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More than 70 House Democrats have asked Inspector General Smithsonian to investigate President Trump’s executive order against the Smithsonian Museum and believe that the president’s actions are stolen from the agency’s independence.
71 House Democrats led by representatives Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) and Paul Tonko (New York) criticized Trump’s March 27 executive order, which said the Smithsonian agency “has been influenced by a separatist, race-centric ideology in recent years.”
In a letter to Smithsonian Inspector Nicole L. Angarella on Thursday, Democrats said that Trump’s order “will violate the independence of the Smithsonian agency to carry out its core mission to provide Americans and the world with the tools and information we need to forge our shared future.”
As a result, lawmakers asked the Angaralila office to “investigate the impact of the execution of executive orders” on the Smithsonian Institution’s “non-partisan mission and operational integrity as a beacon of history and culture.”
They asked Angarella to “make the most out of your supervisory authority to ‘improve the efficiency, effectiveness and integrity of Smithsonian’s plans and operations’, detailing how the Smithsonian agency can accomplish its mission in accordance with the directives outlined in the enforcement order.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement to the Hill that the letter was “another rash attempt by the radical left who could not stand President Trump is bringing sanity back to our institutions.”
The Office of the Inspector General declined to comment on the matter.
The government argued in March’s executive order that museums in Washington “should be places where individuals go to learn – not to be influenced by ideological indoctrination or separatist narratives, which would distort our shared history.”
They pointed to the exhibition at the American Museum of Art, called “The Story of Race and American Sculpture,” and mentioned in references to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which says individualism, hard work, and the idea of “the nuclear family” is part of “white culture.”
The Smithsonian Institution was created by Congress in 1846 for the increase of “the spread of knowledge.”
House Democrats say that following the administration’s requirements will undermine “the fundamentals of the establishment of these museums.”
The government faces dozens of lawsuits from advocacy groups trying to prevent the president from ending diversity, equity and inclusion within and outside the government.
Updated at 4:48 PM ET