President Donald Trump has ousted former second gentleman Doug Emhoff from the Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, just three months into what is typically a five-year term as a board member.
Emhoff, who was appointed by then-President Joe Biden in January, announced his removal from the board in a statement Tuesday in which he suggested the move was political.
“Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized,” Emhoff said. “To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.”
Emhoff was one of a dozen new members appointed to the council in the final days of Biden’s presidency. According to The New York Times, which first reported Emhoff’s firing, Trump also removed other recent Biden appointees, including his former chief of staff Ron Klain, Biden’s former domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and Anthony Bernal, senior adviser to former first lady Jill Biden.
Former Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who was appointed to the board in 2024, confirmed to NPR that he, too, had been fired from the museum council.
In his second term, Trump has sought to reshape dramatically the cultural institutions supported by the federal government. He has taken over the board of the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chair, signed an executive order threatening to pull funding from the Smithsonian Museum over content on “race-centered ideology,” and purged the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of his administration’s cuts to the federal government.
Neither Trump nor the White House has said why the president fired Emhoff, who is Jewish and has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism. The White House has also not confirmed that the president removed other Biden appointees from the board. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump plans to appoint new board members “who will not only continue to honor the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, but who are also steadfast supporters of the State of Israel.”
