NGOs say they’re under attack from Trump — and are ready to fight back

“An open declaration of war” and “an existential threat” — this is how leaders at international NGOs and other U.S. nonprofits are describing the environment under the Trump administration. The administration’s antagonistic approach to nonprofits is causing deep anxiety in the sector. Insiders told Devex that its actions are creating an environment where many organizations are worried about advocating loudly for particular causes or criticizing the administration. A deluge of announcements with unclear implications and threats against those who are ideologically opposed to President Donald Trump’s agenda is leading some organizations to self-censor. However, organizations are fighting back through collective action, such as information sharing and joint letters, in the hope that there is safety in numbers. The situation is “creating fear, but at the same time, it’s generated a lot of energy to assert the rights of civil society,” said Kay Guinane, a lawyer who specializes in the rights of nonprofit organizations and who has returned from retirement to help tackle the threat to the sector. “There’s time and resources going into shoring up defenses for civil society … but also [into] speaking out vigorously about the authoritarian nature of what the Trump administration is doing,” she said. “The main thing is to not be silenced.” Many organizations — especially those reliant on federal funding or working on issues to which the Trump administration is hostile — are afraid that speaking up could put a target on their backs. But as the attacks ramp up, there is increasing awareness that organizations must stand together and resist, several experts said. ‘An open declaration of war’ Many nonprofits feel they are facing an existential threat, said the experts. And the problem has grown over the past 10 months. “Nonprofits are very fearful right now about the political and financial risks that they’re facing,” said Sarah Saadian, senior vice president at the National Council of Nonprofits. “They’ve seen this escalating rhetoric from the White House, and [from] some in [the U.S.] Congress, denigrating nonprofits and framing them as being enemies of the American people.” On top of the sweeping funding cuts that have already left many organizations teetering on the edge, nonprofits have also been threatened with the loss of their tax-exempt status and restrictions on issues that can be key to their work, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion — or DEI — and gender rights. A recent presidential memorandum directed law enforcement to “disband and uproot” networks and organizations that it views as supporting “domestic terrorism” or “organized political violence.” It was released the same day as media reports that the Justice Department was preparing to investigate the Open Society Foundations for everything from material support for terrorism to racketeering, and it has ramped up the level of fear, said Saadian. Separately, some senators have pushed for Code Pink, a feminist pacifist group, to be investigated for alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Both OSF and Code Pink deny all the allegations against them, which are widely regarded as politically motivated. In June, the House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee also launched a probe into more than 200 immigrant-serving nonprofits, which it accused of using taxpayer dollars to facilitate undocumented immigration. “Many nonprofits are really worried about whether and how they advocate on the issues that they have always done,” said Saadian. “They’re worried about being targeted based on their missions and who they serve. And many are speaking up but many are really afraid to,” for fear of “putting themselves on the radar of the administration” and potentially finding themselves under investigation even when there has been no wrongdoing, she said. Asked if she could recall such fear in the sector under previous administrations, Saadian said no. “The level of the threats, the breadth of the threats and the scope of the threats is unprecedented,” she said. Guinane sees a historical precedent in the 1970s when, under President Richard Nixon, anti-war and civil rights organizations were accused of being communist or anti-American. She said the difference is that what happened under Nixon was more secretive — taking place mostly through covert FBI operations — and largely emerged after the fact. “This is unprecedented in that it’s so open,” said Guinane. To her, the presidential memorandum — which “orders three different agencies to take specific actions against nonprofits … [based on] ideological criteria” — is “an open declaration of war.” While Saadian said the intent was to “silence” nonprofits, Guinane said it goes beyond that. “They were explicit that they want to ‘disrupt and dismantle’ the work,” she said. “They want to cut off funding. They don’t want to just shut us up; they want to shut us down.” ‘You don’t know what they’re going to do next’ Part of the challenge is the sheer volume of orders and announcements coming from the White House. Guinane noted that, so far, very few of these have legal force, but they can affect access