US culture cuts: Grants worth millions cancelled

Thousands of US culture and history programmes awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) have had their funding pulled with immediate effect as part of a federal cost-cutting effort.  

Some grant recipients received communications from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, informing them that their funding has been relocated “in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda”, according to The Arts Newspaper.

Meanwhile, NEH’s acting director, Michael McDonald, sent others a message, which read: “Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities”, according to the New York Times.

‘Devastating effect’

The cuts are thought to impact at least 1,200 grants affecting a wide range of organisations and projects, including the Japanese American National Museum, the American Musicological Society, a nationwide scheme to digitise local newspapers and plans to tour Smithsonian exhibits to remote communities.

With a budget of $207m from congress for the last financial year, around 40% of NEH’s programme funding goes to state humanities agencies, which operate localised support and grantmaking.

CT Humanities in Connecticut has had $1.5m of its $4m budget slashed, while Virginia said it will not receive $1.35m of recently allocated funding. Humanities Texas, which receives 65% of its annual income from NEH, told the Washington Post that the cuts would have a “devastating effect” on programming. 

Vermont Humanities, which receives 45% of its budget from NEH, said that the loss would “decimate” its ability to serve its local communities, “eliminating” essential programmes and hitting rural areas hardest.

Legal action

Elsewhere in the sector, some organisations are pushing back against Trump’s terminations of congressionally approved programmes. 

Last week, a union representing 42,000 museum and library workers and the American Library Association (ALA) announced they will take legal action against the Trump administration over its cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

IMLS is one of the US’s largest distributors of federal funding, providing $266.7m in grants to libraries, museums and archives last year.

It is one of seven federal agencies targeted by an executive order signed by Trump last month which called them “unnecessary”, leading to the organisation to dismiss the majority of its 70 employees and board members while cutting funding allocations.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of ALA and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), seeks a preliminary injunction to reverse the actions and prevent “any further steps to dissolve the agency”.

The claimants contend that the cuts are illegal as “congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency, not the president and certainly not DOGE”.

The attorneys general of 21 states have also filed a similar lawsuit claiming that the cuts violate the US constitution and federal law.

“Libraries play an important role in our democracy, from preserving history to providing access to government information, advancing literacy and civic engagement, and offering access to a variety of perspectives,” said ALA president Cindy Hohl in a statement.

“These values are worth defending. We will not allow extremists to threaten our democracy by eliminating programs at IMLS and harming the children and communities who rely on libraries and the services and opportunities they provide.”