"Reading builds empathy": The case for saving America's libraries; Salon, March 30, 2025

 

MELANIE MCFARLAND,

Salon; "Reading builds empathy": The case for saving America's libraries

"Libraries are the nexuses of democratized access to culture, community expertise, diverse perspectives on history and the instruments that further that knowledge. They also are gathering spots and safe spaces for the vulnerable.

“People who are in library leadership, on boards, and certainly librarians even today, are not interested in limiting, shaping, prescribing how that creative and generative expression should be had,” says John Chrastka, Executive Director and founder of the non-profit advocacy organization EveryLibrary. “They're just interested in making sure that everybody's got a fair shake to get to it.”

This may be why the Trump administration is set on starving our nation’s libraries to death, or close enough to it."

The power of boycotts; The Ink, March 31, 2025

 Anand Giridharadas, The Ink; The power of boycotts

"Elon Musk’s feelings are hurt. His companies are suffering.

Weird, coming from the guy who denounced empathy as Western civilization’s “fundamental weakness.” While a little needling by Tim Walz about Tesla’s plummeting share price may have set him off, the real pain point is the #teslatakedown movement, which this past Saturday put on a worldwide day of action.

Folks on the right like to complain about boycotts. They’ve called them illegal. They’ve tried to intimidate those who’d dare use their economic power. They’ve threatened to criminalize the very idea. They’ve commingled peaceful calls for investors and shoppers to withhold their hard-earned dollars with acts of vandalism, and have tried to paint the entire movement as terrorism. But, as you might expect, accusations are confessions: what far-right political figures mean when they denounce boycotts is that they want to decide who gets boycotted.

So what is it that scares the guy who wants to privatize everything? Members of the public, exercising their private power to decide, and doing it collectively (Musk famously hates that whole collective thing). Because when that power is clearly targeted and well organized, it gets results. Maybe it’s the sheer gumption of speaking truth to power in its native language — money — that pains Musk. But that’s the free market, isn’t it?"

‘It reminds you of a fascist state’: Smithsonian Institution braces for Trump rewrite of US history; The Guardian, March 30, 2025

David Smith, The Guardian; ‘It reminds you of a fascist state’: Smithsonian Institution braces for Trump rewrite of US history

"The US president, who has sought to root out “wokeness” since returning to power in January, accused the Smithsonian of trying to rewrite history on issues of race and gender. In an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, he directed the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from its storied museums.

The move was met with dismay from historians who saw it as an attempt to whitewash the past and suppress discussions of systemic racism and social justice. With Trump having also taken over the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, there are fears that, in authoritarian fashion, he is aiming to control the future by controlling the past.

“It is a five-alarm fire for public history, science and education in America,” said Samuel Redman, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst."

Trump executive order on Smithsonian targets funding for ‘improper ideology’; Associated Press via The Guardian, March 27, 2025

 Associated Press via The Guardian; Trump executive order on Smithsonian targets funding for ‘improper ideology’

[Kip Currier: This Trump executive order is deeply disconcerting but not at all surprising: weeks ago, it was clear Trump 2.0 will target and attempt to reshape -- in its ideological image -- any institution that provides access to information, data, and the historical record, i.e. libraries, archives, and museums.]

[Excerpt]

"Donald Trump revealed his intentions to reshape the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order on Thursday that targets funding to programs with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology”.

The president said there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”.

He signed an executive order putting JD Vance in charge of an effort to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.

Trump’s order specifically names the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Women’s history museum, which is in development.

“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn – not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” the order said."

U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries; The New York Times, March 26, 2025

 Stephanie Nolen, The New York Times; U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries

[Kip Currier: Luke: 12:48: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."

What a tragic policy decision -- by the richest country on earth -- to stop financial support for vital vaccines that save lives and protect at-risk Global South children and adults.

As a nation, we have a moral imperative and calling to share our abundance with people in need.]

[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally.

The administration has decided to continue some key grants for medications to treat H.I.V. and tuberculosis, and food aid to countries facing civil wars and natural disasters.

Those decisions are included in a 281-page spreadsheet that the United States Agency for International Development sent to Congress Monday night, listing the foreign aid projects it plans to continue and to terminate. The New York Times obtained a copy of the spreadsheet and other documents describing the plans.

The documents provide a sweeping overview of the extraordinary scale of the administration’s retreat from a half-century-long effort to present the United States to the developing world as a compassionate ally and to lead the fight against infectious diseases that kill millions of people annually."

