The Trump administration, working in coordination with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has gutted a small federal agency that provides funding to libraries and museums nationwide. In communities across the US, the cuts threaten student field trips, classes for seniors, and access to popular digital services, such as the ebook app Libby.
On Monday, managers at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) informed 77 employees—virtually the agency’s entire staff—that they were immediately being put on paid administrative leave, according to one of the workers, who sought anonymity out of fear of retaliation from Trump officials. Several other sources confirmed the move, which came after President Donald Trump appointed Keith Sonderling, the deputy secretary of labor, as the acting director of IMLS less than two weeks ago.
A representative for the American Federation of Government Employee Local 3403, a union that represents about 40 IMLS staffers, said Sonderling and a group of DOGE staffers met with IMLS leadership late last month. Afterwards, Sonderling sent an email to staff “emphasizing the importance of libraries and museums in cultivating the next generation’s perception of American exceptionalism and patriotism,” the union representative said in a statement to WIRED.
IMLS employees who showed up to work at the agency on Monday were asked to turn in their computers and lost access to their government email addresses before being ordered to head home for the day, the employee says. It’s unclear when, or if, staffers will ever return to work. “It’s heartbreaking on many levels,” the employee adds.
The White House and the Institute of Museum and Library Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED.
The annual budget of IMLS amounts to less than $1 per person in the US. Overall, the agency awarded over $269.5 million to library and museum systems last year, according to its grants database. Much of that money is paid out as reimbursements over time, the current IMLS employee says, but now there is no one around to cut checks for funds that have already been allocated.
“The status of previously awarded grants is unclear. Without staff to administer the programs, it is likely that most grants will be terminated,” the American Federation of Government Employee Local 3403 union said in a statement.
About 65 percent of the funding had been allocated to different states, with each one scheduled to receive a minimum of roughly $1.2 million. Recipients can use the money for statewide initiatives or pass it onto local museum and library institutions for expenses such as staff training and back-office software. California and Texas have received the highest allocated funding, at about $12.5 million and $15.7 million, respectively, according to IMLS data. Individual libraries and museums also receive grants directly from IMLS for specific projects.
An art museum in Idaho expected to put $10,350 toward supporting student field trips, according to the IMLS grant database. A North Carolina museum was allotted $23,500 for weaving and fiber art workshops for seniors. And an indigenous community in California expected to put $10,000 toward purchasing books and electronic resources.
In past years, other Native American tribes have received IMLS grants to purchase access to apps such as Hoopla and Libby, which provide free ebooks and audiobooks to library patrons. Some funding from the IMLS also goes to academic projects, such as using virtual reality to preserve Native American cultural archives or studying how AI chatbots could improve access to university research.
Steve Potash, founder and CEO of OverDrive, which develops Libby, says the company has been lobbying Congress and state legislatures for library funding. “What we are consistently hearing is that there is no data or evidence suggesting that federal funds allocated through the IMLS are being misused,” Potash tells WIRED. “In fact, these funds are essential for delivering vital services, often to the most underserved and vulnerable populations.”
Anthony Chow, director of the School of Information at San José State University in California and president-elect of the state library association, tells WIRED that Monday was the deadline to submit receipts for several Native American libraries he says he’d been supporting in their purchase of nearly 54,000 children’s books using IMLS funds. Five tribes, according to Chow, could lose out on a total of about $189,000 in reimbursements. “There is no contingency,” Chow says. “I don’t think any one of us ever thought we would get to this point.”
Managers at IMLS informed their teams on Monday that the work stoppage was in response to a recent executive order issued by Trump that called for reducing the operations of the agency to the bare minimum required by law.
Trump made a number of other unsuccessful attempts to defund the IMLS during his first term. The White House described its latest effort as a necessary part of “eliminating waste and reducing government overreach.” But the president himself has said little about what specifically concerns him about funding libraries; a separate order he signed recently described federally-supported Smithsonian museums as peddling “divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
US libraries and museums receive support from many sources, including public donations and funding from other federal agencies. But IMLS is “the single largest source of critical federal funding for libraries,” according to the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies advocacy group. Libraries and museums in rural areas are particularly reliant on federal funding, according to some library employees and experts.
Systems in big metros such as Los Angeles County and New York City libraries receive only a small fraction of their budget from the IMLS, according to recent internal memos seen by WIRED, which were issued in response to Trump’s March 14 executive order. “For us, it was more a source of money to innovate with or try out new programs,” says a current employee at the New York Public Library, who asked to remain anonymous because they aren’t authorized to speak to the press.
But the loss of IMLS funds could still have consequences in big cities. A major public library system in California is assembling an internal task force to advocate on behalf of the library system with outside donors, according to a current employee who wasn’t authorized to speak about the effort publicly. They say philanthropic organizations that support their library system are already beginning to spend more conservatively, anticipating they may need to fill funding gaps at libraries in areas more dependent on federal dollars.
Some IMLS programs also require states to provide matching funding, and legislatures may be disincentivized to offer support if the federal money disappears, further hampering library and museum budgets, the IMLS employee says.
The IMLS was created by a 1996 law passed by Congress and has historically received bipartisan support. But some conservative groups and politicians have expressed concern that libraries provide public access to content they view as inappropriate, including pornography and books on topics such as transgender people and racial minorities. In February, following a Trump order, schools for kids on overseas military bases restricted access to books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics.”
Last week, a bipartisan group of five US senators led by Jack Reed of Rhode Island urged the Trump administration to follow through on the IMLS grants that Congress had authorized for this year. “We write to remind the administration of its obligation to faithfully execute the provisions of the law,” the senators wrote.
Ultimately, the fate of the IMLS could be decided in a showdown between Trump officials, Congress, and the federal courts. With immediate resolution unlikely, experts say museums and libraries unable to make up for lost reimbursements will likely have to scale back services.