The firing of public officials in President Trump's America, often through controversial means, has become a hallmark of the administration. Many have protested the actions, and others have accepted their dismissals. However, the Director of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has taken a different approach, ignoring the President and continuing to show up at work. 

While President Trump's second term has yet to reach the six-month mark, the arts have been under pressure since the inauguration. Most recently, on 30 May, the President laid off Director Sajet via his social media platform, Truth Social. In defiance of the termination, Sajet has continued to report to work, as of early last week. This has the potential to lead to a major showdown as the Smithsonian, which oversees the NPG, issued a statement that reinforced its status as an independent entity that reserves the right to make its hiring policy. 

While refraining from commenting on the Sajet case in particular, the Smithsonian statement states, "All personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the Secretary, with oversight by the Board," a near-direct challenge to the statements made by the President on his social media platform. 

However, to call this latest event one of the biggest or most impactful hides the multitude of other efforts by the second Trump administration to reshape the art and culture sector of the United States to their liking. What precedes this firing is a cavalcade of policies and budgets that have deeply impacted the US culture sector both directly and indirectly.

At the core of Trump’s campaign of transforming the American cultural institutions is a socially right-wing conflict with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI is a broad term that comprises efforts to promote and uplift those traditionally subjected to discrimination based on their identity, with Republicans seeking to oppose, defund, or dismantle programs and personnel who promote such efforts. 

In the case against Sajet, President Trump directly attacked her on Truth Social, labeling her “a highly partisan person and a strong supporter of DEI,” using this as a pretense for her dismissal. At the time of her firing, the National Portrait Gallery was running an exhibition titled America’s Presidents, which featured various paintings of past leaders, including Trump, whose caption mentioned his impeachments and his 6 January 2021, insurrection, one of the reasons she was dismissed, according to the Washington Post. 

In response, Sajet has ignored the president, returning to work as usual, with experts arguing that the firing is illegal. Senator Gary Peters, D-Michigan, who serves on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, has stated, “The president has no authority whatsoever to fire her. The Smithsonian is an independent institution.” Such an act is not new for President Trump, who dismissed the Library of Congress's first female and African-American leader, Carla Hayden, and the Kennedy Center's first female president, Deborah Rutter, appointing himself to the role of its chairman.

Chief Art Critic at the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott, has stated that if Trump wins over Sajet, it will set a dangerous precedent that the president can hire and fire whoever they want, and that because of the Smithsonian's reach and importance in American culture and education, this decision will reverberate throughout all sectors.

For reference, the Smithsonian and its various subordinate institutions, such as the National Portrait Gallery, were founded as a “trust instrumentality” of Congress, while government officials sit on its board, and 2/3rds of its staff are federal employees; it’s independent of the government. The gallery director position is appointed by the Smithsonian Board of Regents; thus, Sajet can only be fired by its secretary, not the president.

As for the Smithsonian, it has also fallen under the ire of the President. In late March, the Smithsonian was singled out in an executive order, where Trump states that “Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” 

In total, four executive orders have impacted the Smithsonian, directing it to divest from DEI and, more specifically, from more modern exhibitions and components that are defined as “anti-American,” according to the BBC. Smithsonian components such as the American Women’s History Museum and the exhibit The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture have been singled out by the Trump administration as “harmful and oppressive” to American history.

In response to the administration, the same Smithsonian statement that references Sajet's firing also stated, "To reinforce our nonpartisan stature, the Board of Regents has directed the Secretary to articulate specific expectations to museum directors and staff regarding content in Smithsonian museums, give directors reasonable time to make any needed changes to ensure unbiased content, and to report back to the Board on progress and any needed personnel changes based on success or lack thereof."

The Smithsonian, along with other major cultural institutions in America, such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the Kennedy Center, has faced various tools of the administration used to directly reform or control their content. However, moves against the Smithsonian have drawn specific ire from the public, especially as the institution has seemingly been more willing to comply and modify their offerings per government pressure. 

The Smithsonian's compliance with the administration's orders has left lenders to its collection bewildered and angry. One of the Smithsonian's sub-museums, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), has complied with the government's orders by removing 32 items from their gallery to comply with a 20 January order, a move that has affected those lending the items.

Amos C. Brown, a civil rights activist, lent the NMAAHC a Bible that was his father's and that Martin Luther King, Jr., personally carried with him to protests. Speaking to NBC, Brown called the NMAAHC's actions “inhumane, disrespectful, and downright unjust.” The museum played the issue off as standard operating procedure.

In another case, the diary of a lawyer who worked on behalf of the enslaved man Solomon Northup (immortalized in the movie 12 Years a Slave) had been on loan with the NMAAHC until September of this year; it was suddenly taken down from showcase in March, coinciding with the executive order.

A major tool in the Trump Administration's conflict with cultural institutions, and other institutions in general, has been slashing their budget to force change or shut down whole organizations. While entities like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been instrumental in this defunding of cultural entities tied to the US government, such as IMLS, the Administration’s budget reflects DOGE’s aims on a larger scale.

Before this mass defunding of the arts, which President Trump has proposed, including the shuttering of the entirety of the NEA, the museum industry in the US was already facing trouble. In June 2024, 2/3rds of museum directors were already warning that they were short on funding, with them requiring a boost of 10-20% on average to reach a stable position, due to a majority of them losing private and public funding sources. This has been an ongoing issue even as the number of visitors to museums rises, post-pandemic.  

The further cuts and firings by organizations such as DOGE have greatly harmed the arts across the country, with officials and employees of museums and libraries from across the country being impacted by the loss of organizations such as the IMLS.

Most notable will be the loss of US$266.7 million in funding, US$55 million of which went to major urban museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but also smaller regional museums instrumental in maintaining local history and culture, and which experts fear will go extinct should the proposed budget cuts go through.