Advocacy Alert – November 15, 2024

In this Alliance Advocacy Alert:

• Registration Opening Soon: Museums Advocacy Day 2025 – Feb. 24-25

• Nominate a Legislator: Nominate a Legislator who has Championed Museums

• Election 2024: What it means for museums

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Museums Advocacy Day 2025 – Feb. 24-25: Registration Opens Soon!

Registration will soon be opening for Museums Advocacy Day 2025! With the many changes 2025 has in store including first-time elected members and changes in leadership and committee assignments, the start of the new year will be a pivotal time to advocate for museums.

For over 15 years, Museums Advocacy Day has mobilized museum advocates nationwide to help ensure we reach every member of Congress with our message that museums are worthy of federal support and are essential to their communities. Together, we communicate with lawmakers and their staff to ensure museums are included when relevant legislative policies are enacted and important funding decisions are made.

AAM will provide training and talking points as well as schedule all of your Congressional meetings. On Monday, February 24 at the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel in Arlington, VA, participants will attend a daylong program to prepare them for their visits. On Tuesday, February 25, participants will spend the day visiting the offices of their members of Congress in Washington, DC including attending a Congressional reception that evening.

Don’t miss this powerful opportunity to combine our collective voices to share the unique value of museums of all types and sizes across the country. Your participation matters.

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Nominate a Legislator Who Has Championed Museums

Has a member of Congress supported or helped advance the work of your museum? Each year during Museums Advocacy Day, we present awards to members of Congress who have demonstrated exemplary support for museums.

See past honorees and nominate a legislator by November 30.

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Election 2024: What it means for museums

As noted in its recent statement, the American Alliance of Museums recognizes the 2024 federal election results present the potential for significant policy shifts that could directly impact museums. As your Alliance and as a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), we are steadfast in our decades-long commitment to strong, bipartisan support. There is a lot at stake, and we look forward to reinforcing the message that museums are a critical investment for our country.

President-elect Trump has a “trifecta” with a slim Republican majority in the Senate and and an even slimmer majority expected in the House of Representatives. While we continue to assess the election’s impact on museums, here are our initial top takeaways:

What It Means for Museums:

• IMLS, NEH, and NEA: Recall that previous Republican-controlled Congresses did not enact past Trump budgets that would have eliminated funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In fact, Congress ignored the Trump Administration’s requests and increased funding. We don’t expect funding increases now due to changes in the composition of the lawmakers in Congress. However, we know that members of Congress do not want to vote for bills that will cost jobs in their district or harm their constituents. We need to keep speaking up for these and other vital federal programs that benefit museums and the communities they serve. Support for museums is strong, regardless of political persuasion:

  • 96% of Americans would approve of lawmakers who acted to support museums.

    • This number is consistently high among respondents who consider themselves politically liberal (97%), moderate (95%), or conservative (93%).

  • 96% of Americans think positively of their elected officials for taking legislative action to support museums.

  • Three-quarters of the public believe museums are an important part of our civil society.

  • The total economic contribution of museums in 2016 amounted to more than $50 billion in GDP, 726,200 jobs, and $12 billion in taxes to local, state, and federal governments.

• Tax Reform: Congress is expected to pivot quickly to debate a major tax package in 2025 as the 2017 Trump tax cuts are set to expire. Museums could see increased revenue and public support if a non-itemizer charitable deduction, such as the one in the Charitable Act (S. 566, H.R. 3435), which will need to be reintroduced next year, is included in the package. AAM has been a long-time advocate of the non-itemizer charitable deduction and is a member of the Charitable Giving Coalition, a broad coalition of charitable nonprofits working to boost charitable giving. AAM also will be working to oppose harmful polices some think tanks are currently proposing, such as the Tax Foundation’s disastrous proposal to require nonprofits, including museums, to pay the regular corporate income tax rate on any earned income. Additionally, Congress previously has shown interest in establishing rules for private foundation museums to ensure they are adequately accessible by the general public.

• Reinforcing Bipartisan Support for Museums Is Critical. Museums have always enjoyed support from both sides of the political aisle, and we will continue to build relationships with all our elected officials—learning about their priorities, finding common ground, and ensuring that lawmakers know that museums are essential to their communities.

• Big Picture: Here’s a broader agenda on what could be expected in Trump’s second term.

• AAM Statement: Read the American Alliance of Museums Statement on the 2024 Elections.

“Firsts” in the 119th Congress

The 119th Congress will usher in a number of notable “firsts” when it kicks off in early January. Here are some of the incoming members who are poised to make history:

• Sens.-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) will become the first two Black women to serve together in the Senate. Neither Delaware nor Maryland have ever had a Black senator. Delaware has never been represented by a woman in the upper chamber.

• Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) will become the first openly transgender member of Congress. Her election comes at a time when Republicans have increasingly targeted transgender rights.

• Rep.-elect Julie Johnson (D-Texas) will be the first openly gay member to not only represent Texas but the entire South.

• Emily Randall (D-Wash.) will become the first openly LGBTQ Latina in Congress.

• Sen.-elect Andy Kim (D-N.J.) will be the first Korean-American senator.

• Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) will become the first Hispanic senator from Arizona.

• Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) will become the first Hispanic lawmaker to represent Ohio statewide. He will also become the first senator born in South America.

What You Can Do Now

• Take Action to Support Funding for Museums: Urge your legislators to support FY 2025 OMS funding.

• Take Action to Support Increased Charitable Giving: Urge your legislators to support the nonitemizer deduction.

• Share Your Connections: The AAM Government Relations & Advocacy staff looks forward to working with the new Congress. We know that you may already have connections with your new or returning members of Congress. We hope you will share that information with us by filling out our Washington Connections Contact Form, so we can work together on outreach.

• Invite Legislators to Visit your Museum: We also encourage you to introduce and/or invite returning and new members of Congress to visit your institution and tell them your story about the positive impact you have on improving your community.

• Engage Your Board Members in Advocacy: Download a copy of Stand for Your Museum Mission and begin a dialogue with your board about how they can play an important role in advocating for your museum.

• Register for Museums Advocacy Day 2025 (Feb. 24-25): Opening Soon.

Lame Duck Congress

Congress returned this week for upcoming leadership elections and a long list of unfinished business, including fiscal year (FY) 2025 appropriations, hurricane relief funding, a massive farm bill, and the annual defense reauthorization bill. The current FY 2025 stopgap measure keeping the federal government funded at FY 2024 levels will expire on December 20. While Speaker of the House Johnson (R-LA) in recent days has expressed that he’s leaning toward extending the stopgap spending bill into March, president-elect Trump has yet to weigh in and no final decisions have been made. In the meantime, we encourage you to keep telling your legislators to support at least $55.5 million for OMS and support at least $209 million each for the NEH and NEA.

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Your steadfast advocacy efforts make a big difference in building needed support for museums and museum professionals.

Looking for more advocacy tools and resources? Visit the Advocacy section of the AAM Resource Library today!

Visit http://www.aam-us.org/advocacy to learn more about AAM’s advocacy for museums.