A Quarter of Republicans Think Trump Should Control Museums
Over a quarter of Republican voters think that the president should control national museums and theaters, according to the results of a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The six-day poll, which closed on Monday, April 21, surveyed 4,306 adults across the United States on Trump’s overall performance as president and specific approaches to issues including immigration policy, federal court rulings, taxation, and university funding.
Although a majority of respondents across party lines — 66% — said that they do not agree that the president should be in charge of the country’s museums and theaters, 26% of those who identified as Republicans approved of the takeover. Meanwhile, 86% of respondents who identified as Democrats said that they do not agree with the president’s interventions on cultural institutions (6% said they agreed, and 8% did not respond).
The poll also found that more than half of respondents — including one-third of Republicans — disapproved of government attempts to defund universities on the basis of the president’s opinion of how those institutions are run.
The results come amid Trump’s ongoing crackdown on federally funded arts and culture organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution, which was targeted in a recent executive orders aimed at influencing its programming to remove critical race theory, inclusive concepts of gender, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) met with leadership of the National Gallery of Art last week over the museum’s “legal status,” a vague term that raised concerns about the future of its nonprofit classification.
Other actions taken by the Trump administration since January have resulted in the termination of hundreds of federal grants for arts organizations and the abrupt dismissal of dozens of employees at the independent Institute for Museum and Library Services, all while the government seeks to redirect cultural funds for a puzzling nationalistic sculpture garden. Compounding this overhaul of the US cultural sector, the White House has also been attempting to tighten its grip on independent higher-education institutions, including Harvard University and Columbia University, by threatening to withhold federal funding. The latter recently capitulated to Trump’s demands, including placing its Middle Eastern Studies department under receivership.
The results of this week’s Reuters/Ipsos poll were released shortly after that of another benchmark survey known as Bright Line Watch, which revealed that hundreds of political science scholars think the US is quickly moving away from a liberal democracy and toward some form of authoritarianism.
