- Wyoming Humanities got bad news in April 2025.

All federal funding had been eliminated.

The agency is smaller now, but it's still alive and still kicking.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(upbeat music) Welcome to "Wyoming Chronicle."

Pleased to be joined today by Chloe Flagg of Wyoming Humanities.

We're speaking in the Historic Cooper Mansion or Cooper House in Laramie on the campus of the University of Wyoming, which is where you have your small office now.

- Small yes.

- And one of the reasons I mentioned that is because Wyoming Humanities is a smaller entity than it used to be.

- Yeah.

- Smaller than you wish it were, - For sure, yeah.

- Tell us what happened.

- Well, where do you wanna start?

You wanna start in April?

- Let's begin with when you started with Wyoming.

- [Chloe] Oh, boy.

That was back in 2021.

- In 2021 how many... Let's start with people.

- Yeah.

- How many people worked here then?

- We had six full-time employees at the time, and were constantly hiring interns, administrative assistants on grant funds.

We were having people in and out of the organization all the time.

- At that time, humanities was administering and putting to use about how much money in a typical year.

- So when I actually came on in 2021, of course, that was, you know, kind of the height of... Somewhat the height of the pandemic, right?

Kind of the tail end a little bit.

And so when I was hired, we were trusted to get almost half a million dollars out the door in federal funds and grants across the state of Wyoming.

And in addition to that, we are allocated $150,000 annually through a state legislative budget amendment.

- How many people working here now full-time?

- Two.

- Two?

- Yep.

- You and your compadre, Olivia.

- Me and Olivia.

She's over there in the corner.

- She's in the room with us.

Very helpful to us this morning.

- [Olivia] Yes, thank you.

- Back in April, our federal funds were shut off overnight- - Which actually was more than a half a million dollars.

- Yes, yeah.

So the total of that federal award that was canceled was $870,000.

Of that, we'd made it through about 430,000.

The tap was turned off overnight.

And so what that meant was a lot of really, really difficult decisions really quickly.

And at the time, leadership was under Sean Reese as the Executive Director of Wyoming Humanities.

He'd been there for five years in that role.

- A person that you knew and worked with.

- Absolutely, yeah.

No, absolutely.

And you know, along with the board of directors, they had really difficult decisions to make.

And we ended up with only two full-time staff positions at the end of that, down from six.

- Your position prior to that was what?

- Director of Grants and Programs.

- And now you're still doing that work.

- I'm still doing that work.

- But you've taken on- - Yeah.

- A lot of other work as well.

- Yes, Yeah.

Now I'm currently the executive director.

When everything happened, when everything kind of fell apart, I feel like everyone at the organization was so concerned about the health of the organization and not so much about themselves.

And so we all kind of took a look, you know, took a step back and looked at the organization as a whole and really just kind of tried to assess what would be best for it moving forward.

And that's where we landed.

- It's a decision that was made.

- Yeah.

- But it's worth mentioning just because these are human beings.

- Yeah.

- They had jobs that they don't have anymore.

- That's right.

- People that you knew, you wouldn't have said, "Boy, I wanna leapfrog over everybody."

This wasn't the way you were thinking about things.

- Oh my gosh, no.

- But things had to be... As you say, had to be thought about all of a sudden.

And to keep the entity going.

Let's talk for a moment about what Wyoming Humanities is.

- Yeah.

- It's not an entity of state government.

- No, no.

We are not an entity of state government.

We are a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Wyoming Humanities actually was established in 1970.

We were the first state council.

Well, we and Oregon Humanities, kind of neck and neck, we both claim to be the first.

- But either the first or the second.

- First or the second.

- A trailblazing entity.

- Trailblazing entity, established by historian T.A.

Larson.

We kind of set the stage for this nonprofit model for all state humanities councils now.

- And what was that model?

What did he have in mind?

- He had in mind this... You know, what the humanities are, right?

