Trump’s National Endowment for the Arts Grant Restrictions Spur Backlash

A group of more than 400 artists sent a letter to the National Endowment for the Arts Tuesday calling on the organization to stop following orders from President Trump and remove restrictions on awarding grants to projects that promote diversity or gender ideology. 

The letter, which was part of a campaign led by Annie Dorsen, a theater director and writer, comes after NEA says federal grant applicants, which include nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities, individual artists and more, must now comply with regulations under Trump’s executive orders in order to receive grant funding. 

Per the new regulations, an applicant is not allowed to operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs and cannot use the federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” 

“While the arts community stands in solidarity with the NEA, we oppose this betrayal of the Endowment’s mission to ‘foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.’ We ask that the NEA reverse those changes to the compliance requirements,” the letter reads. 

“We recognize that our colleagues at the NEA are in a difficult position. Perhaps the hope is that by making these compromises, the Endowment will be able to continue its important work. But abandoning our values is wrong, and it won’t protect us. Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism,” the letter continues. 

Earlier this month, the NEA said that it was canceling its next round of grants for its Challenge America program, which gives out small grants to underserved groups and communities. Those groups are still eligible to apply to the NEA’s general grant programming, which is “encouraging applications that celebrate the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring the semiquincentennial of the United States of America (America250).” 

During a webinar Tuesday, NEA administrators said that the organization has been encouraging projects celebrating America 250 since 2021, and it was “not the only area of interest” in funding grants. Administrators added that they would also still fund projects centered on disability as well as award grants to organizations centered on specific genders or racial groups. 

Trump is also taking on the arts through his appointment as chair of the Kennedy Center, where he has also named Richard Grenell, formerly Trump’s ambassador to Germany, as interim president, and installed a number of new board members.

The full letter is below:

February 18, 2025

To the National Endowment for the Arts:

We are artists, playwrights, choreographers, performers, musicians, and workers from many parts of the arts and culture sector. All of us have benefited from the NEA’s grant making activities, either directly from the Endowment’s support for the institutions that have developed and presented our work, or indirectly but no less importantly from the role that the Endowment has played in creating the vibrant and diverse arts ecosystem of which we are grateful to be a part.

We are writing to express our tremendous disappointment that the NEA has made the short-sighted decision to change its compliance requirements for the Grants for Arts Projects, conforming to Trump’s reactionary and discriminatory executive orders. The orders in question, Executive Order nos. 14173 and 14168, are being challenged in the courts, and will likely be invalidated on statutory and Constitutional grounds. In fact, parts of EO no. 14168 have already been enjoined.

While the arts community stands in solidarity with the NEA, we oppose this betrayal of the Endowment’s mission to “foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.” We ask that the NEA reverse those changes to the compliance requirements.

We recognize that our colleagues at the NEA are in a difficult position. Perhaps the hope is that by making these compromises, the Endowment will be able to continue its important work. But abandoning our values is wrong, and it won’t protect us. Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism.

Trump and his enablers may use doublespeak to claim that support for artists of color amounts to “discrimination” and that funding the work of trans and women artists promotes “gender ideology” (whatever that is). But we know better: the arts are for and represent everybody. We can’t give that up. The NEA must not abandon these principles—or these artists. Artists are not primarily in the business of promoting ideology. We are compelled to tell our truths, to create community around the stories that give life to those truths, and to make common cause with others while we share this 4me on earth.

The arts have a particularly important role to play in times of political crisis. When national identities fracture and the public sphere shrinks or becomes increasingly contentious, the arts serve as an indispensable source of memory, imagina4on, and envisioning. The arts community, which the NEA both supports and is a part of, must stand together in the face of those who would erase our memories, cramp our imaginations, and blinker our vision.

In this spirit, we ask the NEA to reverse these prejudicial changes to its compliance requirements, and refuse to implement any further such restrictions going forward.