Why?
By Zane
McNeill , Truthout
“The attempted intrusion by DOGE — a temporary, un-elected
and non-Congressionally approved agency — toward the Vera Institute should
alarm every American,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Council of
Nonprofits, said
in a statement.
During a call with DOGE representatives, Vera’s legal team
challenged the legitimacy of the request, noting that the U.S. Department of
Justice had already terminated the
nonprofit’s federal grants, which had totaled approximately $5 million over
three years. While the Vera Institute successfully pushed back and DOGE
ultimately withdrew
the request, civil society advocates
warn that the incident is part of a broader campaign to undermine
nonprofit independence.
“This action by DOGE sets a dangerous precedent, leaving any
recipient of federal funding — nonprofit, for-profit, and individuals alike —
vulnerable to the whims of this destructive group. DOGE and The Trump
Administration’s professed commitment to free speech and financial efficiency
falls flat when their actions selectively target and weaken groups whose
missions they may oppose,” Yentel
said.
This tactic to control nonprofits could have far-reaching
consequences. An Urban
Institute analysis found that more than 103,000 nonprofit
organizations received a combined $267 billion in government grants in 2021.
These figures, based on IRS filings, excluded smaller organizations with
limited reporting requirements — highlighting the vast scale of the nonprofit
sector’s entanglement with public funding.
“The end goal is to destroy all of civil society. NGOs include everything from community clinics to civil rights orgs. It means the end of the ACLU, NAACP, and all advocacy orgs,” Harvard cyberlaw instructor Alejandra Caraballo wrote on Bluesky in February. “Elon is seeking to eliminate any and all independent sources of power outside of an [authoritarian] government he controls.
This is just the latest in a growing
series of attacks by the Trump administration aimed at exerting
control over the nonprofit sector. In one of its most dramatic moves,
DOGE assumed
control of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) — an independent
nonprofit created by Congress in 1984 — by firing its board and leadership,
installing loyalists, and transferring ownership of its headquarters to the
federal government. DOGE officials reportedly
referenced this takeover in their conversations with Vera, citing USIP
as an example of a successful federal intervention into nonprofit affairs.
Elon Musk has publicly
accused nonprofit organizations receiving government contracts of
widespread fraud, asserting without evidence that leaders of these “fake NGOs”
should face imprisonment. In a post on X last month, Musk claimed, “The
Democrat government-funded NGO scam might be the biggest theft of taxpayer
money ever.”
Musk’s comments seem to support that targeting the Vera
Institute is part of a broader
effort to delegitimize civil society by portraying nonprofits as
threats to government authority — a hallmark of authoritarian
regimes. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a Princeton professor and board chair of
the Vera Institute of Justice, warned
on LinkedIn that Trump’s executive
order empowering DOGE to target “waste, fraud, and abuse” is merely a
“pretext for what amounts to a federal takeover” of nonprofit organizations.
“Fascists need to crush civil society orgs because they are
a bulwark of liberalism. They democratize access to power and institutions
while defending civil liberties,” Caraballo said on Bluesky.
“That’s what all of this is about.”
Advocates like Caraballo are especially alarmed by the Trump
administration’s mounting
pressure on private universities — including Harvard, Princeton,
Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Northwestern and Brown, all of
which are 501(c)(3)
organizations. The Trump administration has frozen
billions in funding from these institutions, demanding the
elimination of DEI initiatives, imposing hiring and curriculum oversight, and
pressuring universities to collaborate more closely with law enforcement and
immigration authorities.
Advocates say the Trump administration is using these
institutions as a testing
ground before expanding its attacks to all nonprofit organizations.
“Trump has to crush Harvard and all other civil society institutions to
consolidate power,” Caraballo
explained.
Harvard has refused
to comply with Trump’s demands. In a recent statement, the
university’s president declared that
“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its
constitutional rights.” In response, Trump threatened
to revoke its tax-exempt status, which Caraballo says will
be used as a tactic against nonprofit organizations next.
Caraballo previously
warned that the Trump administration will likely attempt to “gut the
entire nonprofit sector” by using investigations into DEI, “antisemitism” —
code for opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza — or “gender ideology” as a
pretext to revoke the tax-exempt status of organizations that challenge Trump.
“This administration has systematically attacked every
aspect of civil society, from academia to law firms and the media, and is now
coming after the nonprofit sector. We can only surmise that these tactics seek
to silence us,” the Vera Institute said
in a statement. “It will not happen. We will not back down.”
Zane
McNeill is a trending news writer at Truthout. They have a master’s
degree in political science from Central European University and are currently
enrolled in law school at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. They
can be found on Twitter: @zane_crittheory.
