The Trump administration and the so-called DOGE team is now attacking the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and cancelling existing grants unlawfully. They are also illegally halting payments to the grant recipients.

The New York Times reports that “Cultural groups across the country have received letters informing them that their grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities were canceled, stirring fears of great harm to museums, historical sites and community projects of many kinds.”

Archaeological excavations and historical research at Jamestown, Virginia, have received funding from NEH grants. This is just one of the thousands of historical projects that has been awarded an NEH grant.

“Since the agency’s creation in 1965, it has provided more than $6.4 billion to support more than 70,000 projects in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions, according to its website. Supported projects have included more than 9,000 books (including 20 that went on to win Pulitzer Prizes) and more than 500 film and radio programs, including Ken Burns’s landmark 1990 documentary ‘The Civil War,’ which received about a third of its budget from the agency,” according to The New York Times.

Despite this impressive record of achievement in promoting historical and humanities research and programming, the NEH is now being dismantled.

“Starting late Wednesday night, state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding was ended immediately. Instead, they were told, the agency would be ‘repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda.'”

I personally know historians and humanities researchers who have received cancellations of their ongoing grants and suspensions of the payments. These NEH research grants have already been awarded via a legal process that involved rigorous peer review of proposals. I have previously served as a NEH Fellowship reviewer and I am familiar with the peer review process.

The NEH grant recipients have won their grants through intense competitions and have been named grant awardees. So, the ongoing payment of the grants is required by federal law.

The United States Congress must act to stop the unlawful suspensions of authorized grant payments and the illegal diversion of those appropriated funds to sources unknown.

The New York Times has reviewed several of the letters that were sent to NEH grant recipients: “‘Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,’ the letters said. ‘The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.'”

“The letters, more than a half dozen of which were viewed by The New York Times, were on agency letterhead and bore the signature of Michael McDonald, a longtime N.E.H. official who became acting director of the agency last month, after the previous leader, a Biden appointee, was pressed to resign.”

Some lawmakers are emphasizing the illegality of the NEH grant cancellations.

“Representative Chellie Pingree, Democrat of Maine and the ranking minority member on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the endowment, said in a statement that the termination of the grants was ‘devastating and outrageous,'” according to The New York Times.

“‘Let’s be clear: These grants were already awarded and use funds already appropriated by Congress on a bipartisan basis,’ she said. ‘The notion that these terminations are justified by a sudden shift in ‘federal priorities’ is nonsense. This is ideological targeting — pure and simple. And it is happening with no input from Congress or the public.'”

Schuessler, Jennifer. “Groups Are Told That Federal Humanities Grants Are Canceled.” The New York Times (3 April 2025).