On May 8, President Trump fired the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, claimed that the firing was due to an ideological disagreement: “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,” she said.
This language reveals that neither Leavitt nor presumably Trump know what the Library of Congress is. It is a research library open only to patrons over the age of 16. It also houses the copyright office of the US and collects the records of every book published in our nation. Its major mandate in recent years has been the digitization of all of its records and collections to make them more accessible to the average citizen.
The reference to children (who are not allowed in the Library of Congress) betrays that their potential harm has become a smoke screen for the dismantling of American organizations tasked with preserving the history and culture that rightfully belongs to the American people.
Hayden’s firing part of a larger attack on humanities and arts organizations, many funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which have experienced extensive cuts to funding and staff in the past weeks. These endowments, created by Congress in 1965, support many of the arts, literacy, and educational services that we rely on in our communities.
The Florida Humanities Council is one of the organizations that has lost its NEH grant through cuts by DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency). Since 1973, the Florida Humanities Council has distributed over $20 million dollars to libraries, museums, and other organizations to expand our access to cultural resources and public programming. State-specific humanities councils are important because they understand the unique cultural and historical context of our heritage and therefore are well-positioned to preserve and share it. They are particularly important in Florida, where recent state funding cuts have left us at the bottom of the list for cultural funding.
NEH funding has also abruptly ended for the Chronicling America Historic American Newspaper Collection at the Library of Congress. The funding provided digital access to historic American newspapers from across our nation. The collection had been heavily used by citizens for family history and genealogy projects. Since funding has stopped, further digitization will cease, and the future hosting of the collection on the Library of Congress website is uncertain.
But the NEH isn’t gone completely. It has recently advertised a grant opportunity for sculptures for the “National Garden of American Heroes,” which was established in Executive Order 13978 during President Trump’s first presidency. According to the executive order, the garden will be “a monument to our country’s greatness” and a reflection of “the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism.”
Imagine an America without libraries. Museums. Cultural festivals. This America would be truly exceptional in relation to its developed neighbors.
The arts and humanities are not waste, fraud, or abuse. They are the preservation and vital circulation of our stories and our history. Institutions like the Library of Congress and the Chronicling America project are important because they allow any interested citizen to discover and learn from our past.
The arts and humanities work best when they are in our communities — in touch with students and teachers, young and old, you and me.
Don’t cast my taxpayer dollars into monuments in a walled garden nearly a thousand miles away. Let them circulate in my local library, local cultural festivals, and local life.
Anna Muenchrath lives and works in Melbourne, Florida. She has a PhD in Literary Studies.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Opinion: Firing of Librarian of Congress is just part of attack on the arts and humanities
Reporting by Anna Muenchrath / Florida Today
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