The Smithsonian’s twin shrines to identity politics had a deservedly rough political week.

In Tuesday’s Texas primary, the Senate champion of the Latino Museum went down in an inglorious defeat. Meanwhile, four days earlier, the House rejected a bill advancing construction of the women’s museum—because an amendment said it had to be about women!

That the chief supporters of both woke indoctrination factories are Republicans—John Cornyn (R-Texas) in the Senate and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) in the House—says a lot about what is taking place inside the GOP.

One side seems to want no part of what it disdains as “the culture wars,” the messy business of recapturing cultural ground seized by the woke Left. The other, siding with President Donald Trump, wants no part of the Left’s plan to radicalize groups it describes as marginalized.

Cornyn’s loss is being analyzed from many angles. He barely managed a third of the vote in a state he has represented in the Senate since 2002. Trump’s endorsement of his opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, is rightly seen as the most likely reason.

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Paxton was already leading in the polls, but the president’s support must have packed on the votes. He is on a primary streak comparable to the New York Knicks in the last 11 NBA playoff games. The candidates he has backed have gone undefeated.

Yes, it is very unlikely that Trump considered Cornyn’s support of the National Museum of the American Latino in his internal deliberations over the Paxton endorsement. Yet there is a reason Trump trusted his instinct and backed Paxton late in the race. Cornyn’s support for the museum is a fitting culmination of his political style.

The senior senator from the Lone Star State didn’t just back the Latino Museum—he was an enthusiastic and early booster of it. He joined Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), now serving an 11-year sentence in a federal prison after being convicted of corruption, as lead Senate sponsor of the National Museum of the American Latino Act as early as 2017.

Then, in 2020, Cornyn ushered the bill authorizing the Latino Museum across the finish line, as it became part of the nearly $1 trillion Omnibus bill that Trump was all but forced to sign into law in late December that year, though he called it a “disgrace.”

“Close to 40 percent of all Texans identify as Hispanic, and their history is an integral part of Texas history that must be recognized and remembered. By creating a new museum in the Smithsonian Institution, we can honor American Latino contributions and highlight their stories for future generations,” Cornyn wrote in a statement. It was clear he hadn’t understood how the museum would be used as a hothouse for anti-U.S. grievances.

But the Latino Museum hasn’t fared well since authorization. Its first precursor exhibition, ¡Presente!, which appeared at the Molina Family Gallery in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2022, was so dedicated to the culturally Marxist view of the United States as an oppressor society that House appropriators cut off funding a year later.

They unwisely reopened the funding spigot later that year, but progress on finding a site for it on the National Mall, never mind actually starting construction, has gone nowhere in the U.S. Congress.

The stink around the museum was so strong that in 2025, sponsors of the women’s museum decided to lead two separate bills permitting the construction of museums in what is known as the “reserve” on the Mall, a “no-build zone” in the Tidal Basin. The one advancing the construction for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum would go first.

“Right now our No. 1 priority is the women’s museum,” Rep. Monica De La Cruz, also a Republican from Texas, told Roll Call.

That, too, came up a cropper. Lawmakers rejected Rep. Malliotakis’s bill 204-216 on May 21, with six Republicans joining 210 Democrats to oppose.

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What happened? The House Administration Committee added language that dedicated the museum to “preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements, and lived experiences of biological women in the United States,” prohibiting the museum from trying to “identify, present, describe, or otherwise depict any biological male as a female.”

That is what made Democrats drop their support for the construction of the women’s museum—an amendment which simply mandated that, if you’re going to build a women’s museum, well, make sure you build a women’s museum.

In other words, all the confirmation one needs that these are to be the identity politics shrines that critics have made clear all along.

The comments that kept pouring forth said it all. “The language prohibiting trans women from being included is very harmful, as Republicans will use that language to exclude any woman they deem not feminine enough,” fumed Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA).

Rep. Emily Randall (D-Wash.), meanwhile, decried that Republicans had “inserted culture war language limiting the museum to biological women. It was added to erase trans women from American history. Trans women are just as much a part of our history as anyone else.”

If all of this doesn’t convince conservatives that these museums cannot, must not, be built, then little else will.