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

Source: The Guardian

Fri 20 Feb 2026 12.56 EST
Last modified on Fri 20 Feb 2026 13.05 EST


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”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/20/congress-funding-cultural-institutions