(C) South Dakota Searchlight
This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
State Library faces Trump threat to federal funding after escaping the Noem knife • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
['John Hult', 'Joshua Haiar', 'Seth Tupper', 'More From Author', '- April', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-04-04
The Trump administration’s move to gut a library-supporting federal agency could make a victory for backers of the South Dakota State Library short-lived.
Last year, State Library advocates were aghast at a budget plan from then-Gov. Kristi Noem that would’ve hollowed out the Pierre-based organization, which operates under the umbrella of the state Department of Education.
The Legislature softened the cuts during its annual lawmaking session that ended earlier this month, keeping the State Library alive and eligible for a federal grant that funds much of the organization’s budget.
Then, the day after lawmakers went home in mid-March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the head of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, or IMLS — which provides the grant — to cut its operations to the “maximum extent allowable by law.”
That has State Library advocates worried about its future again.
Among other duties, the State Library handles interlibrary loans, pays for databases that are accessible at no cost through any public library in the state, provides support for summer reading programs and organizes professional development workshops. It also offers Braille and talking book services for readers with disabilities.
Noem’s budget plan, unveiled in December, would have pared down every piece of the State Library’s operations except those last two items. The proposed cuts were deep enough to dash about $1.3 million in federal matching dollars from the IMLS. That money, on top of the state’s $1 million contribution, was enough to fund the State Library’s border-to-border operations and pay its 21 employees.
Noem wasn’t around to fight for her proposal, however. She left the state to take a job as head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before state lawmakers dug into the details of her budget.
The Legislature ultimately worked with the administration of her successor, Gov. Larry Rhoden, to fashion a compromise that spared the jobs of all but 3.5 State Library employees.
The $850,000 in state funding approved in the deal with the state Education Department was enough to preserve IMLS grant funding, even as the Legislature dissolved the citizen board that oversees the State Library. Summer reading program support, training for librarians and most of the databases were saved in the deal.
Nancy Van Der Weide, the Education Department’s spokeswoman, said databases from EBSCO, World Book, BookFlix, Peterson’s Test Prep, SIRS Issues Research, Discoverer, Research Library, U.S. Newsstream, and CultureGrams will remain available to South Dakota citizens through the State Library.
State unsure about impact of Trump action
The IMLS dollars that buoy South Dakota’s State Library serve similar purposes in every state. Grants from the organization also support curation and collection management activities at museums and local libraries.
Congress last authorized IMLS grant funding in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. There’s money available through the 2025 federal fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
DOGE in SD For more about the impact of federal firings, funding freezes, spending cuts and grant cancellations, see Searchlight’s DOGE in SD page.
Trump’s order gave the agency a week to craft a plan to comply with the edict. IMLS Acting Director Keith E. Sonderling has already placed all employees of IMLS on administrative leave.
South Dakota’s State Library has its funding in hand from federal fiscal year 2024, according to Van Der Weide. The department “is waiting on a grant award for FY 2025,” she wrote, referring to the current round of funding.
Congress authorized grant funding through FY 2025, she said. But as a department, Van Der Weide said, “we do not have a clear indication” as to the impact of the Trump executive order.
On Friday, the attorneys general of New York and Rhode Island and 18 other states — but not South Dakota — filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to stop what they called the “targeted destruction” of the IMLS and two other agencies targeted by Trump. The lawsuit alleges that the president illegally overrode the power of Congress to decide how federal funds are spent.
Library group reaction, union concerns
The congressional authorization is some comfort to Elizabeth Fox, head of the South Dakota Library Association. That group’s membership rallied opposition to Noem’s proposed cuts, both before and during the legislative session.
The words “allowable by law” in the Trump order and the knowledge that another year of federal grant money is written into the law helped calm — for her, at least — some of the “more extreme” reactions that followed news of the IMLS targeting.
Fox was thinking about the next round of IMLS funding long before Noem’s December budget address. Every five-year funding cycle for the federal agency represents a moment of action for library advocates around the nation, Fox said.
“We have known for a year now that we were looking at getting that renewed,” Fox said. “We knew we were going to be having this discussion.”
Others remain concerned, especially after the news on administrative leave for IMLS staff. That move is likely to complicate the agency’s performance of its statutory obligations, according to a federal employees union called the American Federation of Government Employees.
“In the absence of staff, all work processing 2025 applications has ended,” the group’s local chapter wrote in a statement to South Dakota Searchlight. “The status of previously awarded grants is unclear. Without staff to administer the programs, it is likely that most grants will be terminated.”
Museum director: IMLS director statement ‘terrifying’
Conor McMahon heads the Journey Museum in Rapid City. His organization got $50,000 from IMLS a few years ago to help fund an exhibit on the historic, deadly Rapid City floods of 1972.
The federal agency also serves as a funding source for unglamorous museum necessities like new shelving, McMahon said. That’s a topic the Journey director expects to broach with the Rapid City Council in the coming months to deal with a dearth of space in the organization’s building.
“If the city doesn’t fund this, IMLS would have been our second source,” McMahon said.
The Trump administration’s administrative leave order for IMLS employees was set for 90 days. Even if those employees return to work at the end of 90 days, or at the order of a federal judge, McMahon is not encouraged by a statement from Sonderling, the IMLS acting director. Sonderling is also the deputy secretary for the Department of Labor. Sonderling said he’s committed to “revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”
To McMahon and other museum and library advocates around the country, that sounds like a pledge to politicize the work of preserving and maintaining the nation’s history and culture.
For museum curators and library professionals who aim to offer an honest, unvarnished and nuanced perspective to the public, McMahon said, “I don’t think you could find a more terrifying statement than that.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with the addition of information about a lawsuit filed since the story’s initial publication.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2025/04/04/state-library-faces-trump-threat-to-federal-funding-after-escaping-the-noem-knife/
Published and (C) by South Dakota Searchlight
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/sdsearchlight/
