Smithsonian Leader Behind Leftward Degradation Resigns

Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution who led its leftward degradation, resigned Tuesday after years of overseeing the advancement of anti-American propaganda at the nation’s premier art, culture, and history establishment.

Bunch, who took over as secretary in 2019 but has been at the Smithsonian for almost 38 years, founded the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture prior to becoming secretary. Under his leadership, the Smithsonian added to its insidious track record of partitioning its museums along racial and gender ideology lines. He plans to leave the Smithsonian by the end of the year, according to the resignation announcement.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is chancellor of the Smithsonian by law, lauded Bunch’s tenure in a statement reacting to the resignation, saying, “Secretary Bunch has pursued excellence in the telling of our nation’s story. The Regents, and the Smithsonian, have benefited greatly from his wisdom, vision and leadership.” However, as The Federalist has chronicled, the Smithsonian has been in stark decline for years.

For example, the National Museum of American History’s director, Anthea Hartig, has repeatedly parroted a land acknowledgment claiming that the United States is on stolen land taken from American Indian tribes. A video from the institution called “The Indian Problem” asserts that the American government committed genocide against American Indians.

As John Fonte noted in these pages, Bunch and Hartig “consistently claim that they are presenting a nuanced, neutral, unbiased narrative of America’s story to our citizens and foreign visitors.” But they actually use the “crude weaponized concept” of “stolen land” to “‘problematize’ our founding (to use Anthea Hartig’s own language) and, in the process, de-legitimize historic America. This is all part of the effort to fundamentally transform our nation.”

The American History Museum also referred to the founding of America and civilizational expansion as the “profound unsettling of the continent.”

That kind of propaganda, and much more, has been ingrained in the Smithsonian for a long time. The institution partnered with the far-left historical revisionism group the Zinn Education Project (ZEP) to participate in “teach-ins” for teachers to receive continuing education credit.

One of the ZEP’s initiatives has been to abolish Columbus Day, and it has been partially successful, especially at the state and local levels. President Joe Biden officially proclaimed the protest “holiday” of Indigenous Peoples’ Day every year he was in office.

ZEP also advances fake, anti-American histories about the American Founding and Revolution, slavery, the Civil War, World War II, and demonizes the anti-communists in the House Un-American Activities Committee while shielding the role of communism in the American labor movement and civil rights movement.

The Smithsonian also promoted homosexuality and argued that “transgender” athletes should be allowed to compete against members of the opposite sex, denying that characteristics like testosterone and bone density give men an advantage over women.

Meanwhile, the American flag is seen either being used to support left-wing causes like mass migration and LGBT material, or it is being burnt, associated with the Ku Klux Klan, or included with other anti-American exhibits.

At every turn, in seemingly every museum, there is anti-American propaganda that is meant to serve as the “memory for the nation,” as the Smithsonian itself claims to be.

The Museum of African Art used exhibits to advance Black Lives Matter and the “national racial reckoning” narrative, and showed an exhibit putting drug overdose victim George Floyd and communist revolutionary Che Guevara on par with Jesus Christ.

The Museum of Natural History had a display showing how cell phone footage, like in the case of George Floyd, can be used to start riots and protests in order to advance social justice.

The Museum of Asian Art highlighted “transgenderism” with an exhibit “confront[ing] notions of gender and cultural identity through photography” to “explore representations of power, place, and sexuality in today’s world.”

The institutional capture was so thorough that soon after taking office, the Trump administration started its push to revitalize the Smithsonian, aiming to restore it to its founding mission: to be “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”

“A healthy attachment to this country is neither blind to its flaws nor fanatical in believing that America is the source of all good,” Hillsdale College’s Matthew Spalding testified to Congress earlier this year, noting how Smithsonian bureaucrats “killed America’s story.” “Nevertheless, each generation should be equipped with a knowledge of America’s principles and history, a reverence for their liberties, and a reflective love of their country. That patriotism must be strong enough and unsentimental enough to coexist with criticism, dissent, disappointment, and opposition. But it is love all the same.”

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.