This bridging of academic knowledge and public interest, right, and community interest, right?

And so I think they felt like the nonprofit model was the way to go, because it could be informed by a board of directors, right?

That could be assembled from community members, from academics here at the university or other community colleges across Wyoming.

But I mean, I think that was really the goal, right?

Was to create something that was sustainable for the public, but with the help of scholars.

- And you talked about the board of directors.

I want to get some nuts and bolts out of the way here first.

There is an entity called the Wyoming Humanities Council.

- Yeah, so Wyoming Humanities and Wyoming Humanities Council are one and the same.

We are the same organization.

- And the members of the Humanities Council serve as the board?

- Yes, yeah, yeah.

So we have a board of directors.

Right now, it's a little slim.

I think we're around 13, 14 board members, again, from all over the state.

- Right, and the intention of that, I understand it, is to try the geographical- - Exactly.

- Distribution, but also representing different areas of what could be called the humanities, which I think very generally speaking, would be separate from what we might think of as the sort of a STEM type entities now.

It's not overtly technical or scientific, although there are elements of that in the work that you've done.

I know that to be true.

But it's the humanities type people rather than the test tube type people.

I say this with no disrespect to the other types.

- Yeah.

- The money that you talked about and the vision that Dr.

Larson had and that Wyoming Humanities has practiced through the decades now, what are some examples of the kinds of things that the money gets put toward?

- Sure, a lot of what we do is grant making, right?

So administering our state dollars out into the state, right?

Which is tremendous work.

I mean, $150,000 a year doesn't sound like a lot, but for, you know, the Grand Encampment Museum, you know, a $560 grant is a big deal and allows them to host a film festival for a weekend, right?

So everything's kind of scalable to our communities, and that's why we love our grants so much.

But so aside from that work, the grant work that we do, we had a very robust podcast program.

We were running two podcast shows at a time- - I should say, we did a "Wyoming Chronicle" show with one of the people who did that.

- Emmy (indistinct).

- Emmy (indistinct).

And Emmy also, when we were there, had just administered another thing that humanities did in cooperation with the Wyoming Arts Council as well.

The Road Trip Playlist.

- Yes, and it's happening again this year.

We're so excited.

You know, we interviewed some really well known world renowned people, authors, writers, you know.

And so of course we still have that library, right?

We still have all of those incredible interviews, but, you know, without federal funding, that programming has stopped.

And you know, we were putting out a show every week, right?

An episode every week.

And so that felt like a really huge hit to us to cut that back so drastically.

- And again, to the person as well.

- [Chloe] Yeah, exactly, exactly.

- $870,000, that's not nothing.

But people don't understand, I think, might not understand honestly how little money that really is.

- Yeah.

- In the big scheme, no one I think could claim credibly that Wyoming Humanities was fat.

- Oh, gosh, no- - Wasting money.

- I don't think so at all.

No, no.

We were all... We were definitely all working very hard towards the same goal share stories and ideas.

- And as you touched on earlier, not an entity that's giving away $10 million to... You're looking at dozens and dozens and dozens of smaller entities to say, "We could use just a little bit of help, and here's what for," and you try to do that all the time.

- All the time.

Yeah, we... You know, before April of 2025, we were running a grants program, our Spark grants, they were available every single month, up to $2,000 grants.

And I think we were one of the only regularly awarding grants in the state for smaller programmatic projects and events and things like that.

And so to have to take a step back and not be able to offer those Spark grants right now is sad.

It makes us sad 'cause we know how important some of those what are perceived to be smaller events and smaller programs, right, in smaller communities, they're huge for those communities.

- For those communities.

- Exactly, right?

And sometimes I think for us, we're definitely making a shift from, you know, quantity, right, number of people that we're reaching to quality.

How are we reaching those people and how are they interacting?

And what kind of impact are they left with, you know?

- How do you find out about something like this?

Was there a phone call?

Was there a letter?

Was there a warning be prepared for a major announcement?

