Small towns across America wanted to throw a party for the nation's 250th birthday, but a new report found President Donald Trump's cost-cutters took away the money and funneled it toward his own beautification projects in Washington.
NOTUS reported that when DOGE axed federal funding for state humanities councils last year, local libraries and historical societies were forced to abandon plans for the semiquincentennial. The councils, created by Congress around the 1976 bicentennial to fund small-scale history and civics projects, operate in nearly every state and territory.
In Trumbull County, Ohio, even a modest "passport" project encouraging visits to history sites had to be kept small because the historical society could not afford to print more booklets. Councils in West Virginia, Alabama and Washington state were hit too.
“There’s certainly things that we could have done for America 250 if the funding was available. That just didn’t work out how we thought it could have,” Meghan Reed, the executive director of the Trumbull County Historical Society, told NOTUS.
"There's not really a lot of cultural infrastructure in West Virginia. Where most of the cultural work is done is in regional centers, community centers, small museums, county historical associations. So the people who really got hurt were those small organizations across the state," said Eric Waggoner, head of the West Virginia Humanities Council, who added of his 250th plans: "I'm sad to say we had to scrap it."
NOTUS reported that Congress funded the councils at normal levels for fiscal 2026, but the administration has disbursed less than half and told them not to expect the rest. The Federation of State Humanities Councils has asked a federal judge in Oregon to rule that Trump is violating separation-of-powers rules.
Meanwhile, Trump's Great American State Fair and his planned triumphal arch push ahead.