Social scientists and commentators have for years been expressing issues about what they name the “authoritarian playbook.” To be transparent, no such ebook exists. However would-be and precise dictators do generally tend to apply a not unusual set of methods to consolidate energy.
Because the 2000s, populist leaders from Russia to Venezuela have used their nations’ personal democratic methods to overturn democracy itself. One explanation why for his or her luck is also the truth that supporters of democratic establishments don’t appear to have a defensive playbook to compare the authoritarians’ offensive one.
Establishments that make stronger democracy, together with many nonprofits and media retailers, have few examples to be told from. And in many nations, their responses had been susceptible and disorganized.
I’m a sociologist who researchers how club in nonprofits can impact anyone’s democratic values and the way nonprofits set up to perform in nondemocratic regimes. As a result of there are lots of indicators that the U.S. executive is changing into more and more autocratic, I’m now learning how U.S. nonprofits are responding to a spate of assaults on their freedom to perform.
I’ve discovered that lots of them had been unusually a success.
Nonprofits underneath fireplace
The second one Trump management has minimize billions in investment for nonprofits concerned with bettering get entry to to healthcare and childcare and offering meals for low-income other people. It’s additionally slashing support to creating nations.
Nonprofits that in the past had contracts to hold out U.S. overseas support priorities, equivalent to Oxfam, Save the Youngsters and the Global Rescue Committee, had been particularly exhausting hit after the Trump White Space dismantled the U.S. Company for Global Building.
The Trump management additionally limited the facility of nonprofits to perform loose from political interference.
As an example, it modified the principles on a program that forgave pupil loans to workers of nonprofits, barring mortgage forgiveness to workers of nonprofits that the management disapproves of. Those come with nonprofits that assist undocumented immigrants, supply gender-appropriate hospital therapy to transgender youngsters, have interaction or abet what the management calls “illegal discrimination,” or make stronger political protests that would possibly violate state regulations in opposition to “trespassing, disorderly conduct, public nuisance, vandalism, and obstruction of highways.”
The Trump management has additionally threatened to criminally prosecute nonprofits for doing advocacy paintings, even if advocacy by way of nonprofits is criminal.
Congress is taking part in a job
Congress has added to the drive on nonprofits by way of preserving hearings that experience accused a few of them of smuggling undocumented immigrants and alleging that others made unsuitable bills to former Biden management officers.
At a February 2026 Space of Representatives listening to, 3 Republicans – Jason Smith of Missouri, David Schweikert of Arizona and Tracey Mann of Kansas – accused the nonprofit Long term Farmers of The united states of being attached to the Chinese language Communist Birthday celebration.
However a lot of this drive is coming from the chief department of presidency.
After the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, Vice President JD Vance pledged to move after a community of nonprofits that he claimed, with out proof, “foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”
Later that month, President Donald Trump issued a countrywide safety memo that outlined left-wing terrorism in phrases so extensive that it incorporated safe political speech. The memo pledged to “investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations,” together with “non-governmental organizations,” and designate them as “domestic terrorist organizations” in the event that they make stronger perspectives that the management considers to include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, extremism on migration, race and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American beliefs on family, religion, and morality.”
In December 2025, then-Legal professional Common Pam Bondi issued directions to box places of work telling them to start out prosecutions of the “Antifa-aligned extremists” and “domestic terrorist organizations,” together with nonprofits, that have been described within the previous nationwide safety memo.
That very same month, Rep. David Kustoff, a Tennessee Republican, and Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, offered a invoice that will permit the Secretary of the Treasury to label nonprofits as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip them in their tax-exempt standing.
The Space handed a equivalent measure in 2024. It didn’t transparent the Senate.
Thus far, the White Space and Congress have adopted up on few of the ones threats. Then again, the Justice Division indicted the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle, a civil rights nonprofit, on felony fees in April 2026. The Trump management accused the group of fraud, no longer of getting ties to terrorist teams.
Alex Soros is main the philanthropy that his father, George Soros, based.
Elisa Schu/image alliance by means of Getty Pictures
The nonprofit reaction
In many nations, authoritarian assaults at the nonprofit sector had been met with useless resistance. Some nonprofits fought again, however finally, maximum nonprofits both compromised with the brand new fact or have been pressured to close down or cross into exile.
However within the U.S., many nonprofits and massive philanthropic donors are running proactively to unite and give protection to one every other.
An April 2025 Zoom assembly the place nonprofit leaders mentioned their methods crashed when greater than 11,000 other people attempted to take part – it simplest had a capability for five,000.
Hundreds of nonprofits have signed open letters protesting the Trump management’s insurance policies.
As an example, in September 2025, 3,700 nonprofits signed an open letter protesting the nationwide safety memo that known as for the prosecution of nonprofits for allegedly being “domestic terrorists.”
On Would possibly 20, 2026, the Open Society Foundations, the philanthropy run by way of the circle of relatives of billionaire investor George Soros, replied to this danger by way of pledging US$300 million in criminal and monetary make stronger to lots of the nonprofits that in finding themselves focused by way of the federal government.
Some massive foundations, together with the Marguerite Casey Basis, the McKnight Basis and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Basis, have greater their grants to nonprofits that misplaced federal investment.
Bowing to drive
After all, no longer all nonprofits have driven again.
A lot of them have as an alternative modified their challenge statements, or the transient descriptions in their actions that they post to the IRS, shedding references to anything else that would possibly displease the White Space. One not unusual revision: putting off references to any efforts to advance range, fairness and inclusion for traditionally deprived teams as a result of the Trump management’s efforts to wipe out DEI insurance policies around the nation.
Any other self-preservation technique is for nonprofits to modify their web sites. In February 2025, the Nationwide Home Violence Hotline got rid of knowledge and assets for LGBTQ+ sufferers from its website online. Via July 2025, 1 in 12 foundations had censored themselves by way of putting off DEI language from their web sites.
In lots of instances, authoritarians come to energy in nations the place the nonprofit sector is susceptible. As an example, Russia and Hungary had small, younger nonprofit sectors that had simplest come into life within the Nineties after the autumn of communism. In poorer nations equivalent to Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Indonesia, the nonprofit sector is prone as a result of its dependence on overseas investment, which governments can simply limit.
However the U.S. nonprofit sector is centuries previous, smartly arranged and really established. If a success, its efforts to withstand the country’s democratic backsliding might sooner or later tell efforts in the remainder of the sector.
