The National Endowment for the Humanities, which supports museums, scholarship and historical sites, could see grants curtailed and staffing slashed by up to 80 percent.
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.