Congress restores funding to cultural institutions once on Trump’s chopping block

In a break with Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Congress approved a funding bill for multiple key government agencies and institutions in January. Some of those groups included the cultural institutions whose federal funds the president had sought to severely decrease or totally eliminate.

Last year, Trump issued “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, an executive order that specifically cited the Smithsonian Institution as having “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology”. The executive order called for an overhaul of the museums and called out the American Women’s History Museum, which now exists only as an online exhibition, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

In his proposed budget, Trump signaled a desire to eliminate the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino, along with dozens of other programs and agencies.

These actions alarmed historians, cultural preservationists and members of the IAIA community alike. It also spurred them into action.

During the time between the proposed budget and Congress’s passage of the funding, IAIA supporters held a letter-writing campaign and did “very dedicated and targeted outreach” to Congress members, said the IAIA’s president, Shelly C Lowe, who is a member of the Navajo Nation. Students and alumni wrote open letters and spoke to press, while organizations such as the American Indian Higher Education Consortium also offered assistance.

Lowe said that the funding was a “relief”.

“It had been very difficult for many of our faculty and our staff and our students to not know, to feel like our budget was going to be zeroed out,” she told the Guardian. “When we were zeroed out in the president’s budget last year, it made us pay very close attention to the outreach that we were doing with congressional members, both within our state and from other states. We encouraged people to step up.”

The IAIA, which is about 62% federally funded through an annual congressional appropriation and federal grants and contracts, will now receive $13.5m for its 2026 fiscal year. It will allow the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based institution to continue supporting student services, day-to-day operations and academic programs.

The IAIA, the only congressionally chartered institute that focuses on Indigenous arts and culture, is also the only federally chartered institution outside the Washington DC area.

“We have set ourselves up to continue to inform Congress as much as possible throughout the year what we do and the good work that we do and the economic impact that we have not just in the Santa Fe region, but with all of our graduates across the country,” Lowe, who became the institute’s president last August, said. “I’d like to say that we are optimistic that things will be better this next year, but I think we’re going to be preparing ourselves to continue to do this hard work, at least for the next couple of years.”