Republicans Mourning Dolly Parton Quietly Cut Funds for Her Charity

As the U.S. mourns Dolly Parton, the country idol’s charity, Imagination Library, has recommitted itself to providing free books to children under the age of five. But its future has become all the more uncertain due to the quiet machinations of Republicans that have sought to unravel public funding for the cause.According to its website, more than three million children are registered to receive a free book every month from Imagination Library. So far, Parton’s nonprofit has doled out more than 332 million books to kids across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland.“The world grieves with us today. And yet we find ourselves just as certain about what comes next. For decades, Dolly & the team at The Dollywood Foundation—home of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library—worked to build something that would last for generations. So it will,” the organization wrote on social media Tuesday, shortly after Parton’s family announced the 80-year-old had died following a brief battle with cancer. “The work ahead has never felt more meaningful, and we will carry it forward as she lifts us all up.”Yet children in the American Midwest may not find themselves so lucky. In Indiana, funding for the program was removed from the state budget in 2025. Republican Governor Mike Braun said the state plans to replace an annual $3 million allowance via private philanthropic donations, according to Newsweek.Jeff Conyers, the vice chair and president of the Dollywood Foundation, implored Braun and the Republican-controlled state legislature to reconsider the cuts, telling Rolling Stone in February of that year that “the beauty of the Imagination Library is that it unites us all—regardless of politics—because every child deserves the chance to dream big and succeed.”Missouri lawmakers similarly divested from the reading charity, slashing state funding for the upcoming fiscal year from $6 million to $2 million. The impact of that decision has already been felt, forcing the state to freeze enrollment in the book-a-month program on July 1. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education announced in June that it would distribute as many books as it could until funding for the program ran out.“We are unsure of the future of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library in Missouri as a state-funded program,” said Lucas Bond, the department’s communications director, in a statement to St. Louis’s NBC affiliate KSDK in June. “Partnering with local programs could be a potential in the future with time, funding, and partnerships coordination.”The change is a stark reversal for Missouri, which became the first state in the nation to fully fund the program in 2024. At the time, Parton was thrilled by the investment, sharing that “it makes me happy to think that I’m giving them a gift that matters to them, and it makes me happy to know that I’ve made them feel special.”Read more about Dolly Parton:President Donald Trump wants to turn the midterm elections into a Trumpfest in what could be a massive gift to Democratic lawmakers. The Atlantic reported Tuesday that Trump met with his top political advisers early this month to create a strategy for spending his super PAC’s $400 million war chest ahead of November. Trump’s solution in the face of apparent Democratic favorability? To buy advertisements focusing on his own record, according to three people familiar with the meeting. House and Senate Democrats are planning to use the election as a referendum on the president, Trump told his advisers. He wanted to double down by highlighting his scant victories. “Go look at the clips,” the president instructed his staff, one person told The Atlantic. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”It’s no secret that Trump is the Republicans’ best communicator (yikes), but the president’s so-called “Golden Age” isn’t going so well. His choice to turn November’s midterm elections into a Trumpfest comes as his approval ratings have hit a record low and his disastrous policies are threatening to alienate even his most staunch supporters. Things have gotten so bad that Republican candidates are actively distancing themselves from the president and his lackeys. Trump is about to make that a lot harder.President Donald Trump is claiming that the recently deceased country music legend Dolly Parton was a big fan of his, even though she made a point to support the LGBTQ community, proclaimed that Black lives mattered, and remained politically neutral throughout her life—never endorsing Trump.