What was the day in April like?

- Yeah, it was a shock.

And it was strange.

It was a very strange time.

We, along with, I think almost... More than half of the councils received an email literally in the middle of the night from an NEH email address that we'd never received information from before.

And all of these councils were looking to each other like, "Is this real?

Like, what's happened?"

- I heard that one person said, I don't think it was Wyoming, but said it went to spam.

- Yes.

- Because it seemed so improbable.

- Yeah, it didn't feel credible.

And so that letter was received at literally, I think it was 10:38 p.m.

on April 2nd.

- From the National Endowment- - From the National Endowment for the Humanities telling us that effective April 2nd, our funds were no longer available.

I don't think we were expecting it to be as traumatic as it was.

I think we were hoping that it would be a process, right?

And that there would be some kind of evaluation done of our programs and our use of funding, right, to assess how much we were... You know, what the administration or, you know, the National Endowment for the Humanities thought was appropriate, right?

But that's not what happened.

It was just a full stop.

- You wanted the opportunity to have heard, "We're looking at your funding."

- Absolutely.

- "And it's in jeopardy."

- Absolutely.

- "Under scrutiny."

- Yeah.

- "And so make your case."

- Yeah, and in fact, I mean, you know, as a state council that receives federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we undergo a site review every five years where the National Endowment for the Humanities sends staff out to Wyoming.

They meet with our staff, our board, and they assess our worth and our value and what we're contributing to the state.

And so, you know, we already have these systems in place that could have been used.

- And it'd always pass muster?

- Of course, yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and there's part of that process, right, is to always get better at what we're doing.

And so the NEH always offers recommendations, right?

And because they have this incredible view to look at every state council across the country and say, "Wow, these people are doing this really well, and these people are trying to do that, but maybe they need some help."

And so they kind of offer some recommendations or guidance to us.

Yeah.

- Wyoming's not... You're not feeling uniquely picked on, right?

This happened around the country.

- Everyone, yeah.

Yeah, and the notices did roll out over the course of I think it was 48 hours.

So some of us received our notices before others.

It didn't really seem like there was any... To us, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason.

- In the email that you got- - Yeah.

- Was there any justification or explanation given for why this was happening?

- It sure didn't feel like it.

- It seemed to me it was just this... It no longer meets the priorities of the administration.

- Of the administration.

- So it's worth noting that this didn't come, for example, by a vote of Congress.

- No, no.

- Correct?

Even though Congress was involved in establishing the funding.

- Absolutely, they were not only involved in establishing the funding, they were involved, you know, in 1965 in establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

You know, Congress at that time, and throughout since that time, has repeatedly reassured the American people that the work that we do has value and is meaningful and brings quality to their lives, right?

And so it felt very odd, right, for these congressionally appropriated dollars to just be gone.

- Yeah.

When I first contacted you about doing this interview, you were in Washington actually.

- Yes.

- Was that on- - Most state councils, I believe there's one that is not, but most state councils are members of what's called the Federation for State Humanities Councils.

And they provide a lot of professional development for the work that we do.

They also do a lot of advocacy for us at the federal level that we cannot do ourselves.

And so we were there meeting with all other executive directors.

It was the first time that we'd been able to gather since April 2nd and- - Lots to talk about that day- - A lot to talk about, a lot of really meaningful conversations and a lot of ideas exchanged of how we're coping and how we're moving forward and how we can do it together.

- It had occurred to me, maybe you were testifying before a- - Oh gosh.

- [Steve] Congressional committee or something, but it hasn't come to that yet.

- Not yet, no.

- And do we think it might?

What measures might be taken when you and your fellow humanities executives were talking about?

What ideas are being kicked around?

- Well, so there is a current lawsuit between Oregon Humanities and I believe the National Endowment for the Humanities.

It may be, you know, an affiliate office or something like that.

You know, how those things go.

But to say that, you know, these funds were, were not revoked appropriately, and that it should have been handled differently.

