On Friday, president Donald Trump had signed an Executive Order, Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, directing severe cuts to IMLS, which provides resources to museums and libraries in all 50 states and territories, calling for it to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” within seven days. Staff had already been reduced, said the employee, due to steps like the termination of probationary employees.

Word quickly got out Thursday morning on a whistleblowers’ channel on Reddit. “The Institute of Museum and Library Services is being raided by DOGE and the new Acting Director (also somehow DepSec of Labor) Keith Sonderling with the express intent to shut it down,” wrote one anonymous poster. “Sonderling was sworn-in in the lobby of the office building and they are proceeding with quickly and quietly dismantling the agency. There are Department of Homeland Security personnel present—to bully a bunch of civil servants who administer grants to museums and libraries.”