More details have emerged surrounding the resignation of Kim Sajet, the former director of the Smithsonian-run National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., who left her post after President Donald Trump said he fired her via social media.
Many raised questions about whether Trump had the legal authority to make such a decision, and indeed, Sajet continued to report to work until she formally quit her post. And it now appears that one of the objectors to Trump’s demands for Sajet’s firing was a high-ranking official: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is also the chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution.
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According to a New York Times report about Roberts’s role in the Smithsonian, Roberts personally put a stop to internal suggestions among the board that the institution follow Trump’s orders. Carlos Gimenez, a Republican Representative from Florida and a member of that board, reportedly demanded just that, to which Roberts responded, “We already have a motion on the floor.”
In the end, the Smithsonian’s board ended up issuing a resolution that asserted that its board, and only its board, had the right to fire the director of one of its museums. Still, the resolution also promised that the Smithsonian would “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 in making the needed changes.”
The resolution and the scrutiny over Sajet’s leadership followed pressure from Trump, who accused the Smithsonian of having “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” in an executive order earlier this year. In the post in which he claimed to fire Sajet, Trump called her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.”
Last week, Amy Sherald pulled the National Portrait Gallery’s planned iteration of her mid-career survey, saying that she had been asked to remove from the exhibition a portrait of a trans woman posing as the Statue of Liberty.