“We all knew her so well. I knew her a little bit.... She really liked me,” Trump said on the Glenn Beck Program Wednesday morning, suggesting that Parton never came out publicly in support of him because she would lose “20 percent of the fans.”Parton died on Tuesday at the age of 80.Trump on Dolly Parton: "She really liked me, I will tell you" pic.twitter.com/Ha39wOXnlo— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 26, 2026 Trump is using the death of a universally beloved artist as an opportunity to talk about himself. It’s much easier to make claims about how someone felt or didn’t feel once they’re no longer here to make it known themselves.And for what it’s worth, nothing about Parton suggested some secret support for Trump. She was an outspoken advocate for the queer community and spoke out against a transgender ban in Tennessee in 2023, saying she just wanted everyone “to be treated good.” In 2020, she stated that “of course Black lives matter. Do we think our white asses are the only ones that matter?” She was also vaccinated against Covid-19 and donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University, which helped fund the Moderna vaccine.“I don’t do politics,” Parton once said on a podcast. “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence. Of course, I have my opinion about everything, but I learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things.”And yet we have Trump assigning her an ideology in death, getting in his last petty little points—something only a president as callous as him would do. A clean energy group has quietly managed to derail several Republican races.The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC has raised and spent millions of dollars to dethrone at least three conservative figureheads that have backtracked on their green energy promises. Its latest victim: South Carolina Senate candidate Ralph Norman.The group’s third major political coup occurred Tuesday evening, when Norman lost to Darline Graham, sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. The group, which is backed by solar executives and investors, told Politico that it had spent nearly $1 million to undermine the lawmaker’s odds.Earlier this year, the group’s ad buys stymied Representative Chip Roy’s unsuccessful attempt to become Texas’s attorney general. The PAC also spent roughly $2 million to unseat Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles—an effort that came to fruition earlier this month, when the incumbent was defeated by a former state official.The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition’s vendettas are nothing short of personal: Norman, Roy, and Ogles had pushed their caucus to nix clean energy incentives in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.“The clean energy industry’s political muscle is only getting stronger and more intimidating,” Invest in Tomorrow Coalition co-founder Michael Brune told Politico. “Our hope here is that clean energy will go back to being a bipartisan issue, and maybe one of the few issues that all Americans can agree on. But before we get there, we’ve got to continue our retribution tour and take out a few more members who have voted the wrong way.”Norman, for instance, effectively backstabbed the renewable energy industry when he tried to kill the Biden administration’s wind and solar tax credits, despite co-launching the Congressional Solar Caucus in 2018. “Norman’s somewhat even traitorous to the clean energy industry and solar industry,” Tom Matzzie, chair of the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition and a solar CEO, told Politico. “It’s about stopping Norman, but it’s also about sending a message to other members of Congress that if they try to hurt the industry, we’re going to fight back.”With wins under its belt and millions in the bank, the group could prove to be one of 2026’s most formidable election season foes. So far, the group has raised more than $6.8 million, according to data collected by the Federal Election Commission.Read more about clean energy:Does President Trump even know how trade talks with Canada fell apart?After negotiations with Canada imploded last week, both sides started pointing fingers. U.S. officials like JD Vance blamed Canada for introducing new asks late in the talks, while Canadian officials claimed that it was the U.S. that brought unreasonable eleventh-hour demands to the table. In a phone call, CNN’s Jim Sciutto asked Trump whether the U.S. had been the one to make late-stage demands. The president seemed to have no recollection of these events.“That sounds like me,” he said, adding, “They have to pay a fair amount. And if they don’t pay a fair amount, we won’t make a deal. That’s fine.”Right before the deadline, American negotiators reportedly walked back their promise to drop tariffs on Canadian automobiles from 25 to 15 percent, revealing that they planned to exclude medium and heavy-duty trucks. They also tried to restrict Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries. It was also reported that one reason Canadian negotiators walked away was that the U.S. made what were, in their view, unreasonable demands restricting French-language product documentation.“Our culture, our language, is central to our identity, and it is important to exclude that from the negotiating table,” Canadian Premier Christine Fréchette said, “Even though we are threatened with different tariffs, it won’t change. We will stay the way we are.” Trump has since threatened to double tariffs to 50 percent on roughly $28 billion worth of products starting on January 1. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a slate of retaliatory tariffs on about 700 products up to 50 percent that will go into effect on September 8.