Trump’s Cultural Overhaul Throttles Local Arts, Humanities Programs Nationwide

Communities in Virginia Beach fight back as local school board votes to suspend DEIA programming

NEED TO KNOW: Early this year, President Trump issued an executive order to cut federal funding for public schools with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives. Gov. Glenn Youngkin supported Trump’s plan, despite its potential impact on Virginia schools. After a great deal of community pushback, the Virginia Beach School Board voted to comply with Trump’s order. After that vote, a federal judge blocked Trump’s executi…

Kennedy Center loses Yo-Yo Ma to alternative venues after Trump takeover: report

The hits keep coming for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, more commonly known as the Kennedy Center, as Donald Trump's stewardship has driven away more acts.Since the president supplanted former Board Chair David M. Rubenstein with himself, and tapped MAGA ally Richard Gr...

Defunding Belonging: What's at Stake As the Arts Are Politicized

withdrawing National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants from organizations nationwide, targeting cultural spaces where marginalized voices are nurtured. The Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC (GMCW) was among those impacted: our $15,000 grant for FY25 was canceled without warning. This is part of a broader political strategy to silence the spaces where LGBTQ youth find safety, community, and the freedom to express themselves.At a time when LGBT…

President Trump’s effect on cultural institutions: What Marylanders need to know

President Donald Trump set out to change the nation’s cultural conversations starting on the first day of his second term. Among other things, his executive orders rescind previously awarded grants and ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs. These directives have implications for the kinds of ideas to which Americans can be exposed onstage and in art galleries. But some taxpayer advocates applaud the cutbacks as necessary and long-overdue …

Concerns Grow Over Removed Exhibits At NMAAHC AKA ‘The Blacksonian’

Source: Andrew Lichtenstein / Getty Amidst President Trump’s flurry of executive orders targeting civil rights and Black history, concerns are growing over exhibits being rotated out at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). According to NBC News, certain artifacts and exhibits detailing the history of slavery and the civil rights movement are being rotated out of NMAAHC amid a potential review by the…

Trump’s cultural overhaul throttles local arts, humanities programs nationwide

For 60 years, Boston’s Museum of African American History has transported people to the past, letting visitors to a 200-year-old meeting house see where abolitionists like Frederick Douglass spoke and walk through halls where young Black soldiers once rallied to fight in the Civil War.