On a beautiful day for a voyage to his office for the day, Edward Tepporn, the Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, can't help but feel a bit deflated.

"Opening that email, my stomach just dropped," he said.

Like many leaders of humanities organizations, Tepporn received notice from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that the organization moved to terminate a $25,000 federal grant it had previously awarded his organization.

"Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes. NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda," the letter read in part. "The President's February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions."

"It felt like a punch in the gut reading the letter, seeing the words that our work no longer aligned with the priorities of the federal government when our work is really just about lifting up important parts of U.S. and American history that are sometimes overlooked," Tepporn said.

He and California State Parks' staff, like Casey Dexter-Lee, are stewards of American history at the Angel Island Immigration Station, which was used as a detention center in the early 1900s. Approximately 500,000 immigrants from 80 countries were processed, detained, and/or interrogated here.

"This place was built to enforce the Chinese exclusion laws that were in effect at the time – that was its original purpose," Dexter-Lee said. "You can't learn from historic events if you don't know that they happened."

"Without this funding, it definitely hampers our opportunities and abilities to tell these often-invisible stories," Tepporn said. "This work is important in ensuring the full American story. While it may be difficult to hear, while it may be uncomfortable for people to hear, there are so many lessons that we can learn from the stories of what immigrants experienced under detention here. There are so many stories we can learn about what these immigrants and their descendants have gone on to do to contribute to the U.S. and the world."

The NEH is terminating previously approved federal grants for humanities organizations from coast to coast. That includes 33 in the Bay Area, totaling over $14 million in grant funds.

"DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency], I don't think, even knows what it's cutting, and I'm certain that it doesn't understand the impact on communities across the country," said Steve Kidd, the Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance.

He says the NEH is one of the most important sources of funding for humanities organizations, as it funds a lot of organizations that private donors don't.

"It is less biased towards elite institutions than a lot of private funders," he said.

The NEH's history goes back to the 1960s. 

"NEH is an independent federal agency that supports the humanities in every state and U.S. jurisdiction," the agency's website states. "Since 1965, NEH has awarded over $6 billion to support museums, historic sites, universities, teachers, libraries, documentary filmmakers, public TV and radio stations, research institutions, scholars, and local humanities programming."

Kidd believes this decision to cut grants will have long-term negative impacts on communities across America.

"The NEH has had bipartisan support for years," he said. "Members of Congress know the importance of this work in their districts across the country."

Tepporn says he expects another grant, from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), will soon be terminated as well. The two grants total around $100,000, he says.

"We're still thinking about what possibilities and exploring options for how we might be able to get these federal grants restored," Tepporn said. "We're also exploring opportunities to connect with other donors who might be able to fund the work that we would have done with these grants. Ultimately, we won't give up on continuing to tell these important-to-remember stories, and, encouraging more people to come and visit Angel Island to learn about these histories where they happened."

CBS News Bay Area reached out and requested an interview with the NEH but did not hear back.