Can Trump eliminate the NEA? Experts sound off

San Francisco Chronicle​

14 hours ago

President Donald Trump and his supporters may finally make their decadeslong right-wing fantasy of dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts come true.
In the most aggressive move in years, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies recently proposed a 35% cut to the agency that underwrites theater, dance, classical music, visual art and more nationwide.
And it's just the latest blow in a brutal year for the arts in the U.S.
In February, the NEA abruptly closed a grant category, Challenge America, dedicated to underserved communities. Shortly after, Trump took control of the Kennedy Center. By May, the administration took the unprecedented step of terminating grants for projects it deemed counter to priorities, such as those promoting diversity, equity and inclusion or 'gender ideology' — dozens of them in the Bay Area.
To many, this could possibly mark the beginning of the end of the 60-year-old agency.
'It feels as if the current administration is trying to finally eradicate the NEA and the NEH,' Ralph Remington, director of cultural affairs at the San Francisco Arts Commission and a former NEA director of theater and musical theater, told the Chronicle, referring to the similarly targeted National Endowment for the Humanities.
'We rarely ever see grants pulled midstream from any source — government or private foundations,' he added, dubbing it 'highly possible' that the NEA would cease to exist.
But Jay Dick, senior director of advocacy and partnerships in the government affairs department at Americans for the Arts, sees the situation differently. While a reduction like the proposed 35% cut is very possible, he conceded, the endowment's wholesale annihilation is unlikely.
For one, the president can propose any budget he wants, but Congress controls the purse strings — though that constraint is being tested. Since 2023, Trump has touted a fringe legal theory that would allow him to unilaterally reject Congress' budget allocations, and his second term is becoming a laboratory for how far he can push it.
Secondly, since the so-called NEA Four — performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck and Holly Hughes — had their grants vetoed in 1990 over concerns about outré subject matter, the agency transformed its funding priorities to head off further right-wing criticism. For years now, its dollars have reached every congressional district in the U.S., not just those populated by coastal elites.
That means that the last time Congress debated cutting the NEA, during a House session last year on a spending bill for the Department of the Interior, both a Democrat and a Republican opposed the idea. Even if they're more amenable to cuts this year, their reasoning remains telling.
'I'm not worried about the arts in Washington or in New York or in Los Angeles, but I'm worried about the arts in Shelley, Idaho,' Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said from the floor last July.
Indeed, wealthy places like the Bay Area have other arts funders, but 'If you go to Wyoming, go inland a little bit, oftentimes the NEA is the only game in town,' Dick said. Members of Congress from those districts are loath to take the blame for wiping out a beloved local museum or theater.
On the other hand, similar thinking had long helped sustain federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS — until last week, when Congress cut $1.1 billion to the entity. If it's possible for Trump's influence to upend decades of precedent in that arena, the NEA and the nation's arts nonprofits seem all the more vulnerable.
In any case, Dick added, the NEA's spending amounts to 'budget dust on the federal level.' No cuts there will make a dent in the budget deficit, which appears likely to skyrocket with the tax cuts in Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill.'
For arts supporters, being honest about the NEA's role is a tricky balance. While the agency's support to any single Bay Area organization makes up only a small fraction of that grantee's total budget — leaders at Opera Parallèle and New Conservatory Theatre Center both told the Chronicle they will not go under as a result of terminated grants — the funds still matter.
'It helps us leverage, raise monies from other sources,' NCTC Artistic Director Ed Decker said. The theater's cancelled $20,000 NEA grant pays for less than 1% of its annual budget, but other philanthropists see it as what Remington called a 'Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.' Other funders, Dick pointed out, don't always have the resources or expertise to assess arts organizations.
NEA uncertainty coincides with arts funding turmoil at the state and local levels.
The Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund was on the chopping block under Gov. Gavin Newsom's May budget proposal, though this month state lawmakers restored that funding. Oakland has both slashed its arts funding and eliminated its cultural affairs manager position. San Francisco canceled Dream Keeper Initiative grant agreements and announced restructuring Grants for the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San Francisco Film Commission as a single superagency, all while requiring more paperwork from SFAC grantees.