Academic Publishers Braced for Slowdown as Trump DEI Purge Bites; Inside Higher Ed, March 21, 2025

 Jack Grove for Times Higher Education; Academic Publishers Braced for Slowdown as Trump DEI Purge Bites

"Academic presses may face a slump in sales as U.S. university librarians become more cautious about buying books related to gender, politics or race in light of Donald Trump’s attack on “woke” research, publishers have warned."

Nasa drops plan to land first woman and first person of color on the moon; The Guardian, March 21, 2025

Richard Luscombe  , The Guardian; Nasa drops plan to land first woman and first person of color on the moon

"Nasa has dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, in response to Donald Trump’s directives to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices at federal agencies.

The promise was a central plank of the space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027 for the first time since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.

The Artemis landing page of Nasa’s website previously included the words: “Nasa will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.”

The version of the page live on the website on Friday, however, appears with the phrase removed...

The move by Nasa is particularly notable because the creation of the Artemis program, and decision to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, were made in 2019 during the first Trump administration, according to the science journal Ars Technica.

The agency has made strides in recent years to embrace diversity and move away from its reputation as being staffed by old, white men. All 12 people who walked on the moon during six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 were white men aged between 36 and 47.

The first spaceflight by a US woman did not take place until 1983, when Sally Ride flew on the space shuttle Challenger. Nasa’s first Black astronaut in space was Guion Bluford, who flew a mission on Challenger later the same year."

Law Firm Bends in Face of Trump Demands; The New York Times, March 20, 2025

Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times ; Law Firm Bends in Face of Trump Demands

[Kip Currier: This law firm's capitulation and transactionalism epitomizes the definition of craven: 

contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly

It's also a terrible precedent to set for the rule of law, the legal profession, and democracy.]

[Excerpt]

"President Trump and the head of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP have reached a deal under which Mr. Trump will drop the executive order he leveled against the firm, Mr. Trump said on Thursday.

In the deal, Mr. Trump said, the firm agreed to a series of commitments, including to represent clients no matter their political affiliation and contribute $40 million in legal services to causes Mr. Trump has championed, including “the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.

It’s unclear how the money will be used to help the task force. The firm, Mr. Trump said, also agreed to conduct an audit to ensure its hiring practices are merit based “and will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.”"

The opposite of fascism: Living well and fighting back in a time of terrors; The Ink, March 19, 2025

 ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink; The opposite of fascism

Living well and fighting back in a time of terrors

"It’s tempting to think that the opposite of authoritarianism, of this nightmare we are living through, is an opposite politics.

And, indeed, the ongoing hijacking of the United States by broligarchs and MAGA minions requires a ferocious political response.

But everyone I talk to is drained by this responding, drained by the burden of constant vigilance, drained by the always-on coup, drained by the ping-ping-ping of executive actions and court orders and protests and town halls and threats and disappearances.

And often people confess guilt.

Guilt for doing anything but this civic duty they feel.

Guilt for having a good time out of doors.

Guilt for being with friends.

Guilt for saying they are doing fine, thank you, in fact great, actually, if they’re being honest, except for the whole world thing.

I want to suggest to you that you don’t need to feel this guilt. The best revenge against these grifters and bigots and billionaires and bullies is to live well, richly, together.

The best revenge is to refuse their values. To embody the kind of living — free, colorful, open — they want to snuff out. 

So when they dehumanize, you humanize.

When they try to fracture and divide people, you connect with people.

When they try to curtail the freedom to associate, you gather.

When they try to make it harder to speak your mind, you find your voice.

When they try to make you cynical, you double down on hope.

When they try to drown you in reacting to each little thing, you remember the far-off “beautiful tomorrow” you are fighting for.

When they try to consume you night and day, you reserve time for your garden or cooking or the feeling of your kid’s breath on your cheek as you cuddle.

They want all of all of us, and they want to saturate our beings only for them and their purposes — as fodder for their machines. They want politics to eat your dreams.

And so living well, and living in community, and living with others, and taking care of your people, and even not your people, is not just self-care in order to keep fighting. That was the 2016 idea. It is actually inseparable from resisting their big project.

Because having, and nurturing, in your life a sphere for joy and connection and community and love and food and music and human difference and living and letting live is everything they are not and is everything they are trying to take away.

Be what scares them. Live lives in colors their eyes can’t even see. Cook food they want to deport. Test the fire code with your parties. Form a scene that meets every Wednesday. Call someone you haven’t in a while. Fight with a smile. Fail and come back. Be weird. Be welcoming. Kiss converts. Refuse despair. Be disobedient. Laugh loudly. Hide someone. Call out. Root down.

They are waging a war on living. The more fully you live, the harder their job will be."