And so we're in the middle of... They're in the middle of that.

The hope, of course, is that whatever comes of that will flow down to, you know, all councils or whatever, so.

- One of the arguments that is made when funding, very generally speaking, such as this is reduced as well, it's not government's job to endorse support, subsidize this kind of activity.

- Sure.

- [Steve] What do you think about that?

- I always send people right back to that founding legislation from 1965, and that legislation is very much laid out that democracy demands wisdom, and that it is the government's job and duty to ensure access to that wisdom.

And that's why public humanities is so important.

There's no gatekeeping here.

There's no... You know, you don't need to afford a ticket, right?

You just show up and you have access to information and learn and you get to learn.

And that's why the NEH was established, and that is the basis for which state councils were established, was to bring that vision to our states, for our people specifically, right?

To not have this national rhetoric, right, forced onto the Wyoming people.

But for the Wyoming people to decide for themselves what that looks like.

- The term that's often used, applied to things as well, "We'll do it the Wyoming way.

Federal government stay out of our lives."

- Yeah, sure.

- So here's federal money coming in and then relying on people like you and the Humanities Council to decide the best ways to use it.

I'm assuming, or do I assume that the state of Wyoming, the recipients of the assistance that you gave them, were pleased with it?

Thought it was working well?

- Oh, absolutely.

Yes, I would think so.

I can't tell you what the response was, right, in April when all of this news came out.

So many grantees were calling not to say, you know, "What's wrong with my grant?

What's gonna happen to my grant?"

They were calling to say, "Are you guys okay?

What's gonna happen to you?

What's gonna happen to Wyoming Humanities?"

Because there are so many small organizations across the state that rely on our grant funding from year to year.

And so now they're having to scale back and change their direction, right.

It's just very much a ripple effect.

- Yeah, we've talked about what happened.

Let's talk about what didn't happen - [Chloe] Hmm.

- Wyoming humanities still exists.

- Yes, yes.

- You are still here.

You and Olivia are still here.

- We are.

- There's still some money available.

- There's still some money available.

- We've talked about some state funding that is provided as well.

What are you still able to do?

- We're still able to award grants right now.

Like I said, we have these... We have funds that have been appropriated to Wyoming Humanities through a legislative budget amendment.

And that's how it's historically been done.

So we're not included in the state budget.

We go up for it every time that we can.

- I see.

- And it's a hope every time, right?

Aside from that, we are still moving forward with Wyoming Center for the Book, which is an affiliate program of the Library of Congress.

And we have a contracted director for that position who was with us before, who was in the role before.

And so it's kind of nice to still be able to work with Lucas Fralick a little bit.

- Tell us more a little bit about what that project is.

- Yeah, so Center for the Book is, again, like I said, an affiliate program of Library of Congress.

There's one center in every state and territory, and we offer programming around literacy and learning and writing and reading.

Historically, we've hosted letters about literature writing contest, which has always been really well received.

Right now we're focusing on an upcoming tour with a Great Reads from Great Places award-winning author and illustrator, "A Home for Steamboat," which is a great children's book.

So we're looking forward to a tour of that in the fall of 2026.

We're gearing up for that right now.

We're also gearing up to select our next round of "Great Reads from Great Places" award winners.

And so we select an adult title and a youth title, and then those selections represent Wyoming at the National Book Festival in Washington DC.

So it's a huge honor.

We're very proud to carry that program forward.

And we're always looking for opportunities to partner.

Another opportunity with Center for the Book that just happened, we were awarded a Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund grant to support the distribution of our upcoming publication of "Tribal Government Wind River Reservation," which a re-edition of a tribal government book that was produced in the '90s.

And so it's been updated, revised, and can be used all over high schools, wherever.

But for Center for the Book specifically and this grant, we're getting this book into high schools, so it'll be available in their school library, their government classes and their history classrooms as well.

