so the smithsonian is avowedly and i'm very consciously nonpartisan, but lonnie, secretary bunch, all of us, i think, believe that, of course, as human beings and in this country, with our freedoms, our constitutional freedoms, we are political, are our very act, our bodies can be political, our actions can be political. so it's less about worrying about being political as politicize sized. it's it's less about being partizan as being a kind of inclusive of a huge, a significant range of political thought, which is is, is, i think, both challenging but also made very. very doable by the breadth of our collection because if we go and collect the with every we collect every presidential election and we joke that like our careers would be the only ones going like in 2020, before i had to pull them from the field because they were in the field when covid hit, they joked that it would be the reporters c-span probably and the smithsonian curators who would be at a sanders rally and a trump rally in the same day. so part of it is that the collection and the interpretive interpretation of the

i've had several interactions with smithsonian secretary lonnie bunch on this very issue. in a house administration committee hearing in december of last year, i questioned secretary bunch on whether or not taxpayer funds were used for drag shows and if the smithsonian had plans to continue to promote drag shows during a hearing, the secretary said, and i quote, i think it is not appropriate to expose children to drag shows. i am surprised. and i will look into that. i was pleased to hear this answer as i also believe it is inappropriate to expose children to these types of events. a few weeks later i was shocked that secretary began pulling back on his answers to me. i believe this was in large back from plowback from staff who work at the smithsonian. a few months later the secretary followed up with additional questions i had. while the response from the taxpayer funds were not used for drag shows directly, official time and smithsonian resources such as web sites, staff and building space were being used. to me, this is completely unacceptable. the smithsonian hosted a