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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Happy Friday, everybody. Today on the show, we have some special Friday guests, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, who many of you know better as an MSNBC host or from the David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart segment on the PBS NewsHour on Friday nights. Many of you watch that, I know. Jonathan has a very interesting memoir just out that includes growing up in New Jersey, why he quit the Washington Post editorial board, how he started his media career right here at WNYC when he's just out of college. I knew him then. We'll do some news of the day with Jonathan Capehart, coming up. Also, the beloved New York Mets television announcer, Gary Cohen, joins us today ahead of the Subway Series this weekend. Gary Cohen is so fun and smart. People love him, even if they're not baseball fans. We'll have another 10-question quiz for this membership drive day. More questions from the actual US Citizenship test study guide. Even if you grew up in the United States, could you pass the citizenship test today? We'll have WNYC swag as prizes again if you get two in a row right.

Jonathan Capehart, Gary Cohen, a 10-question quiz all coming up, but here's where we start. In our spring membership drive, we've been obviously talking about the proposed defunding of public media. I want to pull back not for a fundraising pitch, but for a news segment on the bigger picture of how the Trump administration is trying to defund the arts overall.

My guest for this is Brian Boucher, who writes about art world news for the arts news website artnet.com. As he reports, not only is the president proposing to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, dozens of institutions have received abrupt notices that their NEA grant applications were either denied or actual grants rescinded. We'll name some of the names on that list.

Even beyond that, you've heard that Trump made himself the head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Here's one that maybe you haven't heard. Just last weekend, they fired the head of the US Copyright Office. Why? Apparently, it was a favor to artificial intelligence over the rights of artists' copyrighted material. Yes, I just said a favor to artificial intelligence over the rights of artists' copyrighted material. Elon Musk added, "I agree," to someone's tweet that said, "Delete all IP law." That's, delete all intellectual property law. Brian Boucher from Artnet, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Brian Boucher: Hi, Brian. Glad to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Can you explain the issue around artificial intelligence and copyright law? How do they clash?

Brian Boucher: Well, artists and writers and other, many, many other kinds of creators are very concerned that artificial intelligence training programs are simply trawling through centuries and thousands of pages and images that they've created to train their own image-generating and video-generating, and writing artificial intelligence programs. So, the Librarian of Congress put out a report saying that it's worth more investigation whether these artificial intelligence training programs are impinging on the intellectual property rights of these creators. She actually also said that it was too early to say whether the government should intervene. Even that sort of tentative, non-conclusive position seems to have earned her the disfavor of the Trump administration. She was fired shortly after putting out that report.

Brian Lehrer: When Elon Musk endorses a tweet that says, "Delete all intellectual property law," what are the implications for creators in the arts if Congress were to actually do that?

Brian Boucher: Well, they would have no recourse when OpenAI and other large language models and other programs basically steal their material without any compensation to them for work that is their livelihood.

Brian Lehrer: That firing that you were just referring to, is that the same as the firing of the head of the US Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, after she released a report on this topic?

Brian Boucher: Yes, that's actually who I was referring to. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Now let's talk about the NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts. The number I have is that it has funded 145,000 programs since 1965, which include the designing of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the creation of the American Film Institute, and obviously, so many other things. Now, Trump is proposing to abolish the NEA. Why doesn't he want there to be a National Endowment for the Arts?

Brian Boucher: Well, it's a fair question, and it's one that's a little bit difficult to parse. If I could back up for a second. The moment that he took office, the DOGE chainsaw was taken to all cultural funding, not only the National Endowment for the Arts, which is really the first one to come to most people's minds, but also the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which I describe as the most important cultural funder that most people have perhaps never heard of, if they're not really in the field.

I think these seem to the current administration like just irretrievably woke enterprises that support actual critical thinking. I think that the attempt to eliminate cultural funding and library funding is a very clear authoritarian move to deprive people of the kinds of places where they can be challenged, where they can learn about critical views, where they can get even just the kind of information that is required for critical thinking.

Brian Lehrer: This is also where we get into the aggressive and heavy-handed DOE style cuts on money already allocated. They're not just proposing to not give any future NEA grants from those other agencies that you were just citing. That's a policy debate that people could have in good faith, I guess. They're rescinding money that's already granted. You wrote up a list of arts organizations affected, including some here in New York. One of those is Art21, which you describe as the New York nonprofit that produces the beloved public television series Art in the Twenty-First Century. This is arts funding cuts meet public broadcasting funding cuts. Do you have any details of what will happen to Art in the Twenty-First Century on PBS, especially for listeners who might know that program or any specific episodes?

Brian Boucher: I don't. When I wrote about this, the press office was not able to give me a great deal of information. They say that the upcoming season was still in the planning, and so they weren't able to name any particular artists or episodes that were going to be highlighted. It will leave them in the lurch. You talk about not only canceled future grants, but this is something that I learned in my reporting on this issue, when you get these federal grants, it's often not as though the government writes you a check. You, as the museum or Art21, or whoever, cashes the check and then spends the money. It works the opposite way. They promise to reimburse you for the money, and then you spend it, and then put in for reimbursement.

There's hundreds of millions of dollars of grants that were promised to cultural institutions around the country in all 50 states and all counties that have already been spent. The Trump administration has simply said, "Eh, these don't align with our new priorities, so you're not going to get the money that you were promised." A contract, a promise from the federal government, is now just being treated as completely dispensable.

