Accompanied by a security team and members of Elon Musk’s DOGE, Keith Sonderling arrived at the offices of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on Thursday to take over the independent federal agency as its new acting director. President Trump appointed Sonderling to the position earlier on Thursday, even though Sonderling is already serving as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor.
It doesn’t matter to the Trump administration that Sonderling has a full-time position in the Labor Department, or that there is nothing in his background making him suitable to be the director of an agency serving the needs of libraries and museums. He is not there to make IMLS function better. He was appointed to carry out a March 14 executive order signed by Trump that requires IMLS and six other agencies to “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”
It would take an act of Congress to close IMLS, but starting with the actions he took in January to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump has repeatedly shown that he is willing to shut down federal agencies and suspend or fire almost all their employees, regardless of what the law says.
AFGE Local 30, the union representing IMLS employees, said in a statement it “expects that most employees will be placed on administrative leave over the weekend or Monday. It remains unclear whether funding for existing grantees will continue, and whether new grants will be available in the future.”
The impact of the changes ordered by President Trump will be felt in Iowa.
“The loss of IMLS funds would have a direct and significant impact on Iowa City Public Library patrons and staff,” ICPL Director Elsworth Carman said in a written statement.
“Interlibrary loan — a vital service that allows patrons to access books from libraries across the state and beyond — could be reduced or eliminated. State Library support for our Summer Reading program may decrease or disappear, limiting engaging literacy opportunities for children and families,” Carman explained. “Additionally, the loss of funding for continuing education and accreditation programs would weaken professional development for library staff and diminish the quality standards that ensure excellent library service for our community.”
In a news release on Thursday, the Iowa City Public Library Friends Foundation pointed out that rural areas of the state will be hit hard if IMLS stops functioning.
“IMLS funding cuts will disproportionately harm small and rural libraries, which often rely on federal support to access essential resources,” the foundation said. “Without federal funding, rural libraries could lose access to training, educational resources, and tools like STEM kits, online tutoring, and interlibrary loan systems, further widening the gap in services available to underserved communities. These cuts will make it even harder for small and rural libraries to meet the diverse needs of their patrons, limiting their ability to foster education, community engagement, and equal access to information.”
The Dubuque County Historical Society, which operates the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium and Mathias Ham Historic Site, released a statement explaining how important the funding and support it has received from IMLS over the last 26 years has been, and how it may be impacted by Trump’s executive order.
“This critical funding has helped gain intellectual control of collections, create an interpretive master plan, and create significant permanent exhibits,” the society said. “The National Mississippi River Museum and the Mathias Ham Historic Site draw 200,000 visitors annually, account for $16 million in activity for our local economy, and directly support 176 households through employment. Without IMLS funding, the growth of the museum, its role as a public steward of historic and living collections, and its leadership in contributing to Iowa’s economy face significant risk.”
“… While we are uncertain what the impact of these cuts will be, we can be certain this will have a significant impact on not only DCHS but museums, arboretums, cultural centers, and those organizations preserving history and amplifying community voices.”
IMLS was created by the Museum and Library Services Act (MLSA), which was passed by Congress with bipartisan majorities in 1996, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The institute’s statutory duties involve providing funding, policy leadership, and research to support libraries and museums around the country, and it is required to do so in a nonpartisan, nonpolitical way. That’s why Congress made it an independent federal agency: to limit any possible politically motivated interference from either a presidential administration or members of Congress.
The MLSA was reauthorized in 2003 during the Bush administration, in 2010 during the Obama administration and most recently, in 2018 during the first Trump administration.
Every year during the first Trump administration, the White House submitted budgets to Congress that eliminated funding for IMLS, as well as other cultural and educational agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Each year, regardless of which party was in charge of the House or Senate, Congress rejected those budgets, and continued funding the IMLS and other cultural and educational programs and agencies.
Although IMLS survived the first Trump administration, its future now seems much more insecure. The actions Trump took towards IMLS over the last week are much more aggressive than anything he did during his first term, and Congressional leaders are much more servile in their approach to dealing with Trump now than they were in 2017.
In the last annual budget for the federal government Congress actually passed — the budget for fiscal year 2024, approved in 2023 — IMLS received $294.6 million in funding for the entire year. That amount represents 0.004 percent of the total FY 2024 federal budget of $6.8 trillion. Since FY 2024 ended last June, the federal government has been funded by a series of continuing resolutions, each lasting several months and largely keeping funding levels at those approved in the last budget. The most recent continuing resolution, passed by Congress this month, kept funding levels for IMLS at the same level as FY 2024.
President Trump signed the continuing resolution into law on March 15, one day after issuing the executive order effectively ordering the shuttering of IMLS, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the United States Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency.
