Trump Administration Puts IMLS Employees on Leave

The Trump administration on March 31 placed the staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on administrative leave. In a letter to staff, first shared on social media by independent journalist Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket, the agency’s 70 employees were officially put on paid administrative leave for 90 days and told to stay away from the IMLS offices.

“This action is not punitive but rather is taken to facilitate the work and operations of the agency,” reads the letter, signed by Antoine L. Dotson, the agency’s director of human resources.

It is unclear what will happen to the agency after 90 days. In his March 14 executive order that seeks to effectively wind down the agency, Trump ordered officials to deliver a plan with seven days, but as of press time, no plan has been released to the public.

Though later than anticipated, the move to send IMLS employees home had been expected. On March 19, reps from the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, which represent workers at IMLS, issued a statement saying it had been made aware that "most or all" IMLS employees could be placed on administrative leave" as early as March 20.

Without staff to administer its programs, "it is likely that most grants will be terminated," noted library political action committee EveryLibrary, in a March 31 statement.

"While on leave, the staff are prohibited from continuing their duties. All employees were required to turn in government phones and other property before leaving the building, and their email accounts are now disabled. This means that libraries and museums will no longer be able to contact IMLS for updates about the funding they rely on. Work on processing 2025 grants and 2026 applications has ceased entirely, and the status of previously awarded grants is now unclear," the EveryLibrary statement adds. "This is not only disruptive—it is 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 move to shutter the IMLS comes even as the board of the National Museum and Library Services, tasked under federal law with advising the IMLS leadership, advised newly installed director Keith Sonderling that the “Museum and Library Services Act of 2018,” which authorized the work of the IMLS, cannot be “paused, reduced, or eliminated without violating Congressional intent and federal statute.”

Furthermore, the bipartisan senators who authored the Museum and Library Services Act (MLSA) of 2018—which was signed into law by Trump in his first term—sent a letter to Sonderling on March 26 advising him of the administration’s “obligation to faithfully execute the provisions of the law as authorized.”

In a March 19 article for American Libraries, Alan Inouye, interim associate executive director of American Library Association’s Public Policy and Advocacy Office, called the Trump administration's bid to destroy IMLS “a five-alarm fire,” adding that ALA had delivered more than 55,000 messages urging Congress to step in and spare the agency since March 15.  

“We’ve all seen the news about the unjustified, ill treatment of federal employees across many agencies," Inouye wrote, "and now it has come squarely to the library community.”

In addition to its advocacy work in support of IMLS, Inouye told Words & Money that ALA is also "vigorously exploring legal possibilities" in response to the executive order.

Meanwhile, fears have also emerged that closing the IMLS may not be the worst-case scenario. At his swearing in, Sonderling raised a potentially more troubling scenario: a re-staffed IMLS determined to recast libraries and museums in Trump's MAGA image.

“We will revitalize IMLS and restore a focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations,” Sonderling said in an official statement, in which he also committed to “steering" IMLS "in lockstep" with the Trump administration.

In a subsequent Instagram post, Sonderling also pledged to “restore a focus on American exceptionalism in our museums and libraries.”