President Donald Trump fired the National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet for being a “strong supporter” of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am hereby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery. 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. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
The White House also noted one of the gallery’s photos of Trump, which was curated by Sajet.
The caption of the photo reads, “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials. After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
The White House official also said it was ironic that Sajet said, “We try very much not to editorialize. I don’t want by reading the label to get a sense of what the curator’s opinion is about that person. I want someone reading the label to understand that it’s based on historical fact.”
On November 4, Sajet addressed a gathering at the National Portrait Museum’s Richardson Symposium: Racial Masquerade in American Art and Culture that she spent the majority of her time on “identity politics.”
“America has never been able to separate a person’s appearance from their potential. Our history is filled, and continues to be, with examples of hatred, discrimination, fear, and alienation,” Sajet said at the time.
Sajet then described a time on December 7, 1972, when she “suddenly felt” the world was going to join together and put an end to “petty differences” while thinking holistically about what it meant to be human.
That was the day astronaut Jack Schmidt of Apollo 17 took a photograph of the Earth and named it the “Blue Marble.”
“Well, that utopian vision feels very, very far away today in the terrifying wake of the most uncivil, mistrustful, racially insensitive, sexually exploitative, factually untruthful, digitally manipulated, secretive, and inflammatory election of the modern era,” Sajet said.
“The National Portrait Gallery, as I’ve mentioned, is all about identity politics, whether it is to defend the label text that says President Eisenhower was cautious on civil rights or explaining why only 25% of women were historically considered cool or standing firm or not, allowing Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, to be removed from the Smithsonian or even outlining why we show the portrait of Sylvia Rivera, the transgender activist in the galleries,” Sajet later said during the same speech.
Hours after taking the Oath of Office on Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate all DEI programs from the federal government.
Trump Fires National Portrait Gallery Director For Being 'Strong Supporter' Of DEI https://t.co/iJFfsBO2dj
— Martin Walsh (@martinwalsh__) July 8, 2025
Last month, Trump’s administration dismissed the nation’s top copyright official just days after removing the Librarian of Congress.
Shira Perlmutter, who led the U.S. Copyright Office—an agency under the Library of Congress—was abruptly terminated.
The U.S. Copyright Office informed the outlet that Perlmutter had received an email from the White House, which stated, “Your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated, effective immediately.”
Days prior, Trump dismissed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Her removal was considered part of the administration’s broader effort to replace officials viewed as resistant to Trump’s agenda.
