DOGE Guts Funding for Texas Humanities Council

Humanities Texas, the state’s humanities council, learned last week that it will have nearly two-thirds of its budget slashed as a result of its federal funding being cut.

Established in 1973, the organization supports funding for libraries and museums and offers programs to support public school teachers, using a combination of federal, state and private money.

On April 2, the federal Department of Government Efficiency notified all of the country’s state humanities councils that it would be terminating their funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, according to a statement from Humanities Texas Executive Director Eric Lupfer.

For Humanities Texas, that federal cut will eliminate $2.6 million per year, or about 65% of its annual budget, which will have “a devastating effect,” Lupfer wrote.

The cut will affect the council’s ability to offer no fewer than four programs, according to the alert, including:

• Free professional development workshops for public schoolteachers across the state on U.S. history, Texas history, and English;
• Grants awarded to libraries and museums for historical and cultural programs and exhibits, of which “many go to rural communities that lack access to private philanthropy;”
• Professionally curated exhibitions that are circulated statewide; and
• A reading and discussion program where U.S. veterans “reflect on the experience of service, combat, and the return to civilian life.”

DOGE, headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has made it a priority to eliminate government waste and inefficiency with sweeping layoffs and major cuts to federal funding with little warning that have sown chaos and uncertainty in the federal workforce.

Lupfer described Humanities Texas’s funding situation as “fluid,” and is asking the public to contact their federal representatives and to consider donating to the council.

“We need your help now more than ever,” Lupfer wrote.

A statement from the National Endowment for the Humanities expressed similar concern, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

“DOGE is targeting a small federal agency that… has a positive impact on every congressional district,” the organization said in a statement, according to the Express-News.

Humanities Texas “is active in each of the state’s 38 congressional districts,” according to Lupfer.

DOGE has started to terminate grants from the national endowment that already had been awarded, the statement said, including “operating grants to the state and jurisdictional humanities councils, scholarly societies, community organizations and individuals,” per the Express-News.