Nearly all employees at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency created by Congress to support American museums and libraries, were put on administrative leave Monday, according to a Trump administration official. An IMLS employee and a union representing them said all employees were put on leave, but an administration official said 20% of IMLS employees were not.
The move still impacted about 80% of IMLS’ roughly 77-employee staff.
Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the agency, as well as six other governmental entities, to be reduced to “the minimum presence.” A few weeks ago, employees of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were spotted in the IMLS building in Washington, D.C., to attend the swearing in of the new acting commissioner, Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling.
AFGE Local 403, the union representing IMLS employees, said the notification to employees came after a “brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership.” It said museums and libraries would no longer be able to contact IMLS staff for updates about their funding. The message also said the status of previously awarded grants is unclear, but that funding is likely to be terminated.
IMLS has approximately 77 employees and was created by Congress as an independent federal agency in 1996 through the Museum and Library Services Act to support American museums and libraries. Last year, the institute awarded $267 million in grants across the country, with a focus on helping to organize book drives and museum field trips in areas without existing access to libraries or museums.
EveryLibrary, an organization supporting libraries across the country, called the move to put employees on leave “potentially devastating for institutions that depend on federal support to meet local needs.”
“This is not merely a bureaucratic activity; it is a crisis for the library, museum, and archive communities across the United States,” the group said in a statement.
An email to IMLS employees Monday from the agency’s human resources director stated there was no “disciplinary purpose” being served in putting these employees on administrative leave. The notice said email accounts would be disabled and instructs employees to leave laptops and work cellphones in the office, according to text of the email shared with CBS News.
One employee said Sonderling’s arrival at the agency seemed to signal that employees would soon be put on administrative leave. They have not been told what will happen to the agency, though one possibility entails shrinking the staff footprint to 30 employees and moving them to the Labor Department, according to the Federal News Network.
A White House official said the restructuring “is a necessary step” to fulfill Mr. Trump’s executive order and would ensure “hard-earned tax dollars are not diverted to discriminatory DEI initiatives or divisive anti-American programming in our cultural institutions.”
“These changes will strengthen IMLS’s ability to serve the American people with integrity and purpose,” they added.
Mr. Trump also signed an executive order this month that targeted funding for the Smithsonian Institution programs that haves what he characterizeds as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
A bipartisan group of senators, including Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have previously called for the agency to retain its federal funding and responsibilities under the Museum and Library Services Act of 2018, which Mr. Trump signed in his first term.
“We write to remind the Administration of its obligation to faithfully execute the provisions of the law as authorized,” the senators wrote in a letter to Sonderling. “IMLS grants enable libraries to develop services in every community throughout the nation, including people of diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, individuals with disabilities, residents of rural and urban areas, Native Americans, military families, veterans, and caregivers.”
