The Trump Administration Is Threatening Libraries, Museums, and Other Nonprofits That Support the Arts, Humanities, and Learning

The Trump Administration is attacking federal support for thousands of community libraries, museums, and other nonprofits that support the arts, humanities, and learning, diminishing programs and services provided daily to families across every U.S. state and territory.

The Administration has targeted federal agencies directly responsible for supporting local libraries, museums, arts, and humanities for wholesale dismantlement, while canceling existing support previously committed to communities and, at least in some cases, illegally impounding funds.^[2] While court orders have paused some of these actions, harm is being felt nationwide.^[3]

The long-standing federal role in community arts, humanities, and afterschool and informal learning provides essential support for library and museum programming, digital resources for families, librarian and museum-professional training, and local opportunities in the arts and humanities that many communities cannot otherwise access from state, local, or philanthropic sources. If the Trump Administration succeeds in eliminating or even just destabilizing that support, families across the country, particularly in small, rural, and low-income communities, will experience the resulting harm for years to come.

President Trump Is Again Attempting to Dismantle Agencies That Fund and Support Local Arts and Learning Opportunities for Families

President Trump and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have targeted the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for elimination. These three independent grantmaking agencies have aided communities for a combined nearly 150 years:

• IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries, museums, and archives;
• NEH is the largest humanities funder in the United States; and
• NEA is the largest arts funder in the country.

The first Trump Administration previously attempted to eliminate these agencies in each of its four budget proposals. Each time, Congress roundly rejected the proposals on a bipartisan basis, while also reauthorizing IMLS in 2018.^[4]

Now, during a second term, the Trump Administration has taken more aggressive, potentially unlawful, actions to dismantle these agencies. On the same day in mid-March that Congress enacted full-year appropriations funding IMLS through September, President Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the agency.^[5] Roughly two weeks later, the Administration, with participation from DOGE, placed the entire IMLS staff on administrative leave — even though President Trump had signed Congress’s appropriation for IMLS into law.^[6] The next day, the Administration brought back 12 staff from leave, including only 4 of 35 staff with prior grants management experience, according to a court declaration from an IMLS employee.^[7]

Scores of libraries and museums and several states received termination notices for previously committed IMLS grant funding.^[8] According to the sworn court testimony of IMLS’s acting director, the Administration cancelled approximately 1,200 competitive IMLS grants — more than 90 percent of IMLS’s competitive grants in place at the time — without plans to spend the lawfully appropriated money for some other legally allowed purpose.^[9] These grant terminations and the actions to place IMLS staff on leave ahead of a planned reduction in force have been challenged in court as illegal and are subject to a preliminary injunction.^[10] In June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the Trump Administration’s withholding of IMLS funds from obligation and expenditure constituted an illegal violation of the Impoundment Control Act.^[11]

Similarly, Congress enacted full-year appropriations for the NEH and NEA through September, but the Administration has violated these congressional directions by staunching grant funding flowing from these agencies. NEH offers 47 grant programs for state humanities councils, libraries, museums, schools, and nonprofits, and the NEA offers multiple grant programs for state arts councils, nonprofits, artists, and writers. The Administration terminated over 1,400 existing NEH grant awards and dozens of previously committed NEA grant awards.^[12] Around 80 percent of NEH staff have been placed on administrative leave, with 65 percent receiving reduction-in-force notices.^[13] Every arts director has departed the NEA, along with other agency leaders.^[14] Finally, on May 2, the President issued his budget request and called on Congress to eliminate the IMLS, NEH, and NEA.^[15]

In addition, the Administration has cancelled previously committed grant funding through the National Science Foundation that supports afterschool and informal learning at museums and has terminated AmeriCorps grants that fund the placement of thousands of volunteers in local community organizations, including museums.^[16] The AmeriCorps grant terminations have been temporarily reversed by court order in 24 states and the District of Columbia.^[17]

As litigation to stop the Administration’s ongoing actions to terminate support and withhold funding for local community learning and arts programming continues in the courts, Congress will consider the fate of IMLS, NEA, and NEH appropriations in the months ahead for the next fiscal year.

Communities Across the United States Are Experiencing Harm as a Result

The effects of these actions to dismantle IMLS, NEH, and NEA are being felt across the United States. For example, programming, digital resources, and librarian training at the nation’s more than 9,000 public libraries and their more than 16,500 local branches rely on federal funding. Just the elimination of the IMLS Grants to States Program would collectively cost public libraries in most states millions of dollars in federal support each year — approximately 60 percent of annual IMLS funding is provided as these matching-fund grants to state library agencies.^[18] Libraries in small, rural, and low-income communities rely heavily on these federal resources for services and programming that they could not otherwise afford to offer independently. (See Table 1 on IMLS Grants to States Program funding by state and territory.)

The state library agencies of California, Connecticut, and Washington received notice in early April of the early termination of already promised IMLS support for public libraries in their states.^[19] Several other states reportedly paused support for local libraries given the uncertainty of continued federal funding.^[20] These states attested in court that terminated grants and missed grant payments were leading to staff cuts and shuttered programs.^[21] Additional cuts would further reduce community access to digital resources and services, such as job search support, online certifications, and summer reading programs.

Other Arts and Learning Agencies and Institutions Are Also Under Attack

In addition to attempting to dismantle IMLS, NEH, and NEA and stopping grant funding from those and other federal agencies from flowing to local communities, the Trump Administration and DOGE are interfering with the independence and functions of additional national arts and learning institutions.

• The Administration is interfering with the museums of the nearly 180-year-old Smithsonian Institution, an independent public-private federal trust instrumentality, attempting to fire the head of the National Portrait Gallery, who has since stepped down, and to direct the content of the exhibits and programming of the Smithsonian museums, such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture.^[22]
• The Administration is attempting to dismantle the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nation’s largest funder of public radio and television and a private, federally funded nonprofit corporation, including by attempting to fire CPB board members, embed a DOGE team, and defund CPB through a rescission request to Congress.^[23]
• The Administration has ousted the leadership of the Library of Congress, a legislative branch agency, the largest library in the world, and home of the U.S. Copyright Office.^[24] The Capitol Police recently denied Trump appointees entry to the Copyright Office building after they attempted to take leadership control following the Administration’s firing of the Copyright Register.^[25] The resulting leadership vacuum led to a 12-day pause on new copyright registrations that protect the intellectual property of artists, musicians, and other creators.^[26] The pause impacted approximately 20,000 registrations until processing of registrations resumed, though without a Register’s signature.
• President Trump had himself elected board chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, dismissed the Center board members who were appointed by President Biden, and subsequently reduced its community programming and staff.^[27]