{"id":45697,"date":"2025-07-29T18:43:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45697\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T18:43:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:43:12","slug":"john-roberts-prevented-firing-of-national-portrait-gallery-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45697\/","title":{"rendered":"John Roberts Prevented Firing of National Portrait Gallery Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMore details have emerged surrounding the resignation of Kim Sajet<\/a>, 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<\/a> via social media.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany 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\u2019s demands for Sajet\u2019s firing was a high-ranking official: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is also the chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to a New York Times report<\/a> about Roberts\u2019s role in the Smithsonian, Roberts personally put a stop to internal suggestions among the board that the institution follow Trump\u2019s orders. Carlos Gimenez, a Republican Representative from Florida and a member of that board, reportedly demanded just that, to which Roberts responded, \u201cWe already have a motion on the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, the Smithsonian\u2019s 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 \u201cgive 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe resolution and the scrutiny over Sajet\u2019s leadership followed pressure from Trump, who accused the Smithsonian of having \u201ccome under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology\u201d in an executive order<\/a> earlier this year. In the post in which he claimed to fire Sajet, Trump called her \u201ca highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week, Amy Sherald pulled the National Portrait Gallery\u2019s planned iteration<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More details have emerged surrounding the resignation of Kim Sajet, the former director of the Smithsonian-run National Portrait…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,18862,36123,36124],"class_list":["post-45697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-john-roberts","tag-kim-sajet","tag-smithsonian-institution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}