it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But anxieties have spiked inside and outside the institution. Last year, a viral article suggested that NMAAHC had removed the famous Woolworth\u2019s lunch counter from an exhibit and was returning a loaned Bible and Black-history book to a civil-rights leader. Observers clamored that the museum was acquiescing to Trump. But the story wasn\u2019t true. The lunch counter and stools had never been removed. And the museum regularly cycles objects on and off public display for preservation reasons. (The Smithsonian said that it is also regular museum practice to return loaned items once the terms of the loan have expired.)<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be really clear,\u201d Bunch said in March at an event with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. \u201cThere is not a thing that I\u2019ve allowed to be changed at the Smithsonian. I don\u2019t care what you hear. The artifacts that are there are still there. The interpretations are still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunch has been cast by many of his admirers as something of a resistance figure\u2014one of the only high-profile leaders standing up to Trump by single-handedly preventing the president from rewriting American history itself. \u201cHe is a rock star,\u201d Burnside said. She recounted traveling with Bunch to various museum and history conferences over the years. \u201cThere is a mob of people around him. And they want selfies, and they want to shake his hand, and they want to say thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She went on: \u201cI cannot think of anyone else who can walk through a hotel conference center and have a trail of people following him, sneaking pictures with their phones.\u201d When I told her, half-jokingly, that she made Bunch sound like the Beyonc\u00e9 of museums, she nodded enthusiastically. Bunch\u2019s stardom has also translated into real financial benefits for the institutions he\u2019s led. As the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, he raised $453 million, and as secretary of the Smithsonian, he has helped raise $2.5 billion in six years.<\/p>\n

In February, I visited the National Museum of American History with the secretary. As we walked through the museum just when it was opening for the day, I was struck by how many people approached him. Visitors told him, \u201cKeep standing strong,\u201d as though the entire Smithsonian\u2019s future was riding on him. A staff member retrieved a gift for the secretary from his office. \u201cThank you. Just\u2014thank you,\u201d the staff member said, almost bowing before Bunch as he handed him the small box.<\/p>\n

Near the entrance, a security guard, who looked to be in his 70s and said he\u2019d worked at various Smithsonian museums for decades, told me, \u201cI\u2019ll stay as long as he stays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunch has not<\/span> been able to fend off every single effort by the administration. The Smithsonian closed its Office of Diversity following one executive order last year. In May 2025, Trump announced that he had fired the director of the Smithsonian\u2019s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, despite having no legal authority to do so, calling her \u201ca highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of D.E.I.\u201d In response, the Smithsonian said that only Bunch could remove a director from her post. But a few days later, Sajet resigned, saying she wanted to put the museum first. In July, the National Museum of American History, on its own volition, removed a reference to Trump\u2019s two impeachments from a display case about presidents who had come close to removal from office. The Smithsonian, at the time, asserted that the removal was temporary and part of a larger reimagining of the exhibition. The reference was restored just over a week after a public outcry.<\/p>\n

In August, a few weeks before Trump\u2019s meal with Bunch, the Trump administration demanded that the Smithsonian hand over a broad array of documents, including exhibit materials, wall texts, internal memos, and plans for forthcoming shows. In December, the White House sent a letter to Bunch saying that the effort \u201cfell far short of what was requested.\u201d The letter subsequently threatened to withhold funding if the requested documents were not turned over within 30 days. \u201cFunds apportioned for the Smithsonian Institution are only available for use in a manner consistent with Executive Order 14253 \u2018Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,\u2019 and the fulfillment of the requests set forth in our Aug. 12, 2025 letter,\u201d the White House wrote. Bunch responded, in a letter obtained by The Washington Post<\/em>, that the government shutdown had delayed the Smithsonian\u2019s work on this matter and that he would be happy to meet and discuss the institution\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

Bunch will admit that there are exhibits within Smithsonian museums that need updating and texts that should be revised. As we walked through the American-history museum, he pointed out places where he would like to amend some of the framings of, and materials in, different exhibits. But that is not unique to the Smithsonian; every museum reassesses its work based on new research and new scholarship. The Smithsonian, known for its deliberateness and even conservativism, is hardly the lefty hotbed depicted by the White House. Nor is Trump the first powerful figure to try to influence its displays. As America approached the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the National Air and Space Museum created an exhibit that included the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima. When members of the public learned of the exhibit, they claimed that it focused too much on Japanese victimhood and the devastation of the bomb, and not enough on Japan\u2019s role as an aggressor. Soon, members of Congress began expressing concern and, under pressure, the museum canceled the entire exhibit, then opened a new exhibit with a more laconic and innocuous framing; there was no interpretation and no graphic images.<\/p>\n

Perhaps such experiences have made the institution more cautious in its approach over time. Simply existing as a national museum system is difficult for the institution, which has an interest in not acquiescing to the whims of any administration, but also in not doing anything that might make it a political flash point.<\/p>\n

Scrutiny arrives no matter what. The Smithsonian is developing museums focused on women and Latinos in the United States. One fellow at the right-wing Heritage Foundation said the National Museum of the American Latino \u201cwill be another woke abomination\u201d and that it \u201cwill go out of its way to become an incubator of grievances.\u201d When a recent bill to establish a location for the Women\u2019s History Museum came up in committee, a group of House Republicans passed an amendment barring the museum from including content about transgender women. The bill failed on the House floor; the museum, for now, is in limbo.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Republican Senator Mike Lee said of the planned museums, \u201cThe last thing we need is to further divide our already divided nation with an array of segregated, \u2018separate but equal\u2019 museums for hyphenated identity groups.\u201d Bunch rejects this argument. During his time at the National Museum of American History, he said, he realized that \u201cno one building can tell the story of America. It\u2019s just too complicated; it\u2019s too big.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Smithsonian is a remarkable American institution. It is visited every year by about 15 million people, who travel from all over the world to see free exhibits spanning the skeleton of a tyrannosaurus rex, the command module that carried the first human beings to the moon, and the casket of Emmett Till, whose lynching was a catalyst for the civil-rights movement. There are other museums that cover some of the same terrain, but the Smithsonian is singular in both the collective proximity and the reach of its museums. The institution plays an enormous role in shaping the national understanding of science, culture, and history\u2014which may be why the Trump administration is so eager to change it. If the White House can change the story of America, it can use a distorted, ideologically driven history to justify policies of exclusion and erasure.<\/p>\n

Before the gathering of historians in April, Bunch made clear how high the stakes were. \u201cIf the Smithsonian becomes a state-sanctioned place\u2014of state-sanctioned history, art, and culture\u2014then you might as well close the Smithsonian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more California, Seen Through the Lens of George Rose<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How long can the museum system\u2019s leader, Lonnie Bunch, survive?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nInside Trump\u2019s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=789\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside Trump\u2019s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How long can the museum system\u2019s leader, Lonnie Bunch, survive?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=789\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-22T20:46:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"22 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"Inside Trump\u2019s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-22T20:46:29+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789\"},\"wordCount\":4379,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/32ca19bd393d1afe641b87284886c7b5.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=789\",\"name\":\"Inside Trump\u2019s Plan to Seize the Smithsonian - 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