Pres. Trump recently signed a budget bill that included ongoing funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for the 2026 fiscal year. But what that means on the ground in the Cowboy State is still unclear.
The funding comes after the federal government abruptly terminated NEH grants to humanities councils across the country last spring, including a $850,000 grant to Wyoming Humanities. The NEH allocates funding for state humanities councils every year, according to a legislatively mandated formula. Some saw the grant terminations as a violation of that obligation.
Funding the NEH this year is a pivot from last spring, when the Trump administration proposed entirely defunding the NEH and NEA, along with multiple other government agencies.
The cancelled Wyoming Humanities grant accounted for roughly 80% of the nonprofit’s budget and ultimately pared its staff of six down to two.
The 55-year-old organization typically receives funding every year from the NEH. It’s at the center of a statewide web of community organizations and historic sites, and supports programming like educational lectures and museum exhibits across Wyoming.
Wyoming Humanities Executive Director Chloé Flagg said she still has a lot of questions about what the future will hold after the passage of the officially titled Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026.
“ I can tell you what it doesn't mean,” she said. “Right now, it does not mean that we're returning to any kind of semblance of how things were. This does not seal our fate in any way.”
That sentiment was echoed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the membership organization for councils across the country. It serves as their collective lobbying arm, as well as their point of communication with the NEH.
“We acknowledge and appreciate Congress’ continued bipartisan support for humanities councils and their decision to continue their decades-long investment of federal funds in state- and local-level cultural funding,” the organization wrote in a statement on its website. “However, we echo their concerns about interruptions to the Congressional power of the purse.”
What’s next for Wyoming Humanities
Flagg said that Wyoming Humanities has already set up a budget for FY2026 that doesn’t rely on federal funds, and that the organization won’t actually know how much they’ll receive from the NEH until April or May.
When she heard the news that Trump had signed the bill into law on Jan. 23, Flagg said it felt a little anticlimactic.
“It has just been such a long, tumultuous journey to get this signed,” she said. “But we're very, very grateful to legislators and senators that saw value in maintaining this funding for the NEH and the NEA.”
Flagg added that the organization won’t know what kind of conditions or specifications will be attached to the NEH funding until later in the spring.
“ It's just a waiting game and you can really run away and speculate for days and days about what these grant agreements might look like,” she said. “But at the end of the day, we're just, we're very grateful for this opportunity and to be in this position to again feel valued.”
In the absence of federal funding for the bulk of the last year, Wyoming Humanities turned to private donors and grants to fill in the gap. That included a $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation back in late May. The foundation sent those grants out to humanities councils around the country to help cushion the impact of the NEH grant loss.
Flagg said that Wyoming Humanities’ current role is more a grant distributor to organizations around the state, which has put the nonprofit between a bit of a rock and a hard place when seeking new funding sources.
“We don't want to be competing with the organizations that we are trying to support ourselves,” she said. “So it's a very delicate balance of what grants we do apply for.”
Still, given the volatility of federal funds, Flagg said the nonprofit does not plan to “lean on or rely on” NEH funding, and will continue to have the core of its operations come from grants, foundations and private support.
“ We’re really hoping that those federal dollars, when they do flow into our organization, can flow right back out to the people of Wyoming, because that's what they're there for,” she said. “We're trying to keep our operations homegrown as much as possible.”
In collaboration with WyoHistory.org, Wyoming Humanities recently published the second edition of a book titled “Tribal Government: Wind River Reservation,” which was originally published in the ‘90s and dives into the history of governance for both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes.
With support from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, the nonprofit is working to get copies of the book into the libraries and government and history classrooms in every high school in the state.
“ We are working on support curricular materials so that we can hand this over to high school teachers across the state to support Indian Education for All standards,” said Flagg.
The nonprofit will also sponsor the annual Teton Powwow and Native Voices celebration in Jackson this May and is working on creating a short documentary with Caldera Productions and Wyoming PBS titled “ West of the Revolution: the American West in 1776” for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States this July.
Wyoming Humanities is also still running its Pronghorn Reads book club, and launched its first Cultural Grows Grant this winter, which aims to provide general operating support grants for nonprofits around the state. Fifteen organizations around the state will be part of this year’s inaugural cohort.
