One of President Donald Trump’s executive orders threatens to stop funding for the Vermont Historical Society’s milestone COVID-19 project. The work, a three-year oral history initiative, is virtually complete. The book it produced, Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVD-19 in Vermont, hits bookstores on Tuesday, March 25, and a podcast with the same name comes out three days later. The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the historical society a $137,000 grant over three years to help cover the $250,000 project’s cost, and the money has been spent. The agency is one of seven the president now seeks to dismantle. The historical society has yet to receive the grant’s final $30,000. [content-1] Normally, the nonprofit would have several more months to submit a request for the final payout, but staffers are scrambling to file it this week. “We’re worried,” project director Amanda Kay Gustin said on Tuesday. The IMLS awarded Vermont $1.4 million in 2024. The bulk of the money, $1.2 million, went to the Vermont Department of Libraries through the Grants to States program, the largest source of federal funding support for library services in the U.S. The money accounts for a third of the department’s annual budget and supports resources shared by libraries statewide, including interlibrary loan, databases, ebooks, audiobooks and workforce development programs. It is unclear what effect the executive order will have, state librarian and Commissioner of Libraries Catherine Delneo said in an email. According to the order, signed last Friday, it “continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary.” The IMLS, along with agencies that address homelessness, support minority-owned businesses and oversee the Voice of America media network, were ordered “eliminated to the maximum extent” allowed by law. Courts have blocked other attempts by the administration to shrink the government. A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that efforts to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development likely violated the Constitution and ordered operations to be partially restored. Two rulings last week called for agencies to rehire employees fired because they had probationary status. The Vermont Department of Libraries and the Vermont Historical Society are among organizations nationwide swirling in uncertainties. The historical society’s COVID-19 project is the first statewide compilation of pandemic oral history. “This is the kind of work that we know is just absolutely crucial to do,” said Gustin, the…