Jamelle Bouie, NY Times - Last week, President Trump announced that he had fired the head of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. “Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am hereby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of D.E.I., which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly.”
The issue complicating his effort to remove Sajet is that the National Portrait Gallery is part of the Smithsonian Institution, which is independent of the federal government. And the portrait gallery was established by congressional statute — neither the gallery nor the Smithsonian is in the executive branch.
The museum’s bylaws don’t describe exactly how dismissals are supposed to work, but as a matter of procedure (and it seems law), the only person with the direct power to remove Sajet would be Lonnie G. Bunch III, who serves as secretary of the Smithsonian. And Bunch, in turn, is accountable to the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which consists of the chief justice of the United States, the vice president, three members of the Senate, three members of the House of Representatives and nine private citizens.
Trump, in other words, has as much power to remove Sajet from her post as I do — that is to say, none at all.
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