Smithsonian Plan Could Cost Taxpayers Millions While Bypassing Congress

The Smithsonian Institution, the largest museum complex in the world, may have a plan to give its controversial Latino museum permanent residence on the National Mall, providing it with a building and spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars without congressional approval.

Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, first reported that the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents is calling an emergency meeting to finalize plans that would allow the Latino museum to move into the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building. However, Gonzalez argues the Latino museum “should never be built.”

Gonzalez recently joined “The Signal Sitdown,” the Daily Signal’s official podcast, hosted by Bradley Devlin. Gonzalez called the Smithsonian investigation a “civilizational crusade” and said it has been “led very smoothly” by the Trump administration. Devlin is the Daily Signal’s politics editor and host of the podcast.

In July, the White House Domestic Policy Council found that the Smithsonian’s leadership has moved “away from historical education and scholarship of a shared national inheritance to be celebrated, and toward extreme political activism, rooted in Marxism, to divide, dispirit, and discourage Americans.” The council determined the institution could not be trusted to “tell America’s story honestly” and is “not properly stewarding the over $1 billion entrusted to it by the American taxpayer each year.”

The Heritage Foundation recently published a booklet displaying the woke policies the Latino museum is pushing on its website. The museum currently operates online while it saves up funds to construct its own building or renovate one that already exists. It receives $10 million in annual taxpayer funding.

The booklet lays out how the museum currently depicts drag queens and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people; promotes open-border policies by “dispelling legitimate concerns about illegal immigration”; criticizes and blames America using the Monroe Doctrine; credits Marxists with the information displayed in exhibits; and labels Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico as victims of America.

The Smithsonian would easily be able to move the Latino museum into the Arts and Industries Building, which it also owns, based on a 2020 congressional act that listed the building as a potential option.

Congress approved the Latino museum in 2021, in the first Trump administration’s end-of-year appropriations package. But Gonzalez says, based on estimates he has received, renovating the Arts and Industries Building would cost nearly $1 billion, and the building would cost roughly $50 million a year to operate.

“The nation is $40 trillion in debt, where are they going to find it? This ‘cool billion’ is not sitting around anywhere,” Gonzalez told the Daily Signal.

While the Trump administration is invested in restoring the Smithsonian to its founding mission, Congress has also been involved. The House Appropriations Committee has defunded the museum in the past.

The Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency and the House Committee on Administration have held hearings on the museum’s teachings. Republican Reps. Brandon Gillof Texas and Tim Burchett of Tennessee have been outspoken about the museum and the institution as a whole.