Advocacy Alert – June 13, 2025
In this Alliance Advocacy Alert:
- Invite Congress: Sign Up to Show Congress Firsthand the Value of Your Museum
- Act Now:
- Updates:
- Review: Advocacy Webinar
- Advocacy Tip of the Month: Congressional Committees
Invite Congress: Show Congress Firsthand the Value of Your Museum
Members of Congress are in their home districts the entire month of August, visiting local businesses and meeting constituents. Make sure museums are on their August agenda.
Invite your members of Congress to visit your museum! You can invite them to:
- Tour of your museum or a specific exhibit
- Observe one of your programs in action
- Meet with you, your staff, and trustees
- Attend an event like a ribbon cutting
Do not wait! Their schedules fill up quickly, so get your invitations out now. For details and tips, visit the Invite Congress webpage.
Why Officially Sign Up? By signing up, you will receive:
- Exclusive tips and guidance for Invite Congress participants,
- Access to special virtual office hours with AAM’s advocacy staff to help you organize the visit,
- And virtual meetings with the museums participating in Invite Congress to connect and share experiences with each other.
Signing up is free, but please only sign up if your museum intends to invite Congress to visit your museum as part of Invite Congress or at another time this year.
Help Grow Congressional Support for Museums
Earlier this year, the Congressional Museum Caucus was created by co-chairs Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH). AAM advocated for the creation of the caucus, which is made up of members of the House of Representatives. The goal of the caucus is to help raise awareness within Congress of issues impacting museums.
Action: Ask your House member to show their support for museums by joining the bipartisan Congressional Museum Caucus. We strongly recommend editing the draft letter below, sharing why museums are important to you and to your community.
If you attended Museums Advocacy Day, please reach out to the staff person that you met with to follow up on the request for the House member to join the caucus.
Tax Policy Legislation
Last month, the House passed a sweeping tax package. The Senate is currently working on its own version, and details have yet to be released. Eventually, the House and Senate will need to come to an agreement to resolve the differences between the two versions.
The House bill would reinstate a modest non-itemizer deduction for tax years 2025-2028 at $150 for single taxpayers and $300 for married taxpayers. While this is a step in the right direction, this provision is not as strong as those in the Charitable Act (S. 317/H.R. 801), one of AAM’s top legislative priorities. The deduction would allow the more than 90% of taxpayers who do not itemize to deduct charitable gifts.
The House bill also contains troubling provisions for nonprofit charitable organizations, including museums. We oppose several of the House bill’s provisions, including expanding the excise tax on investment income of university endowments, which could impact resources for college and university museums and galleries, and increasing the foundation excise tax thus reducing availability of grant funds.
AAM is working with our coalition partners in the Charitable Giving Coalition, Independent Sector, National Council of Nonprofits, and the Community Impact Coalition to protect and advance the interests of museums, preserve and expand the charitable deduction, and defeat anti-charity provisions.
Federal Funding Update
FY26 Appropriations
The President released his full Budget for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26), which included the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Please note, the president’s budget is just a proposal. Congress sets the spending limits for the agencies.
Congress has begun the Appropriations process to fund the federal government for FY26.
Thank you to everyone who contacted their members of Congress to encourage them to support IMLS funding in FY26. View the final letters and signers for the Senate and House. Note, some members of Congress who serve on the Appropriations Committee, the committee that writes the funding bills, often do not sign onto these letters as they would essentially be sending the letters to themselves.
The House Appropriations Committee released its schedule for consideration of their versions of the FY26 Appropriations Bills. Of note:
- Subcommittee consideration of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies bill (Interior) will be on June 23, with full committee consideration on June 26. The Interior bill includes agencies such as the NEA, NEH, and the National Park Service (NPS).
- Subcommittee consideration for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill (LHHS) will be on July 21, with full committee consideration on July 24. The LHHS bill includes IMLS.
- AAM’s President and CEO Marilyn Jackson provided written testimony to the House Appropriations Committee:
The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its schedule for consideration of the Appropriations bills.
Rescissions Package
The President sent a Rescissions Package to Congress. A Rescissions Package proposes cuts from current spending (in this case, FY25) that Congress would need to vote on to approve. Congress has 45 days to consider the package, or the funding remains where Congress originally intended. The House passed the package this week. The Senate has not yet considered the package. The IMLS, NEH, and NEA funding cuts were not included in the President’s Rescissions Package but could be included in potential future packages. AAM will continue to monitor these developments closely. If those funding cuts are sent to Congress and they approve them, it would take away a key argument in the lawsuits that the President cannot eliminate the agency and not use the funding appropriated to the agency without Congressional approval.
IMLS Lawsuits and Other News Related to Executive Agencies and Actions
IMLS
If you missed the Advocacy Alert from earlier this week (6/10), with the update on the IMLS court cases, you can view that here.
Additionally, please check out recently authored and co-authored op-eds by AAM President & CEO Marilyn Jackson:
- The Trump Administration Is Not Just Erasing History, They’re Rewriting the Future and Attacking Democracy
- How Trump’s Funding Cuts Could Erase 250 Years of Museum History – and Impact Everyday Americans
This week, Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent a letter to IMLS Acting Director Keith Sonderling expressing concerns over the gutting of IMLS and requesting answers regarding grant terminations and the future of IMLS.
NEH
This week, the NEH laid off about 100 employees.
NEA
The co-chairs of the Congressional Arts Caucus organized a Congressional sign on letter to the President expressing concerns over the termination of grants at the NEA and urging the grants be restored.
Smithsonian
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), Co-Chair of the Congressional Museum Caucus, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) led a Congressional group letter sent to the Smithsonian Institution Inspector General requesting an investigation into the President’s Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which targets the Smithsonian Institution.
Advocacy Webinar
The recording is now available from the May 29 webinar on In-District Advocacy: Advocating to State and Federal Lawmakers.
Save the date for July 24 when we’ll host our next advocacy webinar on Year-Round Advocacy. More details to come.
Advocacy Tip of the Month: Congressional Committees
Last month’s advocacy tip focused on doing your homework to learn more about your lawmaker. Part of doing your homework is finding out what committees your lawmakers serve on. When it comes to your members of Congress, understanding what those committees do and oversee provides insight into what policies and legislation they are likely to have the most sway on.
How do you find information about a committee’s jurisdiction? Visit the House webpage and Senate webpage to find the list of committee websites. Once you click on the links to the committee webpages, you can find key information on the committee’s jurisdiction, usually under the “About” tab. While on the committee pages, take a look at upcoming Congressional hearings and recent news releases from that committee.