A February report from the think tank the Urban Institute — 'What Is the Financial Risk of Nonprofits Losing Government Grants?' — illustrates what's at stake. In nine Bay Area counties, 69% of nonprofit arts organizations would be in the red without government support.
The picture gets even bleaker when considering that private philanthropy is unlikely to be a stopgap, according to data from nationwide funders association Grantmakers in the Arts. From 2000 to 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, arts funding as a percentage of total philanthropy shrank by more than 5%.
'All the foundations in the U.S. cannot make up for public investment in the arts,' GIA founder and CEO Eddie Torres told the Chronicle. 'This is particularly true in rural and remote communities and for communities of color, where public funding tends to be their primary source of income.'
But Mary Anne Carter, Trump's nominee to head the NEA, has not endeared herself to Bay Area grantees.
In March, David Mack, co-founder of grantee Artist Magnet Justice Alliance in Oakland, saw Carter speak at an unrecorded seminar hosted by Creative West, which serves artists and arts agencies in the Western United States. He and fellow attendee Mariana Moscoso, who's based in Sacramento, said they recalled Carter making several controversial remarks.
According to their accounts, Carter began her appearance by alluding to the notion that discriminating against white people is against the law, using her white daughter's workshop attendance at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as an example of an organization's anti-discrimination. She also named Elvis Presley, the musical 'Oklahoma!' and American jazz as examples of American heritage — attributing jazz's origins in 'Northern Irish dance, also in Western African dance.'
When asked about 'gender ideology,' the subject of a Trump executive order, Carter reportedly responded by saying, 'There are only two biological genders. It's man, or it's woman. So if you're not one of those, I don't know what to tell you.'
Moscoso, who's nonbinary, told the Chronicle, 'That phrase was a form of institutional erasure to me.'
The Chronicle reached out via email to the NEA's public affairs department, which responded without a name in its signature. (The staff page on the NEA's website does not name individual employees.)
'We consistently have made the point that nondiscrimination laws apply equally to all races,' the response reads.
The NEA's public affairs office defended Carter's remark about Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, stating it served 'as an example of an organization that may apply because it does not exclude a specific group from participation.'
It also said that Carter's examples of American heritage were not meant to be comprehensive, adding, 'Any reference to American jazz dance was made solely to emphasize its multifaceted origins.'
As Bay Area artists try to move forward amid this political and financial uncertainty, it's possible audiences will see more closures and leaner operations among the organizations that stay afloat. More teamwork is also likely. In American Conservatory Theater's next season, for instance, other theater companies are involved — whether as a cost-sharing co-production or otherwise — in all six shows.
Emiko Ono, who directs the performing arts program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, takes some heart in seeing how her grantees are banding together, noting how Julie Phelps of CounterPulse recently asked Ono's foundation how it could help the region's broader dance community be more resilient together.
'That's a very different ask than 'Can you please help backfill this NEA grant?'' Ono explained. 'I think people know — philanthropy included — that there's not enough money to backfill what's going on right now, and there's an appetite brewing around, 'What are the long-term solutions?''
For their part, artists continue to vow to fight.
'If we just get caught up in how traumatic this is … they win,' said Los Angeles playwright Eric Reyes Loo, whose NEA grant for 'Simple Mexican Pleasures' at NCTC was canceled. 'The work has to be louder and browner and queerer and more female-centric and more empowered than ever.'
Conductor Nicole Paiement, who's the founder and artistic director at Opera Parallèle, pointed out that the project her terminated grant was intended to support might suggest a way forward.
Referencing an aria in the opera 'Harvey Milk Reimagined,' which had its West Coast premiere in June, a just-elected Mayor George Moscone (Matt Boehler) sings, 'Thank you for voting for what San Francisco looks like,' celebrating the diversity of winning candidates in that year's election.
'They did it then, and we will do it again,' Paiement said. 'It is a perfect city to lead the way.'