By Max Ayoub
@redlineproject
AI disclosure: Perplexity.ai was used to assist research and citation in this story. ChatGPT was used to create the summary section, and Google Gemini created the images. NotebookLM created the podcast summary.
Summary
- Trump’s 2025 executive order to “reduce bureaucracy” targeted the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
- IMLS funding supports U.S. libraries and museums; Chicago’s systems were heavily affected.
- Elon Musk’s DOGE put 80% of IMLS staff on leave, halting grants.
- Courts later blocked the move.
- Library leaders fear lasting uncertainty and funding instability.
On March 14, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” which listed seven federal agencies and mandated that they be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” All seven of these agencies dealt with social programs or public services, which the Trump admin has framed as “unnecessary” bureaucracy.
Casually included in the center of the list was one of the most important public service-oriented federal agencies in our government: the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Founded in 1996, this agency functions to enforce government funding, support, and maintenance of museums and libraries across the country, with the goal of ensuring continued and widespread public access to museum and library services. Since its inception, it has been instrumental in keeping American public libraries and museums alive.
As Chicago is home to one of the largest municipal public library systems in the country, as well as multiple academic libraries like the University of Illinois Library, it has felt the effects of Trump’s war on library and museum services to the fullest extent. Both Chicago library administrators and patrons are seeing the changes realized in their own day-to-day lives.
Presidential Power
While Trump’s executive order on March 14 set this recent conflict into motion, the story of Trump’s war against libraries actually dates back to his first presidential term. During his first tenure as president, Trump’s administration proposed annual budgets that sought to gut federal funding for the IMLS by increasingly large amounts, four fiscal years in a row. Fortunately, these attempts were thwarted by Congress on all four occasions, who did not pass the budget plans as written and kept the IMLS relatively well-funded.
This time around, however, Trump is not giving up so easily. His aforementioned executive order signifies a drastic change in philosophy from the administration. Rather than “playing by the rules” by attempting to dismantle federal agencies through the traditional legislative process, Trump is now seeking to bypass the legislative branch entirely and force his agenda through unilateral executive action.
However, the Constitution is still obstructing his agenda. Article II of the Constitution allows the president to make executive orders as a means of directing the government to take action on a given issue, but these orders do not function as laws by themselves. They can be overruled by Congress, the courts or even future presidents.
This means that Trump’s executive order regarding the IMLS effectively functions as a coercive demand for the agency’s dismantling, rather than a legally actionable mandate that must be followed.
DOGE vs The IMLS
Following the executive order, the Trump administration’s war against the IMLS intensified rapidly. On March 31, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — a new branch of Trump’s administration– put approximately 80% of the IMLS on administrative leave without attaining any semblance of congressional or institutional approval.
With this severe setback in operational capabilities, the IMLS had no choice but to suspend grant processing indefinitely, throwing the future of American museum and library funding as a whole into complete uncertainty. In the following days, the IMLS began to send out grant termination notices to various state libraries, effectively revoking federal funding to the tune of millions of dollars.
This was the first time that the Trump administration was finally able to directly harm the IMLS, hitting them with mass layoffs and forcefully handicapping their ability to function. Although funding has been largely restored in the months since due to holdups in the courts and institutional pushback on the administration, the uncertainty caused by this drastic authoritarian overstep had severe ramifications across all libraries in America.
Effects in Chicago
Linda Naru is the Associate University Librarian for Administrative Services at the University of Illinois Chicago Library. As a library administrator, she experienced the turmoil and disruption caused by the Trump administration’s shock to the system firsthand.
“We do not rely on direct funding from IMLS to support our core programs and services to students and faculty,” Naru said. “The most significant issues are uncertainty about future federal funding in general and consequent difficulty in financial planning.
“We currently have an IMLS grant for the period of August 2024 to July 2026. In April 2025, midway through the project period, the Library was notified that the grant was terminated.”
This abrupt grant termination aligns with DOGE’s mass IMLS layoffs, resulting in their indefinite suspension of grant-writing operations.
Fortunately, the aforementioned legal pushback against the Trump administration meant that the termination was rescinded only a month later.
“The stop-and-restart events were disruptive to the UIC project,” Naru said. “We didn’t know if we would be reimbursed for grant expenses, and it took much staff time and effort to halt then resume the work.”
In addition to major disruptions in the standard flow of operations at the UIC Library, Trump’s dismantling of the IMLS could spell much larger problems across Chicago and Illinois libraries as a whole.
“Libraries are very interconnected,” Naru said. “We meet patron needs by borrowing materials from other Illinois libraries, and IMLS funds provide for the physical delivery and return of items. In fiscal year 2024, 11 million items were transferred among 1,700 Illinois libraries. The loss of IMLS funding to states would be a serious problem because all libraries, including UIC’s, would have to find a way to fund the resource sharing programs.”
The effects of Trump’s actions did not stop at the administrative level.
Danielle Fugate is an Undergraduate Engagement Program Graphic Aide at the UIC University Library, and her department was also impacted.
“We’ve already had to make cuts in our programming in preparation for not having the budget that we expect to have,” she said. “This limits the types of programming we’re able to do.”
The Undergraduate Engagement Program plans and oversees a number of undergraduate programs at the library, such as the Wall of Engagement and the Short Reads Book Club. If these programs were to disappear, Fugate said, the library would lose value as a place for students to connect.
Concerns for the Future
Since the initial DOGE cuts in April and the subsequent legal holdups, it would seem that Trump’s attention has shifted away from federal agencies like the IMLS and towards the multitude of other targets in his rotating roster of grievances.
As of Nov. 21, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island has ruled in favor of the lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of 21 states against the Trump administration, which claimed that his actions against the IMLS were unconstitutional.
Although this ruling means that their efforts to dismantle the agency have been effectively halted for now, the fact that they were willing to violate constitutional norms so brazenly in the first place means that there is no guarantee that they won’t try it again. The future of libraries and museums is still as unclear as it ever was in our country’s history.
“My concern is that free public resources like the library are being devalued in our world,” Fugate said. “The library isn’t just a place for educational resources. It’s a foundational place for community building and a vector for all kinds of social programs.”
Naru shared similar concerns for the future of American libraries.
“The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights strongly affirms equal access to information, confidentiality of patron records, challenging censorship and free speech,” she said. “We have to stand up against threats to our missions that are made through policy and funding decisions.”
Listen
Reporter Max Ayoub talks about reporting this story for The Red Line Project.