Jackie Robinson’s Pentagon Page Removed—Then Restored—In DEI Purge; Forbes, March 19, 2025

 Sara Dorn, Forbes ; Jackie Robinson’s Pentagon Page Removed—Then Restored—In DEI Purge

"A webpage dedicated to baseball star Jackie Robinson’s military career was removed from the Department of Defense website this week in the Pentagon’s purge of content it deems aligned with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives—but was later restored after the agency suggested it was a “mistake.”...

The page was “mistakenly” removed in the DEI purge, an unnamed Department of Defense official told ABC News, adding that it and others that had been taken down — including those honoring the Tuskegee Airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Navajo Code Talkers — would be restored.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot said in a statement to Forbes that errors are corrected “in rare cases that content is removed—either deliberately or by mistake—that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive.”

Ullyot defended the Trump administration’s directive to dismantle DEI initiatives at the agency, however, referring to the acronym as “Discriminatory Equity Ideology” which he said “is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with services’ core warfighting mission.”"

Jackie Robinson’s Army story deleted in Defense Department DEI purge; The Washington Post, March 19, 2025

 

Cindy Boren

 and 

Andrew Golden

, The Washington Post; Jackie Robinson’s Army story deleted in Defense Department DEI purge

[Kip Currier: Another purge of a story about a person of color from the Department of Defense (DoD) website, just as we knew has been happening, following the Trump anti-DEI executive order. This purged site is about legendary Major League Baseball (MLB) player Jackie Robinson. As with the example a few days ago regarding Medal of Honor recipient Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers, the label "DEI" was added to Jackie Robinson's URL.

Thankfully, the story about Jackie Robinson is still accessible via the Internet Archive.

These kinds of purges of digital information about historically disadvantaged persons are akin to the challenging and banning of books that disproportionately are targeted against books by marginalized authors and/or about marginalized persons, which some do not want people to be able to access.

Thank libraries, archives, museums, and non-profit organizations like the Internet Archive that work tirelessly to promote access to diverse information sources and preserve information in myriad formats for all to be able to freely access.]

[Excerpt]

"An article telling the story of the Army career of Jackie Robinson, the Hall of Fame hero who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, no longer is accessible on the Department of Defense website’s series on athletes who served, apparently removed in a purge of articles related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Robinson, described by President Trump last month as helping “drive our country forward to greatness,” served in the Army during World War II. On Tuesday night ESPN’S Jeff Passan noted that “DEI” had been added to the URL on a page about Robinson’s military past. As of Wednesday morning, the story has been taken down, but it remains available through the Internet Archive."

U.S. Marine Band forced to cancel concert with students of color after Trump DEI order; 60 Minutes, March 16, 2025

 60 Minutes; U.S. Marine Band forced to cancel concert with students of color after Trump DEI order

"After an executive order ending DEI initiatives, the U.S. Marine Band canceled a concert featuring young musicians of color. Veterans stepped in to mentor the aspiring musicians."

Pentagon restores webpage for Black Medal of Honor winner but defends DEI purge; The Guardian, March 17, 2025

Maya Yang, The Guardian; Pentagon restores webpage for Black Medal of Honor winner but defends DEI purge

[Kip Currier: In my comments on a prior Guardian story yesterday, I noted that although it's good that the webpage for Maj. Gen. Rogers has been restored and the pejorative label "DEImedal" has been removed from the website address, we are left with many troubling concerns and questions. Chief among them: how many other websites have been temporarily or permanently removed and/or altered that relate to marginalized persons?

Now, we have a clearer picture, from this Guardian and Associated Press reporting:

In all, thousands of pages honoring contributions by women and minority groups have been taken down in efforts to delete material promoting diversity, equity and inclusion – an action that Parnell defended at a briefing.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/17/defense-department-black-medal-honor-webpage-restored 

These purges more than ever underscore the vital work of people and institutions who are collecting, archiving, and preserving digital records; people like archivists and library and museum staffs. Remember this when someone shortsightedly or misguidedly asks whether libraries, archives, and museums are still needed in the Internet and AI ages.

Other non-profit organizations, too, such as the Internet Archive and its digital preservation-missioned Wayback Machine, are crucial for preserving as much information and as many webpages as possible. 

Digital preservation of the information and webpages removed by entities like the current Trump administration could eventually enable that information to be restored. It is imperative that everyone have access to the full breadth of human experience and history, rather than the fragmented shards of history and lived experiences that a particular political administration deems acceptable.

Access to information is a core principle of healthy, well-functioning, responsive democracies. As the late Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison sagely asserted, "Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations."]

