logo
Trump fires National Portrait Gallery director

Trump fires National Portrait Gallery director

The Hill30-05-2025

President Trump fired the National Portrait Gallery director on Friday for being 'highly partisan' and a 'supporter' of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
'Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby [sic] terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery,' the president wrote in a Truth Social post.
'She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly,' he added.
Sajet is a Nigeria-born, Australian native and a citizen of the Netherlands, according to her profile on the National Portrait Gallery website.
She has a doctoral degree from Georgetown and completed arts leadership training at the Harvard Business School. The Trump administration has rattled both institutions over new deportation policies and campus culture.
Her removal comes after Trump ousted the Librarian of Congress, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant over similar concerns.
The president signed an executive order in March in an effort to combat 'divisive narratives' promoted by certain museums.
In the order, titled 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,' Trump said the Smithsonian Institution, which operates numerous museums in the nation's capital, 'has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.'
He also outlawed DEI practices from the federal government earlier this year. A judge recently declined to block certain aspects of the order, which was challenged in early May.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump's past feuds don't bode well for Elon Musk
Trump's past feuds don't bode well for Elon Musk

USA Today

time20 minutes ago

  • USA Today

Trump's past feuds don't bode well for Elon Musk

Trump's past feuds don't bode well for Elon Musk Show Caption Hide Caption President Trump gives his thoughts on Elon Musk amid clash on bill President Donald Trump responded to Elon Musk's criticism of his "big, beautiful bill" with disappointment as Musk responded on X. WASHINGTON − If history is any guide, and there is a lot of history, the explosive new falling-out between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk is not going to end well for the former White House adviser and world's richest man. The political battlefield is littered with the scorched remains of some of Trump's former allies who picked a fight with him or were on the receiving end of one. Lawyer Michael Cohen. Political adviser Steve Bannon. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. John Bolton, John Kelly and Chris Christie, to name just a few. 'If what happened to me is any indication of how they handle these matters, then Elon is going to get decimated,' said Cohen, the former long-term Trump lawyer and fixer who once said he'd 'take a bullet' for his boss. Musk, he said, "just doesn't understand how to fight this type of political guerrilla warfare." 'They're going to take his money, they're going to shutter his businesses, and they're going to either incarcerate or deport him,' Cohen said. 'He's probably got the White House working overtime already, as we speak, figuring out how to close his whole damn thing down.' Cohen had perhaps the most spectacular blowup, until now, with Trump. He served time in prison after Trump threw him under the bus by denying any knowledge of pre-election payments Cohen made to a porn actress to keep her alleged tryst with Trump quiet before the 2016 election. More: President Trump threatens Elon Musk's billions in government contracts as alliance craters Cohen felt so betrayed by Trump that he titled his memoir 'Disloyal,' but the Trump administration tried to block its publication. Cohen ultimately fought back, becoming a star witness for the government in the state 'hush money' case and helped get Trump convicted by a Manhattan jury. More: Impeachment? Deportation? Crazy? 6 takeaways from the wild feud between Trump and Elon Musk Some suffered similar legal attacks and other slings and arrows, including Trump taunts and his trademark nasty nicknames. Trump vilified others, casting them into the political wilderness with his MAGA base. When Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump savaged him, calling his appointment a 'mistake' and lobbing other epithets. Sessions resigned under pressure in 2018. When he tried to resurrect his political career by running for his old Senate seat in Alabama, Trump endorsed his opponent, who won the GOP primary. After firing Tillerson, Trump called the former ExxonMobil chief lazy and 'dumb as a rock.' Trump still taunts Christie, an early supporter and 2016 transition chief, especially about his weight. Trump also had a falling-out with Bannon, who was instrumental in delivering his presidential victory in 2016 and then joined the White House as special adviser. 'Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,' Trump said in 2018, a year after Bannon's ouster from the White House. 'When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.' Trump's Justice Department even indicted Bannon in 2020 for fraud, though the president pardoned him before leaving office. One of Trump's biggest feuds was with Bolton, whom he fired as his national security adviser in 2019. Trump used every means possible to prevent Bolton's book, 'The Room Where it Happened,' from being published, Bolton told USA TODAY on June 5. That included having the U.S. government sue his publisher on the false premise that Bolton violated a nondisclosure agreement and was leaking classified information, Bolton said. Bolton said Musk is unlike most others who have crossed swords with Trump in that he has unlimited amounts of money and control of a powerful social media platform in X to help shape the narrative. Musk also has billions in government contracts that even a vindictive Trump would have a hard time killing, as he threatened to do June 5, without significant legal challenges. Even so, Bolton said, "It's going to end up like most mud fights do, with both of them worse off. The question is how much worse the country is going to be off."

