On June 10, the Trump administration laid off an estimated 100 employees at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of a “reduction in force,” according to USA Today. Since then, about two-thirds of the organization’s workers have lost their jobs. Fewer than 60 employees are thought to remain at the government agency.
“A major agency restructuring is underway without the appropriate planning needed to ensure the continuity of operations,” the NEH’s union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, said in a statement. “These drastic changes … represent an existential threat to those institutions and individuals who rely on support from NEH to research, preserve, and interpret our shared heritage.”
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Founded in 1965, the NEH has awarded more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historical sites, universities, libraries, and related organizations.
Cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) already halted all remaining funding to the NEH for the 2025 fiscal year. DOGE also cut $65 million from the NEH’s overall $210 million budget and attempted to fire roughly 65 percent of its staff. Those funds have instead been funneled into the creation of President Donald Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes, among other projects.
A lawsuit blocked the planned “reduction in force” at the NEH, but the new layoffs were not announced at the time of that case.
“It is absurd to think that grant dollars that were being used to do things like publish President George Washington’s writings, restore Mark Twain’s artifacts and support civics education are instead being directed to commission statues. While NEH staff have the expertise to help provide historic context about these individuals and their impact, commissioning the artworks falls well outside of the agency’s purview. History is not something that can be set in stone”, the NEH’s union told the Art Newspaper.
Several organizes have filed lawsuits against the NEH, seeking to halt what some have described as the organization’s “dismantling.” The picture looks to only get worse next year: a proposed 2026 federal budget includes a plan to eliminate the NEH, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
A Reuters review of government agency departures found that they have been cut by nearly 12 percent, with 260,000 of the 2.3 million federal civilian workforce having been laid off thus far.
The gutting of federal agencies continues amid an ongoing feud between President Trump and former head of DOGE Elon Musk, who told the Washington Post, “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized.”