[Excerpt]

A screenshot posted on Bluesky by the writer Brandon Friedman noted that a Google preview continued to show the defense department’s profile page – noting of Rogers that, “as a Black man, he worked for gender and race equality while in the service”. Friedman added that the page no longer worked and the URL had been “changed to include ‘DEI medal’”.

By Monday, however, the site was operational once more – and the URL had returned to its original formulation, with the letters DEI no longer present.

In a statement on Monday that did not elaborate, a defense department spokesperson told the Guardian: “The department has restored the Medal of Honor story about army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers … The story was removed during auto removal process.”

While the defense department also claimed publicly on Monday that internet pages honoring Rogers, as well as Japanese American service members, had been taken down mistakenly, spokesperson Sean Parnell also staunchly defended its overall campaign to strip out content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which the Trump administration considers “DEI”.

“I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this – that anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is, is frankly, incorrect,” Parnell said.

In all, thousands of pages honoring contributions by women and minority groups have been taken down in efforts to delete material promoting diversity, equity and inclusion – an action that Parnell defended at a briefing.

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump have already removed the only female four-star officer on the joint chiefs of staff, navy Adm Lisa Franchetti, and removed its Black chairperson, Gen CQ Brown Jr.”

Pentagon webpage for Black Medal of Honor winner restored after outcry; The Guardian, March 17, 2025

Maya Yang, The Guardian; Pentagon webpage for Black Medal of Honor winner restored after outcry

[Kip Currier: Speaking out against injustice can work: The Department of Defense has restored the webpage honoring Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers and has removed the pejorative "DEImedal" label that had been added to the webpage, after enough people apparently called out Pete Hegseth et al.

• How many other people like Maj. Gen Rogers, though, are being "disappeared" and made invisible? 
• Whose histories and struggles and achievements are being purged from historical records?
• How many other websites are being removed?

Recent examples tell us that that number is likely to be many, many people. For example, only after a similar outcry when the U.S. Air Force removed a video about the Tuskegee Airmen and Women's Airfare Service Pilots (WASPs) from a military training course "after President Donald Trump issued a sweeping order barring DEI programs from the federal government and military", did the Air Force reinstate the materials about the Airmen and WASPs.

The take-away: we need people to continue to raise the alarm when instances are spotted like those above.

And we need to then spread the word quickly and demand that such purges be remedied and the original information restored.

History is NOT the possession of one group or movement.

History -- accurate, genuine, unexpurgated, accessible history -- is the collective birthright and legacy of all the American people and peoples of the world.

Censoring or eliminating the story of one person diminishes the entire chronicle of humanity.]

[Excerpt]

"The US defense department webpage celebrating a Black Medal of Honor recipient that was removed and had the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address has been restored – and the letters scrubbed – after an outcry."

Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website; The Guardian, March 16, 2024

Maya Yang, The Guardian ; Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website

[Kip Currier: Shame on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and all those responsible for dishonoring this deserving veteran by removing him from the Department of Defense website and adding DEI to the website's URL, as if the acronym DEI (i.e. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is a mark of infamy and dishonor.

The essence of DEI is ethically-grounded and has been and is still about (1) recognizing that human beings are made up of near infinite varieties of individual and collective qualities, (2) righting historical wrongs that have been done to groups of people, (3) inviting everyone to share their voices and votes in the democratic experiment, and (4) having an equal opportunity for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

Believing and knowing that these kinds of spiteful acts -- like this one done to the late Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers -- against individuals and communities who have experienced genuine marginalization and/or who have fought against injustice and discrimination will someday be overturned and rightfully remedied keeps my spirit hopeful and optimistic for the long term.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

[Excerpt]

"The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.

On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.

According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge."

Russell T Davies: gay society in ‘greatest danger I’ve ever seen’ after Trump win; The Guardian, March 16, 2025

 Hannah Al-Othman , The Guardian; Russell T Davies: gay society in ‘greatest danger I’ve ever seen’ after Trump win

"Russell T Davies has said gay society is in the “greatest danger I have ever seen”, since the election of Donald Trump as US president in November.

Speaking to the Guardian at the Gaydio Pride awards in Manchester on Friday, the Doctor Who screenwriter said the rise in hostility was not limited to the US but “is here [in the UK] now”.

“As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale,” he said.

“I’ve literally seen a difference in the way I’m spoken to as a gay man since that November election, and that’s a few months of weaponising hate speech, and the hate speech creeps into the real world.”

“I’m not being alarmist,” he added. “I’m 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we’re in the greatest danger I have ever seen.”...

