The Latest From IMLS and What You Need to Prepare For Right Now
It’s only been a little more than a month since the current administration dropped an Executive Order related to funding and projects from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). In the weeks following the Executive Order, the IMLS was quickly turned into a propaganda machine. Staffers were fired and grant projects were discontinued just days later.
Libraries and museums were quick to highlight what the IMLS funds do for their institutions. IMLS funds disbursed to states–just one of the IMLS projects–go through the respective State Libraries, which then allocate that money to the appropriate places. In some states, the response was better than in others, and that tended to fall along party lines. Red states had a much quieter response than in blue states–the response from Illinois’s State Librarian was much louder than than from neighboring Iowa or Indiana or Wisconsin or Missouri or Kentucky. Part of that is by design, especially in states where State Libraries were on the table for dismantling this year (fortunately, South Dakota, Arkansas, and New Hamsphire all failed to pass those disastrous bills, thanks in large part to loud public response). This is unfortunate, too, as those states with little or no response are those which receive the largest benefit from those IMLS funds and for whom these cuts will fundamentally alter library services.
We have also seen at least one state library already share that they’ve laid off several employees because of the loss of IMLS funds.
There’s an update to the IMLS news this week, and it ties together a lot of the things that advocates and activists have been trying to highlight not only during this period of dismantling, but in the years leading up to this moment. All State Libraries received the following email from the IMLS this week:
We’ve seen the way that the IMLS is already spinning the use of tax dollars to libraries through a social media propaganda campaign. This latest demand is going to not only help in continuing that campaign, it’s going to put targets on the backs of individual librarians and libraries.
The three demands in the email are asking state libraries to outline the ways that the Grants to States are being used. It is worth noting that these Grants were provided well before the deluge of bigoted, racist Executive Orders began in January–but that doesn’t matter. State libraries are now being put in a position to categorize how they use the money they’ve been granted.
This is precisely why states like Mississippi began to comply in advance and pulled access to state databases with research related to gender and race before this email even hit inboxes. It wouldn’t be surprising if this is also why the fight over Ohio’s state budget for libraries didn’t also include a fight to ensure that LGBTQ+ books aren’t segregated from the collection–a provision of the budget that will be exploited and pushed into law. This sets up the state legislature to continue censoring anything not pre-approved by the federal government (Ohio is, of course, the perfect testing grounds given its connection to the administration and the potential future governor).
The second part of this email asks state libraries to explain where and how the money being granted to them helps educate the public. Let’s be crystal clear here: this is because the current Acting Director of the IMLS has no idea how libraries (or museums) work and because it is the perfect opportunity to begin targeting institutions based on the promises made by the President early on in his campaign to stamp out education and literacy related to mis- and dis- information. Once the Acting Director knows what resources are helping teach Americans how to be information literate–and it’ll likely be all of them–then the next set of orders will begin to execute the plan to target professionals doing this kind of work.
You can’t be surprised. It’s been on paper for years.
That final part of the email is something that folks really need to pay attention to. As I mentioned in my initial post about the IMLS being gutted, the agency is being turned into a propaganda machine. First, they’ll stamp out all of the things they deem traitorous, including education around information literacy. Then, they’ll provide funding again–but only to projects that paint an alternate reality of what America is, and only to projects which laud the current administration for its work. This is precisely why anything outside of the narrow scope of white, cishet, able-bodied, and Christian will continue to be targeted and why any person helping provide information outside of this template will be labeled anti-American (if not far worse). We have already seen a PhD student be disappeared for writing an opinion piece in her university newspaper that did not bow down to the administration. This will continue, and it’ll include born and bred American citizens, too.
Too many didn’t believe that what was in Project 2025 was real. Too many didn’t believe they were already living the reality of Project 2025 over the last several years and that the document itself was just formalizing what was already going on. Anyone who cares about public institutions of democracy like schools and libraries really needs to take America 250 seriously. This all-out propaganda campaign is going to be destructive to the true history and diversity of America, and it is being built on the back of what’s already happened and what’s to come of Project 2025. The White House is already peddling propaganda that it created with the help of the ultra-conservative Hillsdale College. We cannot continue complacency and we cannot continue pretending that it won’t really happen. That didn’t work over these last 4+ years when the writing of library and school destabilization and dismantling was spray-painted on the wall.
The same tactics that are necessary to project books and curriculum are the same ones necessary now. Vote, run for office if you can, get your asses in board room seats, get your representatives on the phone, and keep on talking about what’s going on. Show up where and how you can, and talk up America 250 until you are blue in the face.
It’s also essential that if you are or have been funded by an IMLS grant that you protect yourself. Certainly, the government’s got your information already from the application. But what about your emails to and from colleagues? They–or their allies–will seek out that information and use it to target you specifically. Same thing with your social media. They will track you down, screen grab whatever they deem inappropriate, and use it against you. This is not hyperbole, and it never has been. If it’s not information you’d want twisted by sick minds, then it doesn’t belong in writing. This is a pain, but protecting yourself is more crucial now than ever before.
“IMLS appreciates your dedication to the American public” is our sign off in the email to State Libraries. The language here is intentional.
Only some people are Americans.
Those are the only people you are to serve–and only if you yourself are a subservient, submissive member of the American class.