3 speculations about cultural heritage funding: 1. Reporting on threats to the non science agencies like NEH/NEA/IMLS will be scant. 2. There WILL be explicit zero-out threats to them, but not in first wave: they're ignored in the Center for Renewing America budget doc AFAICT. 3. LOC is insulated. - ThreadSky

bschmidt.bsky.social • 21 days ago

3 speculations about cultural heritage funding:
1. Reporting on threats to the non science agencies like NEH/NEA/IMLS will be scant.
2. There WILL be explicit zero-out threats to them, but not in first wave: they're ignored in the Center for Renewing America budget doc AFAICT.
3. LOC is insulated.

Reposted from Mike Boylan-Kolchin

Here’s a story with some numbers. The proposed cuts are unfathomable: a 60% reduction to NSF would be the end of American science as we know it.

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patrickmccray.bsky.social•16 days ago

Historic self-own

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

w/r/t NARA, I have no idea but it's probably safe to assume that they're not going to be collecting the stuff from this period that they should.

Historians in state I'd be worried about, in DoD less so?

https://bsky.app/profile/jasonkoebler.bsky.social/post/3lhjheefzo225

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

Also always worth remembering that they're proposing $6b in cuts to NSF (plus more at NIH it seems?), while the COMBINED budgets of NEH/IMLS/NEA/NARA is (not bothering to look this up, correct me if I'm wrong) something like $2b.

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•21 days ago

FWIW, I've asked internally and externally if anyone has heard a word from the NEH and the answer is nothing. The money factor here is key. Zeroing out grants from the NEH just gets no "savings" in the grand scheme of things.

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

I have said it before and I'll say it again -- the biggest mistake* of the Johnson administration was putting funding that protects and advances American culture in these independent agencies rather the LOC.

*jk, obviously.

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

One thing I've never been clear on -- anyone know? -- is why although from what I've seen in the archives the New Dealers often looked to put American Civilization-type funding under MacLeish in the LOC, they established NARA as a separate executive branch agency. I kinda wish LOC held that role…

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

Things like the MAL documents case would be more straightforward if the archival record was more clearly part of the congressional oversight role over executive branch agencies.

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

The .edu impact of blowing up NSF this way would actually be very weird. If you ended federal science funding and humanities funding at once, the humanities would do great at most American universities while the sciences would completely implode. Obviously they'd love to end the English major, but

en-dash.bsky.social•20 days ago

Writing a “Man in the High Tower” style alternate reality fiction but the only difference from our own timeline is an enormously powerful MacLeish in a 30 year reign as Librarian of Congress

bschmidt.bsky.social•20 days ago

What we call “consensus history” in our timeline is called the Historikerstreit in that one because the 70s and 80s are just a total agreement that Schlesinger was right about everything.

anthonyclark.bsky.social•21 days ago

The short answer about why Congress created NARA within the executive branch is the separation of powers; the legislative branch can't be responsible for archiving and managing the records of the executive branch.

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

I'm not sure that was so clear-cut in the 1930s? E.g. LOC holds the papers for most pre-FDR papers -- those are probably technical personal papers of the person who was president, but also they're clearly the same thing as the prez libraries NARA now runs. https://guides.loc.gov/presidential-history/digital-collections

tedunderwood.me•13 days ago

Plausible. Can’t think of any other mistakes.

bschmidt.bsky.social•13 days ago

(I was alluding to putting history in with the humanities instead of the social sciences obv.)

anthonyclark.bsky.social•21 days ago

This, too, is separation of powers. But more specifically, LOC is a research institution for Congress and the public; the other agencies you mentioned administer national grant programs and implement cultural policy, which constitutionally are functions of the executive, not the legislative, branch.

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

But isn't LOC also able to run granting programs? Whenever I talk to people who work there, they say so. At one point I did archival work around communications/propaganda research in the period 1939-1941, and putting grant funding of the new field into LOC was a frequent proposal.

anthonyclark.bsky.social•21 days ago

It is. Executing laws isn't the sole prerogative of the executive branch. Both the legislative and judiciary must execute laws in their administration and fulfillment of their constitutional duties.

And respectfully I think you have it backwards: all federal spending originates from Congress. 1/2

anthonyclark.bsky.social•21 days ago

For FY24, those four combined budgets amounted to $1.183B

bschmidt.bsky.social•21 days ago

Thanks, evidently I should have bothered to look it up.

davidsewell.bsky.social•21 days ago

In years past, Republican budgets proposed zeroing out NHPRC, NARA’s grant making division. If it survives, it will no doubt be with the anti-“woke” constraints on projects we see elsewhere.

drgeophysics.bsky.social•21 days ago

Republican Party utopia has arrived.

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