The Trump administration has once again made its stance on queer visibility painfully clear — this time by yanking federal funding from one of the nation’s most celebrated LGBTQ theater festivals. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has revoked a $20,000 grant it had previously awarded to the Criminal Queerness Festival, citing a shift in priorities “as determined by the President.”
The Brooklyn-based National Queer Theater, the group behind the annual event, said the funding represented 20% of its operating budget for the June event. Jess Ducey, co-chair of the board and one of the festival’s lead organizers, called the move “devastating,” noting that the funding was already earmarked for paying more than 50 artists and crew members.
The NEA’s decision to ax the grant came after a wave of resignations at the agency and the rollout of a Trump budget proposal to eliminate the NEA altogether. The agency, in a form email, claimed it would now prioritize “American independence, HBCUs, AI competency, disaster recovery, and houses of worship” — in other words, anything but queerness.
Queer Artists Under Fire
Ducey, who uses they/them pronouns, said the decision comes amid a larger pattern of censorship and political retaliation. The Criminal Queerness Festival — set to stage plays about queer life in Uganda, Indonesia, and Cuba — is now scrambling to stay afloat through online fundraising.
More troublingly, Ducey believes the festival was targeted due to its involvement in an ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the NEA. The suit challenges a new provision that required artists to pledge not to “promote gender ideology” in any work funded by the agency — a clause born of a Trump executive order declaring there are only “two unchangeable sexes.”
While the NEA has since walked back that specific certification, the festival and other queer-led groups remain in limbo, still subject to vague new eligibility rules that effectively penalize them for existing.
“This is about more than a grant,” Ducey said. “This is about the attack on artists and stories and the viewpoints that are considered American.”
The Broader LGBTQ+ Impact
What may look like a $20,000 line item in a federal spreadsheet has seismic impact in the real world — especially in marginalized communities. The Criminal Queerness Festival has become a cultural lifeline, platforming queer voices from countries where homosexuality is criminalized.
Under the Trump administration’s latest culture war offensive, LGBTQ artists are being pushed out of federal support systems. The shift frames queer narratives as political threats rather than vital American art. With anti-trans legislation and book bans already surging across the U.S., this move from the NEA may signal yet another front in a coordinated rollback of LGBTQ rights — with culture and creativity caught in the crosshairs.
For now, the festival is still scheduled for June 11–28. Whether it survives in its full form depends on private donors stepping in where the government has stepped out. But the message has already been sent loud and clear: queer art, under this administration, is not considered American enough to fund.
And to that, the response from the queer community is clear: see you at the show.