A spending bill released late on the night of March 21 signaled an important victory for the arts and humanities. In defiance of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities and other federally-funded organizations in the field, the spending bill for the remainder of fiscal year 2018 provides many of these organizations with generous funding increases. The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences will see its funding increase by $9 million, and the NEH by $3 million. The budget for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission will remain at $6 million, the same as F.Y. 2017, despite a House of Representatives proposal to reduce it to $4 million.
The announcement that the Trump administration would seek to eliminate the NEH and related organizations was met with overwhelming response from the humanities community. Congress was inundated with over 160,000 messages voicing disapproval and a flurry of critical op-eds.
Appropriations for F.Y. 2019 are already in progress. The Trump administration has announced that it will again seek to eliminate the NEH. See the NEH’s website for more details on the spending bill’s impact on humanities organizations and information about further advocacy.
New Spending Bill Increases Funding for NEH, IMLS, and Others
In defiance of the Trump administration's efforts to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities, et al., the spending bill for the remainder of fiscal year 2018 provides generous funding increases.