UNITED STATES. Despite an agenda loaded and led to the run between Ukraine, the increase in customs prices and migrants on the Mexican border, Donald Trump finds time to redefine American cultural policy. To tell the truth, its room for maneuver is limited, culture is mainly private and states. But its fight in the matter which is above all symbolic is no less fundamental, because it touches the essence of its program “Make America Great Again” (Maga): cultural values.
Its main target is the diversity, equity, inclusion program (DEI). It is not strictly speaking a program but an incentive to take into account minorities. It has its origin in the anti -Segregationists of the 1960s and extended over time to all ethnic, religious or gender communities with an acceleration in recent times during the “Black Live Matters” demonstrations and LGBTQ+claims. In institutional level, Joe Biden had made two decrees to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in federal administrations, which Donald Trump hastened to cancel from the first day. In fact, this led some museums to stop their inclusive programs and close the services that carry them, for example to the Smithsonian.
At the same time, he signed several decrees aimed at creating a “national garden of American heroes”, protecting controversial statues, such as that of Christopher Columbus, or even to arouse the installation of news. As of his arrival too, he ended the presidential committee of the arts and letters which he had suppressed during his first mandate and which Biden had recreated. On the other hand, he attributed the presidency of the Kennedy Center for the scene arts, which produces and broadcasts shows, with a budget of around 250 million euros for this. It is for him a way of better controlling the programming of this reference center created in 1971.
One more stage has been taken in the programmed dismantling of federal organizations. On March 3, the Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency (Ministry of Government Effectiveness), led by Elon Musk, created by a Executive order From January 2025 to make the federal administration lose weight, closed five regional offices of two agencies responsible for managing federal goods including heritage sites and an art collection: GSA Fine Arts and GSA Historic Preservation. On March 14, he ordered the abolition of the Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS) which finances libraries and museums with a (modest) budget of 268 million euros.
However, he is not completely free to do what he wants and must have the convention of the congress for some dismantling. It is undoubtedly (the lawyers do not all agree), the case for the IMLS and it is certainly so for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that it did not attack head -on but which he obtained the departure of their presidents from ethnic communities.
Latest assault: against the Ministry of Education and its 2024 budget – not quantified in millions of dollars such as IMLS, NEA or NEH – but in billions of dollars.