- One thing I think I'm writing in saying that the Center of the Book activities around the Nation, they actually celebrate and value the physical book as an object worth having too, which book people- - Yeah, yeah.

- Appreciate.

- Yeah, and we do too.

And that's why we're so excited about this Cultural Trust Fund grant.

It's allowing us to purchase book copies for all of our programs for this upcoming year, which is amazing.

- A book is an important artifact.

- It is, it is.

- I'm not sure you can say that about a download.

- Not so much the same way, right?

- [Steve] In that way.

Considering the makeup of the state legislature now, we're not disparaging that in this way because this is who got elected, of course.

This is who the voters said, we want you to come in and administer the federal government and the state government, and these are the decisions that have been made, and we're exploring the aftermath of that.

Are you getting any indications from the legislature about how they're feeling about this or- - I think that there are a lot of members of the Wyoming state legislature that see the value in what we do.

- Sure.

- And if they don't know us directly, they know someone that has attended a program that we've hosted or sponsored or supported through a grant.

- Sure.

- And so, while we may not be big and splashy and on everyone's mind, we are supporting work that's happening in everyone's community, in every state legislator's community.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And so I hope that they can see the value that we're bringing to their communities.

And I would love to talk to anyone about that value.

- I'm sure you're not seeing a lot of bright side on what's happened since April, but maybe, pointing to what you just said, it at least is an opportunity to reinform people.

- Yes.

- Did you know that this thing that has been happening in your district, in your town, senator, representative, was made possible by Wyoming Humanities- - Yeah.

- Something may have just been taken for granted?

They hadn't really thought about it before.

A lot of what goes on and with legislators who are part-time people, there's a lot of newer faces in it now, and it's a ton of work.

- Oh, yeah.

- Is education.

- Yeah, they need to know what's going on, right?

- And it's no fault of anyone's that they don't know something until they know it.

- Exactly.

- And so maybe I bet that's a part of what you're finding your job is now.

- That's exactly... Yes, a very new role for me to be playing with Wyoming Humanities, but I feel very grateful and very honored to be carrying the torch right now.

- Elections are coming up in 2026.

You never know what might happen if membership and Congress changes.

Any indications at all about the permanence of the situation that you're in regarding these fundings or- - Yeah, there's a lot of information circling on the hill, right?

And what we understand is that it's possible, it's very possible that state councils will see funding in '26.

The level of that funding, we don't know.

We don't know if it will be at the same historic level, at a much reduced level.

We don't know.

And of course, there's always the possibility that we'll be taken off the table entirely.

- Yeah, are there any things that particularly hurt or things that you would want to restore first if you could?

Or is it maybe a matter of, "I wanna restore the way we used to do things as soon as we could?"

- Yeah, it's been something I've really been reflecting on a lot right now, Steve.

And I feel like we have an opportunity to build something a little different than we've done before.

And right now, we have the time to think about what that might look like for us.

And so right now, especially with, you know, federal funding so up in the air, you know, even if we were to receive that, I think it'd be prudent of us to maintain our size, our current size, for as long as possible, as long as we feel like we can.

So that when we are moving forward, we're moving forward in big leaps and making even more impact.

And I hope that when that time comes, it's because Olivia and I are run so ragged because we're working so hard to do so much.

- You're gonna keep going?

- That's the plan.

Yeah, no, that's the plan.

I think Olivia and I are very, very determined.

We're constantly thinking of new ways to do things, right?

You know, we inherited an organization that has been around for over 50 years.

- Yeah.

- And so, you know, we have a duty and an obligation to maintain its spirit, but bring it along to now.

- Well, I wish you well in this.

- Thank you.

- And I think a lot of people watching our show would say the same thing, that I wish you weren't having to go through it in this way.

- Yeah.

- But you're a good person.

You two are good people to be taking us through it.

Chloe Flagg, thanks for being with us.

"Wyoming Chronicle."

- Thank you.

(upbeat music)