The Smithsonian spent years lecturing America about race, gender, and inequality with your money.
New budget charts just revealed exactly how much of your paycheck paid for that lecture.
What those numbers show about the Smithsonian is about to make you furious.
The Billion Dollar Number Nobody in Washington Wanted You to See
In fiscal 2024, the Smithsonian's own budget request hit a record $1.24 billion, and fiscal 2025 topped $1 billion again.
That's not ticket revenue.
That's not gift shop money.
That's your money, appropriated by Congress, spent on 21 museums, the National Zoo, and a research empire most Americans never voted to fund.
Fox News just published a chart breakdown of that spending, and it lands the same week Trump's new budget request does something Washington hasn't done since 2020.
It drops Smithsonian funding below $1 billion.
The proposal also cuts full-time Smithsonian staff by roughly 6 percent.
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch has run an institution that ballooned past a billion in taxpayer cash while telling museum staff that DEI "must be at the center" of the institution.
https://twitter.com/MaziEzike_Nedu/status/2086473260883951772
Now the money is finally shrinking.
Trump Orders a Housecleaning and Congress Starts Asking Questions
Trump didn't stop at the budget line.
He signed a second executive order this year demanding the Smithsonian strip "divisive" and "anti-American" ideology from its museums.
The order pushes the Smithsonian to post signs flagging exhibits containing what the administration calls inaccurate or partisan information.
Texas Congressman Brandon Gill backed the move publicly, saying it's time to "clean house" at the Smithsonian.
House Republicans have opened their own review of the National Museum of American History, according to Roll Call, digging into exhibit language Democrats spent years quietly approving.
The Washington Times ran an editorial this July bluntly calling the institution "the Smithsonian's museum of woke."
A few Republicans in Washington are already getting cold feet, but the fight to defund the woke Smithsonian is finally happening out loud, in public, for the first time in decades.
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The NEA Playbook Comes Back to Defund the Smithsonian
Washington has run this exact play before, and conservatives won it the last time too.
Back in 1989 and 1990, Congress moved to restrict and cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts after taxpayer money funded Robert Mapplethorpe's obscene photography and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ."
The lesson from that fight is simple: federal cultural agencies only clean up their act when Congress threatens the checkbook, not when they ask nicely.
The Heritage Foundation has been making that exact case for years, warning that "ridiculous spending on museums" keeps growing because nobody in Washington ever says no.
That's the network problem here – a billion-dollar budget doesn't just fund exhibits, it funds an entire class of curators, consultants, and DEI staffers who have zero incentive to change unless the money dries up.
Cut the budget and the ideology follows, because the activists can't lecture you for free.
Expect this fight to move to Capitol Hill next, where Republicans now control the purse strings and have already started asking the Smithsonian uncomfortable questions about what your billion dollars actually bought.
If the GOP holds the line on this budget request, 2026 becomes the year the Smithsonian finally answers to the taxpayers who've been footing the bill since Reagan was in office.
Sources:
- Fox News Staff, "IN CHARTS: A visual breakdown of the Smithsonian's billion-dollar taxpayer-funded budget," Fox News, August 9, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Rep. Brandon Gill backs Trump executive order, calls to 'clean house' at the Smithsonian," Fox News, 2026.
- Editorial Board, "The Smithsonian's museum of woke," The Washington Times, July 23, 2026.
- Roll Call Staff, "Republicans in Congress probe history museum, echoing Trump," Roll Call, July 21, 2026.
- The Heritage Foundation, "Ridiculous Spending on Museums May Be Here To Stay," The Heritage Foundation.