Davies also used his keynote speech at the awards ceremony, which rewards the efforts made to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the UK, to criticise Trump, and the president’s ally Elon Musk.

“I think times are darkening beyond all measure and beyond anything I have seen in my lifetime,” he told the audience, which included the singers Louise Redknapp and Katy B, and the Traitors contestants Leanne Quigley and Minah Shannon.

Davies said he had turned 18 and left home in 1981, adding: “And that is exactly the year that rumours and whispers of a strange new virus came along, which came to haunt our community and to test us in so many ways.”

“The joyous thing about this is that we fought back,” he said. The community “militarised, campaigned, marched and demanded the medicine”.

He added: “We demanded the science. We demanded the access.”...

But the peril the gay community now faced, he said, was even greater than that in the 1980s.

“The threat from America, it’s like something at The Lord of the Rings. It’s like an evil rising in the west, and it is evil,” Davies said.

“We’ve had bad prime ministers and we’ve had bad presidents before. What we’ve never had is a billionaire tech baron openly hating his trans daughter,” he added.

Musk, the de facto head of the “department of government efficiency”, bought the social networking site Twitter, which he renamed X. A study by the University of California, Berkeley found hate speech on the platform rose by 50% in the months after it was bought by the billionaire.

“We have never had this in the history of the world,” Davies said. “It is terrifying because he and the people like him are in control of the facts, they’re in control of information, they’re in control of what people think, and that is what we’re now facing.”

But Davies said the gay community would do “what we always do in times of peril, we gather at night”, and would once again come together, and fight against this latest wave of hostility and oppression.

“What we will do in Elon Musk’s world, that we’re heading towards, is what artists have always done,” he told the Guardian, “which is to meet in cellars, and plot, and sing, and compose, and paint, and make speeches, and march.”

“If we have to be those rebels in basements yet again,” he added, “which is when art thrives, then that’s what we’ll become.”"

Trump targets libraries and state-funded media organizations amid Voice of America’s staff cut; The Independent, March 15, 2025

 Gustaf Kilander, The Independent; Trump targets libraries and state-funded media organizations amid Voice of America’s staff cut

"The Trump administration continued its gutting of the federal government on Saturday as it began making significant cuts to Voice of America and other state-operated programming supportive of democratic ideals. 

As Congress passed government funding on Friday night, Trump ordered the administration to cut back the functions of a number of agencies as much as possible in accordance with the law. One of the affected institutions was the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia, as well as Radio Marti, which broadcasts news in Spanish in Cuba. 

In an executive order signed late on Friday, Trump eviscerated a number of smaller offices and agencies that do everything from battling homelessness to funding libraries.

The order stated that the agencies and offices will see their federal grants reviewed. The grants will be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”...

The advocacy group said it “condemns this decision as a departure from the U.S.’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the U.S. government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against this unprecedented move.”...

The latest reductions are especially provocative because the Agency for Global Media is an independent agency chartered by Congress, which passed a law in 2020 limiting the power of the agency’s presidentially appointed executives. Trump has already taken several moves to gut congressionally-mandated programs, setting up a potential Supreme Court showdown over the limits of presidential power.

Trump also took aim at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency that supports libraries, archives, and museums in all U.S. states."

Trump targets libraries and state-funded media organizations amid Voice of America’s staff cut; The Independent, March 15, 2025

 Gustaf Kilander, The Independent; Trump targets libraries and state-funded media organizations amid Voice of America’s staff cut

"The Trump administration continued its gutting of the federal government on Saturday as it began making significant cuts to Voice of America and other state-operated programming supportive of democratic ideals. 

As Congress passed government funding on Friday night, Trump ordered the administration to cut back the functions of a number of agencies as much as possible in accordance with the law. One of the affected institutions was the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia, as well as Radio Marti, which broadcasts news in Spanish in Cuba. 

In an executive order signed late on Friday, Trump eviscerated a number of smaller offices and agencies that do everything from battling homelessness to funding libraries.

The order stated that the agencies and offices will see their federal grants reviewed. The grants will be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”...

The advocacy group said it “condemns this decision as a departure from the U.S.’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the U.S. government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against this unprecedented move.”...

The latest reductions are especially provocative because the Agency for Global Media is an independent agency chartered by Congress, which passed a law in 2020 limiting the power of the agency’s presidentially appointed executives. Trump has already taken several moves to gut congressionally-mandated programs, setting up a potential Supreme Court showdown over the limits of presidential power.

Trump also took aim at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency that supports libraries, archives, and museums in all U.S. states."