Washington has secretaries for agriculture, transportation, energy, commerce, and labor—so why not one for the arts? That question, pushed by Sam Reich, CEO of the streaming service Dropout, is resonating with Democrats looking to reframe their cultural message ahead of 2026 and 2028.
The arts are not a niche concern. In 2023, arts and cultural production generated $1.17 trillion—4.2% of the U.S. economy—and supported 5.4 million jobs, rivaling agriculture and transportation in economic heft. Yet the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced in February that it would stop regularly producing these statistics, a retreat from measuring a sector that underpins American soft power and local economies.
Consider the scale: the film and television industry alone supports over 2 million jobs and $202 billion in wages across more than 162,000 businesses. Video games generate nearly $96 billion in annual economic impact and employ over 250,000 Americans. These are not coastal-elite pastimes; they are blue-collar and white-collar livelihoods in every state.
The urgency comes from artificial intelligence. AI can already generate images, music, scripts, and video, blurring the line between studio productions and small-team outputs. Copyright law, labor rules, antitrust enforcement, and education policy each touch this transformation, but responsibility is scattered across Washington. The Copyright Office itself says fundamental AI questions remain unresolved.
Reich's proposal: a cabinet-level Department of the Arts with a secretary who oversees the whole ecosystem—artists, studios, unions, tech firms, copyright, AI, and cultural exports. The mission would be to protect creators' rights, not police their content. Democrats are eyeing this as a platform plank, especially after Trump's economic headwinds and his takeover of the Kennedy Center signal that cultural institutions are not untouchable.
The Democratic response, some argue, cannot be merely defensive—restoring old programs or budgets. The political divide demands new institutions, not just preservation. A Department of the Arts would signal that government is for building, not just maintaining.
As Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way, writes, the next great American institution need not be inherited; it can be invented. For Democrats, that invention could be a powerful answer to Trump's cultural interventions.
