During the last year or so at Rooster Magazine, I’ve had the privilege of speaking to a number of different artists representing a spectrum of creative endeavors. Whether it’s been a musician, painter, or someone in the culinary world who uses a plate as their canvas, there has always been one sentiment shared by every single artist I’ve spoken with, no matter their muse:

Without (their) art as a major component to the overall human experience, they’d probably be dead.

Unfortunately, when you look at the massive, MAGA-fueled cuts hitting the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) this year, it seems the Republican Party has no idea the butterfly effect this will have on American life.

Or maybe they do …

Before I delve into the more nefarious—and rarely examined—side effects these federal cuts will have, I think it’s essential to recap the government’s role in the art world of 2025, and how, if it were a Bob Ross painting, it would be called the “Happy Little Hellscape.”

For those of you who want to see every vote, law change, and other major event that has negatively impacted the levels of funding both the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will receive, The Greater Pittsburgh Art Council has put together a very thorough anthology here. Although there are a couple of statistics surrounding Pittsburgh lawmakers in the data, overall, it’s a great compilation of the different ways artists are going to get screwed nationwide, with real-world consequences already hitting the Centennial State.

Further breaking down the numbers, the Colorado Sun found that since 2021, the NEH has awarded Colorado more than $9 million to fund 57 projects in 14 cities and towns. And according to NEA numbers, 22 Colorado organizations were set to receive over $400,000 this year.

But now, all this funding has either been paused or vanished completely.

To understand how these cuts are going to impact the arts in Colorado, I reached out to Claudia Moore (Executive Director, Museo de las Americas) and Tony Garcia (Executive Arts Director, Su Teatro) about their years-long experiences with the NEA and NEH, and how grim their future will be under the current political regime.

One of the first things I learned from the interviews was that none of the organizations that receive government allotments were given any kind of advanced warning that the money was going to stop.

Su Teatro had been consistently receiving $10,000 in grants from the Challenge America program for the last 20 years. However, even with the decades of familiarity, Garcia made it clear that nobody reached out to him. “We were notified by email in late March. We found out along with everyone else.” He continued, “We believed that there might be cutbacks, as the NEA has been a target for decades, but a complete gutting was not what we anticipated.”

To support exhibitions and projects that elevate underrepresented voices, the Museo received funding from the NEA in 2020, 2021, and 2023. Yet, like every other non-profit organization, they receive funding from a number of sources. When I asked Moore about the various streams of funding that a non-profit like the Museo has access to, and how important the NEA portion of that is to their organization, her answer was emphatic.

“Our funding model depends on a mix of foundations, corporate sponsors, individual donors, and government sources—both local and federal. The NEA falls into that broader landscape of public support that is crucial for our operations. So, while it is just one piece of our funding puzzle, it is an important one that we have come to rely on.”

During the interviews, I would learn that a key component of both the Museo and Su Teatro’s multi-decade longevity comes from their commitment to the community. “The core of the work is community engagement,” Garcia stated. “What can the arts do to enlighten, heal, gather together, celebrate, and strengthen our lives as human beings? The community is the most important aspect of artistic engagement.”

Moore added, “Cuts to arts funding jeopardize the ability of organizations like ours to preserve and celebrate cultural heritage, foster creativity, and build community.”

Garcia expounded on the idea that a major reason for the funding cuts was to help with building the “right” community. “The cuts are not about what we are presenting, they are about who we are and who belongs. It says some are welcome and others are not; it is a callback to the days of ‘No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed,’ except the list has broadened to include more of us who do not belong.”

He may be on to something.

First off, the argument made by many conservatives that the NEA and NEH are wasting a huge percentage of taxpayers’ money simply isn’t true. Fiscally speaking, the NEA and NEH make up less than half a percentage point of the federal government’s overall budget, with each agency spending about $207 million in the past year.

So, if the actual amount of money shelled out by taxpayers is that minute, could these cuts be racially motivated?

Though I have no quotes from any conservative leaders that show a direct connection between the cuts and racial(ly coded) motivation, there is one interesting study I found when it comes to these potential bedfellows.

Earlier this decade, the Getty Museum released a series of reports about cultural heritage throughout history. In the third report (called “Cultural Heritage Under Attack: Learning From History”), they found that, “Cultural destruction often goes hand in hand with human rights violations and other atrocities … ”

And unless you’ve been living under a rock since January 20th—and I won’t judge you if you have—knowing the sheer volume of human rights violations towards anyone who isn’t white in this country makes the “Getty Museum Art-to-Racism Equation” seem much more plausible.

Whether the motivations behind the GOP completely gutting the arts are based in racism or are being done just to “own the libs,” I can’t say.

What I do know is that both commercial and nonprofit American arts and culture entities make up 4.2% of the nation’s GDP—$1.2 trillion. And I also know that because of these financial reductions, conservatives are openly harming an industry that plays a major role in our financial security, all in the name of some fabricated cause.

Yeah, that seems on-brand.