Trump administration funding cuts threaten Pennsylvania cultural institutions

The email arrived in LancasterHistory’s inbox last week.

It was a message received by cultural groups across Pennsylvania and the country: The Trump administration was terminating its grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For LancasterHistory, a nonprofit that operates a history museum, President James Buchanan’s Lancaster home, a research center, and an arboretum, that meant it would not receive about $50,000 that was to be used to fund an educator position.

“It’s disappointing, to say the least, to have gone through that process, to have guaranteed those dollars somewhere and then be told by the federal government that, No, no, we’re not going to abide by the contract that we’ve agreed to with you,” said Robin Sarratt, the president and CEO of LancasterHistory.

After President Donald Trump’s administration cut funding for programs that support Pennsylvania farmers, national parks, health care and education, among a long list of other programs, it is now slashing funds for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 1965, the NEH has provided federal dollars for museums, libraries, schools, and other cultural institutions nationwide.

Those cuts come as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers try to figure out how to fund Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and the mass deportation of immigrants.

Sarratt explained the NEH cuts make it likely that her nonprofit will not receive the remaining 10% of a grant of approximately $500,000.

The educator position to be funded by the NEH was for LancasterHistory’s Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy, a museum set to open in 2026. The new center will educate the public about Thaddeus Stevens, a Pennsylvania congressman who lived in Lancaster and championed the constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and gave Black men the right to vote, and Lydia Hamilton Smith, an abolitionist and businesswoman who ran Stevens’ house. The museum will also focus on a variety of topics pertaining to the history of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and civil rights, including the important role that Lancaster County played in the Underground Railroad.

“We’re so proud that we get the opportunity to be telling these stories in this moment — the stories of Thaddeus Stevens, Lydia Hamilton Smith and their network of abolitionists and Underground Railroad operatives,” Sarratt said. “It’s a really important story. The story of the enslaved people who came through Lancaster County on their path to freedom is a really important story, and they need to be told.”

‘Our economy will also be deeply impacted’

According to reporting by the New York Times, the National Endowment for the Humanities is canceling the bulk of its grant programs, or upward of 85%, and placing much of its staff on administrative leave.

Those cuts could decimate programs for Pennsylvania libraries, museums, and students, according to the nonprofit PA Humanities, which said in a statement that the Trump administration told the nonprofit it was ending its general operating grant. The move endangers celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, initiatives that connect neighbors and strengthen communities’ downtowns throughout the state, and efforts to create safe spaces for Pennsylvania youth, among other programs, the nonprofit said.

“The implications are staggering and PA Humanities will be directly affected,” the group wrote. “We rely on NEH support to deliver essential programs and provide funding to our grantees and partners across the Commonwealth.

“Cultural organizations and our economy will also be deeply impacted,” PA Humanities continued. “Federal funding is the single largest source of support for the cultural sector in our state, which helps generate a $30.4 billion annual impact and provides 189,700 jobs.”

Walter Biggins, the editor in chief of the University of Pennsylvania Press, said the cuts could affect three of its authors who are each receiving $5,000 NEH grants. The funding was primarily to make their books open-access and freely available to the public in digital form.

“Fifteen thousands dollars is, frankly, a piddling amount of money, and it will do a lot of good for the specific monographs, the books in question, but it won’t do much good at all in terms of helping with any sort of budgetary control or efficiency, but that’s where we are,” Biggins said.

Both Sarratt and Biggins said that communication about the termination of the NEH grants has been confusing and has left them unsure about the status of their funds. The Penn authors, for example, have not received direct communication from the NEH that their grants are withdrawn. 

“The communications have been frustratingly inefficient and incoherent,” Biggins said. “And so no, to my knowledge, none of these specific authors, as of today anyway, has received any official communication saying that their grant has been terminated. 

“So all we have to go on right now is basically the federal government saying NEH grants are going to be terminated,” Biggins continued. “We haven’t received any documentation or official word, either of the authors, so we’re just sort of sitting on pins and needles, waiting for this to happen, but nothing officially has happened.”

That leaves the press, which publishes books on a wide variety of topics, from business to history and art, in a stressful place, Biggins said. 

‘The tariffs are very frightening’

The NEH cuts are not the first time the Trump administration has targeted cultural funding. In March, Trump signed an executive order that gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, a small agency that awards grants to museums and libraries across the country.

These cuts, combined with an increasingly shaky economy in which consumers are spending less, and the chance that there could be a global recession due to Trump’s on-again, off-again implementation of tariffs on imports into the United States, create an atmosphere of fear and anxiety for many in the arts and humanities, said Carrie Wissler-Thomas, the president of the Art Association of Harrisburg. 

While her organization does not receive NEH funding, she is concerned that a federal government that is hostile to the arts combined with a weak economy will lead to troubling times for groups like hers.

“It’s very frightening, and it’s very appalling, what might happen to cultural institutions across the country,” Wissler-Thomas said.

“The tariffs are very frightening because everything is so uncertain,” Wissler-Thomas continued. “But I think that a lot of people in this country and all around the world realize that paintings, drawings, sculptures, operas, plays of all kinds, these are what keeps us alive. They’re very, very important. And in hard and difficult times, I think people will turn more and more, perhaps, to the beauty of the arts and know that this will give us a light in a very dark and frightening time.”