Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.
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Email addresses for all IMLS staff were being disabled today. Those with questions or concerns over IMLS funding will no longer be able to reach the individual or individuals with whom they’d been working.
Further, all processing work on 2025 funding applications is over and there is no information about the status of awards that have already been granted for the year. The union believes most grants will simply be terminated.
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IMLS makes up .0046% of the federal budget.
Two weeks ago, President Trump issued an Executive Order targeting funds allocated to libraries and museums nationwide. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is a federal agency that distributes fund approved by Congress to state libraries, as well as library, museum, and archival grant programs. IMLS is the only federal agency that provides funds to libraries. The Executive Order states that the functions of the IMLS have to be reduced to “statutory functions” and that in places that are not statutory, expenses must be cut as much as possible.
One week later, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) entered the IMLS offices. Many at IMLS were prepared to see their jobs disappear, but that didn’t quite happen. Instead, DOGE installed a new Acting Director of the agency, Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith E. Sonderling.
It wasn’t just a new Acting Director, though. The IMLS took on a new direction thanks to the Executive Order and DOGE. It would now operate “in lockstep with this Administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation. We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”
The new goal of the administration with the IMLS is for it to function as a propaganda machine. This wouldn’t be the first nor the last federal cultural institution to see its mission shift from serving the needs and interests of all of America. On March 28, the administration would issue another Executive Order, this time demanding that the Smithsonian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and other federal museums stop the “revisionist movement” through displays and installations that showcase American history and culture as “racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Such institutions are now to engage in “igniting the imagination of young minds,