In a joint statement, all of its members—including author Jhumpa Lahiri, artist Chuck Close, actor Kal Penn, and more—explained in very specific terms why they no longer felt comfortable serving the president in the wake of his inflammatory remarks about the Charlottesville tragedy. Seventeen members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities said in a resignation letter Friday, “The false equivalencies you push cannot stand.”

The letter was in response to Trump’s comments Tuesday that “both sides” were to blame for the violence at last Saturday’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A day earlier, Trump has abandoned plans to create an infrastructure advisory council, the White House said on Thursday, the day after two other advisory groups were dismantled over the furor caused by Trump's remarks on white supremacists. They announced their resignation through a strongly worded letter condemning the White House’s handling of white supremacy: “We cannot sit idly by, the way that your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions,” it reads. “This does not unify the nation we all love.”

Citing the contrast between America and Cuba, where the group recently led a delegation, the letter says that Trump is eating away at American values. We must be better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.”

The only member whose name did not appear was Broadway director George C. Wolfe. Update (4:55 p.m.): The White House has responded to the committee’s decision to resign, stating that “earlier this month it was decided that President Trump will not renew the Executive Order for the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), which expires later this year,” according to a statement released to the New York Times. You can have someone like Ivanka Trump talk all she wants about the importance of programs for young people, but when she is a senior adviser and her administration’s budget has zero dollars next to those things, it’s not surprising that the First Lady isn’t reaching out. Now that the group members have resigned, they will focus on protecting programs that were initially created by the committee—such as Turnaround Arts, an initiative that provides arts education to schools across the country, in partnership with the Kennedy Center, as well as Americans for the Arts, which provides arts funding to numerous schools. The 17-member committee was appointed by President Barack Obama and hasn't met under Trump, but it has continued work on some of its programs.
All 17 members of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, including actor Kal Penn and artist Chuck Close, resign.