New Hampshire and Rhode Island electorate to vote in state primaries - US politics live

Lonnie G Bunch III has announced he is stepping down as secretary of the Smithsonian Museum after seven years in the role amid Donald Trump ’s unprecedented crackdown on the world’s largest museum’s autonomy.

In an interview with the New York Times (paywall) , Bunch, 73, said it was not the Trump administration’s pressure campaign to control how the Smithsonian presents US history and values that had led to his departure.

double quotation mark It was really just saying, now’s the time . I’m a fighter.

But, acknowledging the strain of the role, he added:

double quotation mark I have to be honest, it has been stressful. And at a certain point, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not look at my cellphone.

Bunch, the institution’s first black secretary, is expected to leave the role at the end of the year.