to federal funding — which is a lifeline for many nonprofits — and they may indicate the direction of things to come. And, each time a new order or memorandum is issued, nonprofits need to spend time analyzing the impact and attempting to understand unclear guidance, diverting resources away from their missions. Trump’s actions have “just ripped out any sort of predictability from the nonprofit sector,” said an experienced nonprofit leader working in the aid sector who asked to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the situation. The administration is “very unpredictable and that … increases their power in some ways because you don’t know what they’re going to do next.” Government initiatives are also enforced in unpredictable ways, they said. For example, executive orders on gender and DEI early in Trump’s presidency led to the apparently indiscriminate targeting of web pages and research papers that included terms such as “trans” and “inclusion,” even when those terms had nothing to do with gender or DEI. This lack of clarity can lead to organizations self-censoring or going further than the regulations technically require. “That instability really keeps people on guard and keeps people continuing to hold back,” they said. This is distinct from the situation under previous administrations, they added. There have often been policies that required nonprofits to adapt, sometimes in significant ways — the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits the use of U.S. foreign assistance funding for abortions, is one example. But while these policies may have been disruptive, nonprofits were clear on what needed to be done and could move forward from there. Trump’s approach has made that impossible, they said. Layers of risk While organizations are concerned about advocating for particular causes to which the administration is hostile — including immigrant rights and environmental protections — there are also fears about criticizing the administration itself. “If you look at the language in the presidential memorandum, it blurs the line between criminal activity and political speech,” said Saadian. For example, she noted that a fact sheet accompanying the memorandum stated that comparing political leaders to the Nazis “is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.” In reality, said Guinane, such speech is protected in the U.S., but the contents of the presidential memorandum can’t be challenged in court until there’s an attempt to enforce them. And it’s not just the threats from the White House. Nonprofits fear that other organizations might become reluctant to work with them, said Mark Blumberg, a Canadian charity lawyer who told Devex he is seeing a surge of U.S.-based nonprofits seeking to register themselves north of the border in case it becomes impossible for them to operate in the U.S. “It is not just government overreach [they are worried about] but also a concern that banks and other financial institutions may freeze bank accounts and assets if pressure is placed on them,” he said. Similarly, the aid leader interviewed for this article felt unable to speak publicly because, having lost their job due to the funding cuts, they worried it could affect her ability to find work. “Even if Trump never sees what I’m saying, if somebody else who’s considering me sees what I’m saying and is afraid of Trump, it’s a second level of vulnerability,” they said. Given the current environment, she also pointed to the potential for online harassment and even doxxing — where someone’s personal information, such as their home address, is maliciously published online — as a reason why those working in the sector might feel unable to comment publicly on politics. Fighting back with collective action Despite these risks, many people and organizations have been speaking up. In the nonprofit sector, “we all believe in the mission of working for the greater good,” said the aid leader. “So I think a lot of people are quite brave and are saying ‘no,’ and are working [to figure out] … how we can work together to push back or resist.” They said that the president could expect pushback against his plans. “I feel like he took on the wrong constituency if he really wanted to get people just to lie down and give up,” they said. “Seeing the level and breadth of organizations that are engaged in pushing back against all this … it’s very encouraging. There will unfortunately be some pain and damage along the way — there already has been, with the Trump administration. But we will outlast him.” --— Kay Guinane, a lawyer who specializes in the rights of nonprofit organizations They highlighted the work of groups such as Friends of USAID, a collection of former USAID workers advocating for international aid and challenging false narratives about it. Another group of former USAID staffers has been raising money to send to local organizations that were formerly supported by the agency. Many of these groups originally formed on Signal due to fears of being tracked, they said, but are now advocating publicly (albeit, in some cases, anonymously). “There are more and more of these kind of resistance groups coming together, so that’s a group-level bravery that we see,” they said. Guinane pointed to the