Progressive NGOs Consider Radical Options to Survive Upcoming Trump Administration Onslaught

Progressive nonprofit groups are girding for a coming legal onslaught from President Donald Trump's administration in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Wired reported on Thursday that many nongovernment organizations are considering taking radical steps to stay alive amid reports that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to launch a probe of Open Society Foundations, the global grant network founded by billionaire George Soros that helps fund prominent organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International.

Sources within the NGO world who spoke with Wired said that many groups are discussing steps such as setting up emergency funds, merging together, moving outside the United States, or even dissolving themselves and restarting as limited liability corporations (LLCs).

Rusty Stahl, founder and president of Fund the People, told Wired that none of these options are ideal. For instance, he said that organizations that restart as LLCs would significantly reduce transparency into both who is donating money to them and how that money is being spent. Moving outside the US, meanwhile, might make it harder for organizations to fund on-the-ground campaigns inside the country.

A Thursday report from NBC News revealed that several NGOs are forming a NATO-like alliance in which they would provide strategic and legal advice to one another, and where they would share staff members and resources to help one another stay afloat while dealing with Trump administration lawsuits.

Vanita Gupta, who was a senior DOJ official under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden who is helping to lead the effort, told NBC News that collective solidarity among nonprofits is the only thing that can possibly prevent the collapse of the entire sector.

“The only way through this moment is with collective action,” Gupta said. “When you have an administration that tries to silence people through the cudgel of the federal government, the only way through is to work together.”

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said that NGOs are trying to avoid the mistakes made by big law firms and universities who have been targeted by the administration individually and have capitulated to its demands.

"One of the most important things we can do in this moment is make clear that our sector stands together in contrast to the law firms, where some capitulated and were picked off," she said.

Norm Eisen, co-founder of the Democracy Defenders Fund, told NBC that he hopes other institutions take notes on the way NGOs are planning to respond to the Trump administration's actions.

"We do hope that other sectors, should they become the target of unfair bullying, will also stand strong," he said. "And they can learn from this example."

But Brian Reich, a strategist for consulting firm Little M Media, said in an interview with Wired that the coming onslaught by the administration means NGOs "are going to have to think radically differently" about how they function just to stay alive, and that big changes are coming, no matter which strategy they use to fight back.

“The Trump administration is going to set the [NGO] sector on fire,” he said. “It’s going to need to be rebuilt.”

In the days after Kirk's murder last month, Trump adviser Stephen Miller vowed to launch a holy war against progressive nonprofits, whom he baselessly blamed for inciting Kirk's killing.

“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven,” Miller said during a Fox News interview, was “that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence, and we are going to do that.”