Leaders at the National Endowment for the Humanities have informed employees that the Trump administration is demanding deep cuts to staff and programs at the agency, in the latest move against federal agencies that support scholarship and culture.
The move comes about three weeks after the agency’s leader, Shelly Lowe, who was appointed by President Biden, was pressed to resign, several months before her four-year term was over. Since then, a team including staff members from the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s government restructuring effort, have made several visits to the N.E.H. office.
On Tuesday morning, managers told staff members that DOGE had recommended reductions in staff of as much as 70 to 80 percent (of approximately 180 people), as well as what could amount to a cancellation of all grants made under the Biden administration that have not been fully paid out, according to three staff members. Senior leadership, employees were told, would develop more detailed plans for what the cuts would look like in practice.
A spokesman for the N.E.H. did not respond to a request for comment. The agency is currently led by an interim director, Michael McDonald, who is its general counsel.
The N.E.H. was founded in 1965, under the same legislation as the National Endowment for the Arts. Since then, it has awarded more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historical sites, universities, libraries and other organizations, according to its website. Last year, its budget was $211 million.
The endowment supports a variety of projects through direct grants. The most recent round, announced in January and totaling $26.6 million, included $175,000 for oral history projects connected to the Lahaina wildfire in Hawaii; $300,000 for digitization efforts at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens; and $150,000 for a study of online language learning at the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts.
But it is also particularly important for the survival of state humanities councils, many of which derive all or most of their support from the 40 percent of the N.E.H. program funds that are channeled directly to them.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the National Humanities Alliance — an umbrella group of universities, museums, state councils and cultural organizations — said it was dismayed at the targeting of the only entity, federal or private, charged with making the humanities accessible to everyone.
“DOGE is targeting a small federal agency that — with an annual appropriation that barely amounts to a rounding error in the U.S. budget — has a positive impact on every congressional district,” the statement said.
The moves at the N.E.H. came a day after all employees at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, another independent federal agency, were put on administrative leave, setting the stage for a potential shutdown. That development drew widespread condemnation from public library supporters in particular, who noted that the agency, which has an annual budget of roughly $290 million, provided a third to half of the budgets of many state library boards.
It remains unclear whether there will be similar cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts. In February, the N.E.A. announced that it was ending a small grant program aimed at projects for underserved groups and communities, though its larger general grant program, available to groups of all kinds, would continue.
A spokesman for the N.E.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