Pentagon chief confronts barrage of tough questions in Senate committee, including ones about Ukraine
Pentagon chief confronts barrage of tough questions in Senate committee, including ones about Ukraine

Yahoo

time21 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Pentagon chief confronts barrage of tough questions in Senate committee, including ones about Ukraine

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was challenged with a barrage of hard-hitting questions, including on Ukraine, during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the armed forces held on 11 June. Source: The Hill, as reported by European Pravda Details: Republican senators from the subcommittee on the armed forces bombarded Hegseth with questions on Wednesday 11 June. Mitch McConnell, one of three Republicans who initially opposed Hegseth's appointment, "grilled" him on budgetary issues and also warned against showing leniency towards Russia in attempts to end the Russo-Ukrainian war. McConnell said that US allies are "wondering whether we're in the middle of brokering what appears to be allowing the Russians to define victory". "I think victory is defined by the people who have to live there – the Ukrainians," he stressed and directly asked Hegseth whose side Trump's administration is on. "America's reputation is on the line. Will we defend Democratic allies against authoritarian aggressors?" he asked. "We don't want a headline at the end of this conflict that says Russia wins and America loses." Later, Senator Lindsey Graham asked Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whether he believed that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would stop if he got what he wanted in Ukraine. Caine said he does not "believe he is" and Hegseth responded that it "remains to be seen". "Well, he says he's not. This is the '30s all over," Graham then sharply countered him. Background: This week, Hegseth said that Trump's administration plans to reduce the budget for security assistance to Ukraine. The Trump administration has not provided new military aid to Ukraine since taking office, although weapons from previously approved packages under the prior administration continue to arrive. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!

Editorial: Ax to the vax — RFK Jr. continues on his anti-vaccine warpath
Editorial: Ax to the vax — RFK Jr. continues on his anti-vaccine warpath

Yahoo

time21 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Editorial: Ax to the vax — RFK Jr. continues on his anti-vaccine warpath

It's time for President Donald Trump, despite his own casual relationship with the truth, to stop putting American lives at risk and get rid of his dangerous quack in chief, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In his latest broadside against science, Kennedy is removing all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, the CDC's main advisory body, to ostensibly restore 'public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda.' God protect us, as RFK won't. This is how a society becomes undone. Science and reason get stepped on by half-truths and conspiracy theories. Next comes preventable death and disease. The problem is that there is no anti-vaccine side in the legitimate practice of science and medicine. The department's accompanying press release denigrated 'public health ideology' as if the practice of public health wasn't the CDC's only function. Researchers and doctors should be biased in favor of evidence-based therapeutics that save lives. Railing against bias towards vaccines is like a politician condemning researchers biased in favor of seatbelts in cars or keeping lead out of household paint. It's idiotic. We understand that the Make America Healthy Again movement Kennedy leads is all about questioning medical and nutritional practice. On a really abstract level, we are in agreement that no scientific truisms should be entirely above questioning — such a perspective would be anti-science. But there is a specific and long-standing methodology for actually answering those questions, and it is not debate club or who can most incite crowds of followers. It is the scientific method, under which hypotheses can be rigorously tested in ways that are replicable and based on clear and clearly laid out evidence. In that arena — really the only arena that actually matters when it comes to public health — the safety and efficacy of vaccines has been conclusively established. There is no additional discussion necessary or appropriate, particularly when it comes to immunizations that have now been standard-issue for decades and have by all measures radically decreased illness and mortality where they've been successfully deployed. The measles vaccine will always be better for individuals and public health than getting the measles. The same is true for polio, tetanus, COVID and all else. Preying on public skepticism of the pharmaceutical and health industries to hawk alternative approaches that are often unregulated and don't work is damaging it enough. Yet a true believer like RFK is more dangerous, especially now that he stands at the pinnacle of our nation's public health bureaucracy, a position that allows him to substantively impose his own anti-science view on an unsuspecting public and take the choice away from the American people. If RFK's new picks for ACIP — which the secretary falsely promised Sen. Bill Cassidy he wouldn't touch during his confirmation process — step back from recommending various crucial vaccines, this could substantially prevent even those who want to make the informed decision to receive inoculations or have their children vaccinated from being able to do so. As much as Kennedy and his followers emphasize the need for people to be able to make individual choices about their health, they seem hell-bent on taking that choice away entirely, especially given that insurance is not required to cover vaccines that are not CDC-recommended. We wonder what RFK will have to say for himself as once-eradicated diseases begin cutting through the U.S. population again. Is there anything that will get him to veer off this disastrous course? If the answer is no, and we suspect it is, then he must be removed before he can further damage public health. _____

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store