In September 2025, a federal judge in Rhode Island delivered a verdict that reverberated far beyond the courtroom. U.S. Senior District Court Judge William Smith ruled that the National Endowment for the Arts had violated the First Amendment by conditioning grant funding on applicants’ refusal to “promote gender ideology” – a term the court found so undefined as to be functionally meaningless. “There is zero explanation of what it means for a project to ‘promote gender ideology,'” Judge Smith wrote, “let alone how that concept relates to artistic merit, artistic excellence, general standards of decency, or respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.” The ruling marked a pivotal moment in a battle that had been raging since February 2025, when 463 artists signed an open letter demanding the NEA reverse its compliance rules. What began as a protest letter became a constitutional confrontation.
The Executive Orders That Shook American Culture
The crisis was triggered by two executive orders signed by President Trump on his first day back in office on 20 January 2025. Executive Order 14151, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” mandated the termination of all Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility initiatives across the federal government. Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” declared that the United States would recognise only “two sexes, male and female,” and prohibited federal funds from being used to “promote gender ideology.”
The NEA, established in 1965 to democratise access to culture, moved swiftly to comply. By February 2025, the agency had revised its Grants for Arts Projects application to require all applicants to certify they would not operate programmes “promoting DEI” and that no grant funds would be used to promote “gender ideology.” The requirements applied to every applicant – from major institutions to individual artists – and represented an unprecedented attempt to dictate the ideological content of federally funded art.
The immediate effect was chilling. At an NEA workshop for prospective grantees in February 2025, attendees were told flatly that “the NEA will not fund projects that include DEI activities,” as NPR reported. Questions were not permitted during the session and had to be submitted in advance. For artists whose work explored identity, race, gender and belonging, the message was unmistakable: adapt or lose access to federal support.
The Open Letter: 463 Artists Draw a Line in the Sand
Annie Dorsen, a New York-based writer and theatre director known for her work at the intersection of performance and technology, decided that silence was not an option. Working with fellow artists, Dorsen drafted an open letter to the NEA that was shared with The New York Times on 18 February 2025 and subsequently reported by NPR. Within days, 463 artists had signed it, their names spanning generations and disciplines: Pulitzer Prize-winners Jackie Sibblies Drury and Lynn Nottage, veteran playwright Paula Vogel, and Holly Hughes, one of the original “NEA Four” who had fought a landmark obscenity case against the agency in the 1990s.
The letter was unsparing in its language. “Trump and his enablers may use doublespeak to claim that support for artists of colour amounts to ‘discrimination’ and that funding the work of trans and women artists promotes ‘gender ideology’ (whatever that is),” it read. “But we know better: the arts are for and represent everybody. We can’t give that up.” The signatories called for the NEA to roll back the compliance rules entirely, arguing that they betrayed the agency’s founding mission to “foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.”
Dorsen told NPR that the letter had been sent privately to the NEA before its public release. The agency’s response was terse: a spokesperson said the NEA was “a federal agency and will fully comply with the law,” while noting that “no person at the NEA has received the letter as described.” The dismissiveness only hardened the artists’ resolve. “The First Amendment is one of the most cherished principles that this country was founded on,” Dorsen said. “This action by the NEA is more than concerning, because it seems to suggest that through these sort of weird executive orders and the applications of them to certain agencies, that freedom is being taken away bit by bit.”
The ACLU Steps In: Rhode Island Latino Arts v. NEA
The open letter was galvanising, but the legal muscle came from the American Civil Liberties Union. On 6 March 2025, the ACLU and the ACLU of Rhode Island filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island on behalf of four organisations: Rhode Island Latino Arts (RILA), National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive, and Theatre Communications Group (TCG). The complaint challenged the NEA’s “gender ideology” certification requirement as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination – the government punishing artists not for the quality of their work but for the ideas it expressed.
The case moved with unusual speed. On 11 March, the NEA quietly suspended its certification requirement for the current grant cycle while the litigation was pending, a tacit acknowledgement that its position was legally precarious. A hearing was scheduled for 18 March, with the court ultimately ruling in April that the NEA’s policy likely violated the First Amendment and exceeded the agency’s statutory authority. In June, the ACLU filed a motion for a full injunction after the NEA admitted it would continue to “disfavour” projects deemed to promote gender ideology – even without the formal certification requirement.
