The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, which the Democrats passed in March 2021 without any Republican backing, was billed by the Democratic Party as an economic necessity for getting the nation through the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which got $135 million from the plan, declared last October that it had allocated $87.8 million in ARP funds to “nearly 300 cultural and educational institutions to help them recover from the economic impact of the pandemic, retain and rehire workers, and reopen sites, facilities, and programs.”
Many of the institutions were awarded grants for projects that had little to do with addressing recovery attempts from the virus, according to research from American Crossroads shared with and verified by Fox News Digital.
For example, $499,023 went to the University of Montana for many programs on racial justice, including a public address series on “racial justice, death and Indigenous knowledge.”
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A $50,000 in ARP funds went to a nonprofit organization in the Northern Mariana Islands called 500 Sails for “reopening programs that teach Indigenous canoe-building and explore pre-colonial sea life.” The same nonprofit had already received over $14,000 from two Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans founded by the CARES Act in May 2020 and February 2021.
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The NEH gave $471,905 in ARP funds to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh for the “ongoing development” of an existing exhibit on Ancient Egypt after the museum had already received $5.8 million in PPP recovery funds in April 2021.
The Science History Institute in Philadelphia was granted $359,097 by the NEH to create a “multiplatform project exploring the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.” The same institute previously got a $1,230,100 PPP loan on April 14, 2020.
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A further $200,000 in ARP funds went to the Chicago Humanities Festival to create “six humanities programs on racial justice, gender equality, and building an inclusive society.” The group was previously granted $778,236 from two PPP loans between April 2020 and January 2021.
A whopping $3.5 million was granted to the nonprofit American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for a grant program providing relief funds to colleges and universities across the nation addressing “racial equity, climate change, international relations, pandemic recovery, and strengthening democracy.” Through that program, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, received a grant for its public humanities program that “advances social justice issues focused on three core tracks: public information, racial equity, and food and land justice.”
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