No funding for nascent Smithsonian Latino museum in Trump’s 2026 budget request

The Smithsonian’s planned American Latino museum – already a political football in the nation’s capital – is getting no financial help from President Donald Trump.

The museum, still in its infancy, is effectively left out of Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. The president’s spending plan – the first of his second term – includes no money for the design and development of the museum, one of two new Smithsonian museums green-lit several years ago by Congress.

The prospects that the Trump administration would withhold money that the museum needs to get off the ground is potentially problematic for its leaders, who are seeking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to construct the building. In a 2026 budget document released in May, the Smithsonian describes the president’s budget as “eliminating funding for the development of the National Museum of the American Latino.”

“The Smithsonian has received federal appropriations for the National Museum of the American Latino for the past four years,” a spokesperson for the museum told the Miami Herald, noting that the president’s budget “does not include funding” for the institution.

Why does Trump want to omit funding?

The museum, approved with bipartisan support by Congress and Trump in 2020, was created with the goal to “honor the dreams, challenges and triumphs of U.S. Latinos, elevating [their] stories within the national narrative,’ according to its website

Led by Jorge Zamanillo, former director of HistoryMiami, the museum does not yet have a location. Its leaders are still searching for as much as $800 million in funding reportedly needed to construct and fill a building.

A White House official told the Herald that the lack of a location for the museum factored into the president’s decision to omit funding in his proposed budget. The official also said President Joe Biden’s final budget included no money for the planning and design of the museum.

Trump, though, has been critical of the Smithsonian. In a March executive order, the president said the “Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” describing it as part of a movement to recast U.S. history in a negative light. The order directed Trump’s vice president, who is among the leaders on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”

The museum has also been the subject of criticism from conservative groups and Republican representatives.

In a 2024 article, The Heritage Foundation publicly denounced the Latino museum, deeming it a “woke indoctrination factory” and “disgraceful.”

“Its aim is to teach the young and future generations to see themselves as victims of America, so they can destroy it from within,” wrote Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank.

In an X post Thursday morning, Alfonso Aguilar, conservative activist and former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship, said the Latino museum “is being used to promote a ‘woke, culturally Marxist’ agenda.

“That’s why #Trump is asking Congress to defund it,” Aguilar wrote. “If Republicans really want to counter the woke agenda, they should comply with his request.”

Miami Republicans have also been critical at times of the museum. Cuban-American U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart deemed an exhibition created by the museum and hosted in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History as “patronizing” and “quasi-racist” during a 2023 subcommittee hearing. Diaz-Balart worked at the time with House Republicans to push legislation forward to pull the museum’s funding, though he backed off that effort after he said he had a productive meeting with Smithsonian representatives.

What happens next?

Congress sets the U.S. budget, not Trump.

“This is the first step of a very long appropriations process,” said the Latino museum spokesperson.

Notably, Diaz-Balart serves on the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, which is tasked with drafting legislation to allocate federal government funds. His office did not respond to a request seeking comment.

Miami Congressman Carlos Giménez, a Cuban-American Republican who sits on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, also did not respond to a request for comment.

“I consider the museum something which I’d like to have, but it’s not something I gotta have,” Gimenez told Roll Call.

Meanwhile, some members of the House and Senate continue to push to create a space for the museum along the National Mall – the greenspace home to memorials and other museums east of the U.S. Capitol – and preserve financing for an institution that is supposed to highlight Latinos’ influence on U.S. history.

A Senate bill called the “Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino Act,” led by California Democrat Alex Padilla and Texas Republican Ted Cruz, would allow the federal government “to build a new Smithsonian museum on the National Mall that recognizes the accomplishments of Latinos,” according to a news release.

The bill says museum leaders “shall ensure that the exhibits and programs of the Museum accurately and comprehensively represent the varied cultures, histories, events, and values of Hispanic or Latino communities.”