Then, on 19 September 2025, Judge Smith issued his definitive ruling. The NEA’s policy was unconstitutional on multiple grounds: it constituted viewpoint-based restriction on private speech, it was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, and it exceeded the agency’s authority under the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act. “Even when the government funds private speech, it does not get to support only those messages that parrot its views,” said Vera Eidelman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. Marta v. Martínez, executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts, called the decision a vindication of “the freedom to create, to express one’s truth, and to tell our stories.”
The Kennedy Center: Trump’s Most Visible Trophy
The parallel conflict at the Kennedy Center played out in even more theatrical fashion. In February 2025, Trump dismissed most of the Board of Trustees – including chairman David Rubenstein and president Deborah Rutter – replacing them with loyalists including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and second lady Usha Vance. The new board elected Trump as chairman, making him the first sitting president to hold that role.
The backlash was immediate. Actor Issa Rae cancelled a sold-out show, writing that “due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds.” Opera singer Renée Fleming, musician Ben Folds and producer Shonda Rhimes all resigned from their advisory positions. The Washington National Opera departed the venue entirely, its artistic director Francesca Zambello telling The Guardian that donor confidence had been “shattered.”
By December 2025, the board renamed the building the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” installing new signage bearing both names. More cancellations followed: jazz musician Chuck Redd pulled his Christmas Eve performance, banjoist Béla Fleck withdrew, and Doug Varone and Dancers scrapped their entire April run. “With the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself, we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution,” the dance company wrote.
The renaming proved to be the administration’s overreach. In June 2026, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the Kennedy Center had been illegally renamed, ordering Trump’s name removed from all signage and contracts. Trump responded on Truth Social: “We are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them.” Having failed to co-opt the institution, the president chose to abandon it.
The Budget Axe: From DEI Bans to Total Elimination
The cultural offensive extended beyond cultural institutions into federal budgets themselves. On 3 May 2025, the administration proposed eliminating the NEA entirely in its fiscal year 2026 budget. The same day, the NEA sent termination notices to organisations whose approved grants fell outside the administration’s new priorities – projects celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence, fostering AI competency, and supporting houses of worship. Portland Playhouse learned that a $25,000 grant for its production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone had been revoked.
The House Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations responded in July 2025 with a proposal to cut the NEA’s budget by 35%, from $207 million to $135 million – one of the steepest reductions in the entire appropriations bill. NASAA warned that such a cut would cause “significant loss of staff, programming, and access to arts and culture events across the nation.” Staff members began to resign, and the American Alliance of Museums reported that one-third of American museums had lost government grants or contracts since Trump took office.
Art as Resistance: What Comes Next
History offers both caution and encouragement. The original NEA Four – Hughes, Karen Finley, Tim Miller and John Fleck – lost their grants in the early 1990s after conservatives decried their work as obscene. The ensuing Supreme Court battle established that the government could not retaliate against artists for the content of their expression. Judge Smith’s ruling expands that principle: viewpoint discrimination in arts funding is unconstitutional, regardless of which administration attempts it.
The grassroots response has been formidable. In October 2025, artists including Michael Moore, Lynn Nottage, Ava DuVernay and Amanda Palmer organised nationwide protests under the banner “The Fall of Freedom,” with events in dozens of cities. State-level responses have also emerged, with blue-state governors creating alternative funding mechanisms for projects that federal restrictions would exclude.
For the United Kingdom, where Arts Council England has navigated its own fraught relationship with government priorities, the American crisis serves as a stark warning. As our recent analysis of Arts Council England’s fractured landscape demonstrates, the erosion of arts funding independence is not confined to one nation. The Amy Sherald episode – the artist who cancelled her Smithsonian show over a censorship row – underscores the pattern: institutions are being weaponised, and artists are being forced to choose between complicity and exile.
What the American experience makes unmistakably clear is that the battle is not merely about budgets. It is about whether a democratic society permits its government to decide which stories deserve to be told. “Artists are always the punching bag,” Holly Hughes observed. But the courts have now said that even punching bags have constitutional rights.
