The President Ordered Warning Signs Outside a Smithsonian Museum. He Cannot Order Anything Inside It - Which Is Why the Order Stops at the Sidewalk.

Read the order for what it can and cannot do, because the boundary is the point.

Executive Order 14416, 'Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution,' was signed July 24 and publishes tomorrow. Section 3(a) directs Interior and the National Park Service to 'install temporary signage along the NPS-maintained sidewalks and walkways used by the public to access the Museum.' Section 3(b) requires signage 'that corrects inaccurate information presented in the Museum' [1].

Sidewalks. Not galleries, not wall text, not exhibit labels - the pavement outside.

Now the statute that explains why. Under 20 U.S.C. 42(a), the Smithsonian Institution is governed by a Board of Regents made up of the Vice President, the Chief Justice of the United States, three Senators, three Representatives and nine citizen members [2]. Seventeen people. The President is not among them.

That is not an oversight in the drafting of an old law - it is the design. The Smithsonian was established as a trust rather than an executive agency, and the President has no directive authority over what it displays. Which is why an order that wants to correct the museum's content ends up ordering signs on the footpath.

What the order does reach is money. Section 2 names the Interior Secretary, the OMB Director, the GSA Administrator and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and tells them to use 'any and all available authorities... including any mechanisms available to encourage correction of the issues identified in the Report and compliance with any applicable statutes, regulations, executive actions, and funding or contract conditions' [1].

Funding and contract conditions are the lever that exists where directive authority does not.

The substantive complaint is checkable and, on its face, narrow. The order asserts the museum 'failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year' [1]. The number is right - there were 56 signers. Whether a museum honoured them appropriately is not the kind of claim a document can settle.

The Smithsonian said it had no comment [3].