The Trump regime has canceled most of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant programs and started putting staff on administrative leave. Starting late Wednesday night, state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding had ended immediately.
Grant recipients have been told that funds from the NEH would be redirected to furthering “the president’s agenda.” As of April 1, 2025, the agency was reportedly asked by the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, named for an internet meme cum crypto currency) to reduce their staffing by up to 80%.
OurStoryBridge, the Adirondacks based non-profit which provides assistance to communities across the country on collecting and sharing online short-form oral histories, told New York Almanack that it had lost it’s NEH Public Impact Projects at Smaller Organizations grant, announced here March 30th.
With the funds provided by the NEH grant, OurStoryBridge was planning to implement a project titled “Interpretive Capacity Building for Short-Form Oral Histories with OurStoryBridge” which focuseed on identifying new and effective ways of using and distributing the over 1,000 stories that have been collected. It was expected to include a collections review, audience research, and building a strategic plan to identify public programming opportunities for the stories.
The NEH was an independent federal agency of the U.S. government established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965. Dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities, the act was signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.
According to its mission statement: “Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans.”
“After the federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City in 1995, a [NEH] grant helped preserve stories of survivors,” reports USA Today. “A similar grant supported the recording of oral histories from survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Veterans centers, public schools and rural communities have also received some of the $42 million handed out by the state-run Oklahoma Humanities over the last 50 years.”
NEH supported projects related to 9/11, including funding for a national exhibition and community programs, as well as supporting the preservation of a 9/11 archive.
More than a thousand National Endowment for the Humanities grants have been terminated by the Trump regime, including those provided to every state humanities council for decades – including Humanities New York, (formerly the New York State Humanities Council).
They had received about $1 million in the 2025 NEH grant round for redistribution to local organizations.
NEH also administered the “Save America’s Treasures” program, funded the National Humanities Medals, the National Medals of Arts and the National Digital Newspaper Program, along with numerous projects in New York State and grants from Humanities NY.
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