The federal agency responsible for supporting the nation’s libraries and museums has reinstated all grants terminated by President Donald Trump, complying with a federal court ruling that found the executive order mandating the cuts to have been unlawful.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the only federal agency responsible for funding libraries. This year, the White House ordered it to scale down to a “minimum presence,” forcing it to slash its spending by millions.
But in a November ruling, the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island found that the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the IMLS was unlawful.
In a brief statement posted online Wednesday, the IMLS said that “upon further review” it had reinstated all federal grants. “This action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination,” it added. The statement did not directly reference the court ruling.
The Trump administration had gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services in March, ordering the agency to dismantle as much of itself as possible. In response, staff at the agency were placed on administrative leave.
The agency had submitted a budget request to Congress of $280 million for the 2025 fiscal year. According to a federal watchdog report in June, the agency’s funding had been slashed by more than half in the first five months of the year, with its spending down by over $100 million compared with previous years.
In April, the attorneys general of 21 states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s executive order dismantling the agency, along with several others. In his ruling last month, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell found that the administration’s efforts to diminish the agencies had been “arbitrary and capricious” and that the president did not have the unilateral authority to refuse to spend congressionally appropriated funds.
“The question presented in this case is a familiar one: may the Executive Branch undertake such actions in circumvention of the will of the Legislative Branch? In recent months, this Court — along with other courts across the country — has concluded that it may not. That answer remains the same here,” McConnell wrote.
The total value of the IMLS grants reinstated as a result of the order was not immediately clear. Last year, the agency gave libraries and museums $266.7 million in grants and funding for policymaking and research.
In a statement welcoming Wednesday’s reinstatement, American Library Association President Sam Helmick said: “This means that libraries across the country will be able to resume vital services for learning, imagination, and economic opportunity. … Every public, school and academic library and their patrons benefit from the research findings and program outcomes from individual library and organization grantees.”
The bulk of IMLS’s grants are distributed through its Grants to States program, which annually distributes $160 million to library agencies in every state and the District of Columbia using a population-based formula. According to ALA, the nation’s oldest library group, library administrators use the money to fund initiatives such as summer reading programs for children and early-years literacy programs.
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