Brian Lehrer: Well, do you have any sense of how this is playing in red state and red district America, as with Medicaid and some other programs, renewable energy manufacturers, another one that's been in the news? Sometimes that's where the federal funding fills the biggest void. Do you know if there's anything like that with the arts that might affect the politics of this in Congress? Your list of affected arts organizations really spans the entire United States.

Brian Boucher: It's a great question. It really is time for people in red states to stand up for this programming. The first thing that was eliminated from the National Endowment for the Arts grant was the so-called Challenge America grants, which were $10,000 grants. Really, the tiniest amount in each individual grant that went to underserved areas, rural areas. The NEA had a very robust program for arts for veterans, arts for children, arts for people with learning disabilities, arts for seniors. Those things were all chopped immediately.

The reason that I said earlier that it's a little difficult to parse is that at first, the NEA changed its guidelines, saying people applying for future grants should focus on patriotic projects and those that mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Then, later in his budget proposal, Trump put forward a budget proposal with no budget line for the NEA. When I spoke to a museum director about this recently, between those two things occurring, she said, "It's hard to run a cultural institution. We don't know if we should apply for NEA grants, or is the NEA going to be eliminated tomorrow?"

I think it would absolutely be time for elected officials and the public to stand up in these in red states. We know, in his first term, Trump proposed to eliminate the NEA, every congressman and every representative represents people who receive funds from NEA, NEH, and IMLS. It wasn't successful the first time, and maybe it won't be successful this time around.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, on the AI and copyright issue, listener writes, "Trump, Vance, Melania, and MAGA writers won't like it when their publications are out there for free use by AI. Norman AI is freely using the images Trump sells for profit." A little commentary on that from a listener. A few more minutes, listeners. If you're just joining us with Brian Boucher from artnet.com, he covers the art world, and we're talking about broad-based cuts to art and cultural funding coming from the Trump administration now, including the proposal to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts altogether.

Brian, the Washington Post recently reported that not only does this agenda aim to extinguish efforts to extend the reach of the arts to diverse communities, as the Post put it, it also shifts funding to causes that Trump deems more patriotic, including celebrations for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence next year. I'm curious if you're familiar with some of the programs that Trump does want to fund, that we call arts programs, or that he calls arts programs?

Brian Boucher: One thing that is very easy to find amusing is that he wants to redirect a lot of the money that was meant to go to National Endowment for the Humanities grantees and redirect it to a National Garden of American Heroes, which is location, tbd, but is meant to honor, like, a long, long list of American heroes, from Rosa Parks to Kobe Bryant to Hannah Arendt, author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, ironically enough. He has decreed that the sculptures should be realistic and not abstract, and is putting out proposals for artists to put forward proposals to create these sculptures in his beloved sculpture garden.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that's interesting and maybe ironic in light of one of the grants that you wrote up that's being canceled or denied for a museum in Los Angeles that's specifically a response to Monuments. This was particularly-- you tell me, but I think it was particularly an arts project in response and a museum exhibit in response to the battle over continuing to have monuments to Confederates.

Brian Boucher: Yes. The curator, Hamza Walker, is organizing a show. He works at an LA institution called The Brick. The show is to be at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. It's called Monuments. I found this fascinating. I wrote about it when I got wind of the show. He wanted to get decommissioned Confederate monuments and put them in a museum exhibition along with work by contemporary artists that would respond to this whole issue.

That was, as you say, one of the many museums that was meant to get small, tens of thousands of dollars grants to support these exhibitions. Whether that one earned the particular ire of anybody in the Trump administration, I can't say, because it is, as you see, part of a very, very, very, very long list of exhibitions of unimpeachable quality that have been left in the lurch.

Brian Lehrer: Right. It reminds us of Charlottesville 2017, when Trump said there were good people on both sides, and the good people he was referring to on that side were the ones who wanted to preserve the monument of Robert E. Lee. Last thing, one of your articles on Artnet is called "Lawsuits mount as Elon Musk's DOGE enforces sweeping changes across federal arts agencies." Do you have any details or examples of a lawsuit? What makes some of these things a question of law and not just a question of government policy?

Brian Boucher: Right. Well, 21 state attorneys general brought a suit against DOGE for the dismantling of organizations, including, as I mentioned earlier, the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The NEA and the NEH, and IMLS were established decades ago by Congress and are appropriated money by Congress every year. That is apparently meaningless to the Trump administration, which wants to basically dispense with the authority of Congress in these matters, it seems, and just take a DOGE chainsaw to all of them. These state AGs point out that these organizations are required to exist and to have many very specifically mandated functions by legal statute.

As usual, the Trump administration wants to simply move fast and break things, if we could say so, and eliminate things. Then, the legal system is a little slower to follow up. Of course, if these things get caught up in the courts for months or years, who knows what will happen? There was a preliminary decision by, I believe it was Rhode Island District Court judge in favor of these AGs suing to stop the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. That's an encouraging moment for those who support public cultural funding in the US.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Boucher writes about art world news for the arts news website artnet.com. Thank you for joining us and explaining what's going on.

Brian Boucher: So glad to be with you, Brian. Thanks for having me.

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