information sharing that is happening between nonprofits, with “know your rights” webinars, fact sheets, and analyses going out “all the time.” Another example of collective action is the open letter “rejecting presidential attacks on nonprofit organizations” that was signed by 3,700 organizations in October. In the same vein, some umbrella groups or coalitions — including the National Council for Nonprofits and the Charity & Security Network — have been vocally pushing back, although others have been quieter. “We think it’s really important that we’re using our platform to provide cover to other nonprofits who might not be in the position where they can speak out against these actions,” said Saadian. As more organizations start to speak up, “hopefully that makes it easier for other nonprofits to do the same.” She added: “It’s very obvious that the administration is taking a divide-and-conquer approach here, where they’re trying to target those nonprofits that they think have the least amount of public support. But … it’s important that we’re staying together as a sector and pushing back because more of our organizations could be targeted later on.” Is it worth speaking up? Saadian believes it’s important for nonprofits to be more vocal about their work and the threats they’re facing. She sees public advocacy as part of a three-pronged defense strategy, alongside litigation and engaging with policymakers. “Part of the framing that the administration has been using is that nonprofits are these foreign NGOs; they’re nameless, faceless organizations that have no connection to the American people. But that’s not true,” said Saadian. “Most nonprofits are locally driven and locally accountable … and the more we remind the American people about that, the more they support nonprofits.” Guinane agreed that public advocacy is a critical line of defense. While legal challenges are a vital tool, they can take a long time to work their way through the courts, by which point a lot of damage has already been done. And with something like the presidential memorandum — essentially a policy directive that can’t be legally challenged until specific action is taken — nonprofits are locked in a waiting game to see what happens next. As for Congress, said Guinane, it’s in such a “dysfunctional” state that it can’t be relied on to offer protection to nonprofits, either. “So the alternative right now is to show that we are not going to back down and be silenced,” she said. For many organizations, however, there is a careful balance in deciding when to speak up and when to simply keep working behind the scenes. For aid organizations, the flood of attacks, and the unpredictability of the administration, makes it difficult to know where to focus. There are question marks over whether to be proactive — such as launching a campaign to protect nonprofits’ tax-exempt status before anything happens — or whether to stay silent so as not to draw attention to a new target. Moreover, many organizations are still receiving at least some government funding, which they don’t want to jeopardize. But while at the beginning of 2025 it looked like the biggest risk for many nonprofits was losing their federal funding, now, increasingly, the dangers look bigger than that. “The risk [of speaking out] is that you make yourself a target,” said Guinane. The risk levels are different for every organization, and each one has to make its own assessment, she said. “But … I think a greater risk for the sector would be to be silenced,” she went on. “Because the reason we exist is to fulfil the missions of our organizations, whether that’s humanitarian assistance or peace building or immigrant rights … If we stop doing that, we might as well fold up the tent and go home.” Keep on working All the experts agreed that the single most important thing nonprofits can do is just keep working. “We’ve been encouraging nonprofits to continue doing their important work and to focus on their missions and carrying that out,” said Saadian. That’s not just because that work is “vitally important,” but also because “when Americans are reminded about the great work that nonprofits do, they support nonprofits,” she said. “We’re encouraging them, also, to not overreact to the administration’s threats, because … they want to discourage nonprofits from doing their work … And if we preemptively acquiesce to that, then we lose nonprofits’ freedom to be able to choose their mission,” she said. Even where people might feel unable to speak publicly, there are other ways to demonstrate bravery, said the aid leader: “All those mission-driven people who are saying — ‘OK, you can make this rule, we’re going to figure out how to navigate it; you can cut this money, we’re going to figure out how to do the work anyway; you can make this illegal, we are going to figure out how to do something else that fills that in’ — all of that is bravery,” they said. Guinane concluded: “Coming back after being retired for three years and seeing the level and breadth of organizations that are engaged in pushing back against all this, to me it’s very encouraging. There will unfortunately be some pain and damage along the way — there already has been, with the Trump administration. But we will outlast him.”