WASHINGTON, D.C.: President Trump has released a 2026 budget proposal which includes, among many deep cuts to federal spending, the wholesale elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as several other federal and regional cultural agencies.
We have been here before: In 2017 and 2018, the first Trump administration released budget proposals that included the elimination of these same entities, but they were preserved thanks to the work of arts advocates and Congressional support, including elected Republicans. This time, however, with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) given free rein to scrutinize and slash federal spending and a flurry of executive orders issued by the president which target specific organizations and programs—not to mention the apparent unwillingness of Congress to contravene the President—this new threat of termination must be taken more seriously.
The NEA has largely been spared direct fire from the new administration to date, at least by contrast to the NEH, which had its staff drastically reduced and grants rescinded, and the CPB, the target of a recent executive order demanding that it stop funding PBS and NPR. The arts endowment hasn’t been entirely exempt from the new administration’s interventions: In February, new compliance guidelines appeared to require grant applicants to assent to Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders, and to certify that their work would not promote DEI or “gender ideology.” Both strictures were temporarily halted, the latter thanks to a lawsuit led by the ACLU (and joined by Theatre Communications Group, the publisher of this magazine), though a judge later declined to block the NEA from reimposing that requirement, instead allowing the agency’s internal process to proceed (with a deadline of April 30). At the same time, the court made clear that reimposition would likely violate the First Amendment.
The endowment met that deadline this week with an updated document signed by NEA senior adviser Mary Anne Carter that seems to try to split the difference. It affirms that the president’s executive order “requires executive agencies to take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to ensure that agency funds are not used to promote gender ideology,” adding that “the NEA will implement EO 14168 on a grant-by-grant basis.” It takes pains to assure applicants that they “will not be required to certify that no federal funds are used to promote gender ideology,” and “that there is no eligibility bar to submitting an application related to promoting gender ideology.” They add that the agency’s long-standing criteria for applications leaves “no room for viewpoint discrimination.”
So how will the administration’s anti-trans order be enforced? While Carter’s letter reiterates the primacy of standards of “artistic merit” and “artistic excellence,” she states that in evaluating projects on a grant-by-grant basis the NEA’s chair may also take “into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”
The language about “eligibility bar,” “viewpoint discrimination,” as well as the qualification “as permitted by law,” can all be read as responses to the ACLU’s challenge, which cited in part a First Amendment objection to the implementation of the executive order. Said Lynette Labinger, cooperating attorney for the ACLU of Rhode Island, “Unless the NEA clarifies otherwise, this information does not eliminate the significant concerns addressed in our lawsuit.”
Meanwhile, rumors have been swirling for the past week that DOGE visited the NEA last week and that major staffing changes are imminent. Grantees are no less uncertain about their future: While grant recipients from last year’s first funding cycle (GAP 1) who have not yet been reimbursed are wondering when they’ll find out if their payments will come at all, applicants who received offer letters for last year’s second funding cycle (GAP 2), who would have typically received an official award by February or March, have been told their grants are still under review. Applicants for most recent current grant cycle, for which the deadline was April 7, wouldn’t normally find out results until December, but there’s nothing normal about the current moment.
The timeline so far:
January 15: NEA grant awards for FY2025 were announced. Within the theatre category, 148 grants were awarded for a total of $3,730,000. Within musical theatre, 29 grants were awarded for a total of $930,000.
January 20: Maria Rosario Jackson stepped down as chair of the NEA. Mary Anne Carter, who served as chair in 2019 under the previous Trump administration, is the current senior adviser.
February: When NEA grant details and applications for FY2026 were posted, the NEA imposed a certification requirement and funding prohibition in response to President Trump’s order prohibiting federal funding of anything that “promotes gender ideology.”
March 6: The ACLU, the ACLU of Rhode Island, David Cole, and Lynette Labinger, cooperating counsel for the ACLU-RI, filed a suit in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island on behalf of arts organizations applying for NEA funding.
March 7: Just a day after the suit was filed, the NEA temporarily rescinded the attestation requirement and funding prohibition after the lawsuit was filed.
March 11: Original deadline for part 1 of grant applications for the upcoming cycle.
March 14: NEA applicant portal’s extension opened.
March 24: Original deadline for part 2 of grant applications for the upcoming cycle.
April 4: The U.S. District Court of Rhode Island refused to block the NEA from reimposing a restriction on funding for projects deemed to promote “gender ideology,” even as they maintained that the rule likely violates the First Amendment.
April 7: Part 2 deadline closed.
April 30: Evaluation said to have been completed. The formal notice of the Executive Order was released.
American Theatre’s coverage of the NEA in the past year is here.
