Philanthropy Leaders Decry Trump’s Order to Investigate Liberal Groups

Philanthropy leaders reacted with shock and resolve to stick together in the face of attacks from the White House Thursday after President Trump issued an executive memorandum announcing a comprehensive law enforcement effort designed to “disband and uproot” groups — including foundations and other nonprofits — the administration alleges support domestic terrorism.

The order, titled a “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” coincided with a report from the New York Times that the Department of Justice was calling on federal prosecutors to investigate the Open Society Foundations, the global philanthropy created by George Soros, whom President Trump has demanded be thrown in jail and who has long been the subject of right-wing attacks in the United States and abroad.

Thursday’s memorandum calls for the creation of a National Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate “institutional and individual funders, and officers and employees of organizations, that are responsible for, sponsor, or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct.”

The order directs the Internal Revenue Service to refer tax-exempt organizations to the Department of Justice it suspects of aiding, indirectly or directly, acts of political violence or domestic terrorism.

To help law enforcement identify groups to investigate, the memorandum includes a list of attitudes and ideologies that should serve as red flags.

“Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality,” the memorandum reads.

In response, Open Society Foundations’ President Binaifer Nowrojee decried political violence and stressed that its activities are “peaceful and lawful.”

“These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech,” she said in a statement. “When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk.”

Nowrojee continued: “The reported efforts to manufacture criminal charges against Open Society are an affront to the rule of law, the First Amendment, and the most fundamental principles of the Constitution.”

‘Straight Out of the Authoritarian Playbook’

The White House has escalated its attacks on left-leaning foundations and nonprofits since the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10. The suspect in the shooting, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, has said he acted alone and has no known connections to liberal nonprofits or grant makers. Still, Vice President Vance attempted to link the Ford and Open Society foundations to political violence and made clear that those grant makers would be targeted. (The Ford Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)

More than 180 foundations followed those threats with a statement of unity, saying that the messages coming out of the Trump administration were efforts to “exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work or restrict our fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech and the freedom to give.”

In the hours following the White House memorandum and the New York Times report, progressive foundation leaders said they stood with Open Society.

Calling the Department of Justice mandate to investigate Open Society a “brazen and unfounded attempt to intimidate charitable foundations serving the public good,” the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said it would not be intimidated.

“Silence will not keep any institution safe,” the foundation said in a statement. “People with power and privilege must raise their voices to denounce this dangerous overreach. The health, vitality, and safety of our communities are on the line.”

The Democracy Alliance, a network of progressive mega-donors, posted on LinkedIn that the reported investigations are “straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”

“This is more than an attack on one organization, it is a plan to give the federal government the power to punish perceived political opposition.”

John Palfrey, president of the MacArthur Foundation, wrote on LinkedIn that Soros’s philanthropy has the right to give according to its values.

“Attempts to silence speech, distort or discredit charitable work, or limit the freedom to give not only weaken our democracy, they endanger the very fabric of our civic life,” he wrote. “We stand with our peers in philanthropy, and we will continue our work to defend the organizations and communities we serve.”

Other foundation observers defended the plans for increased law enforcement targeting grant makers. Michael Hartmann — senior fellow at the Capital Research Center, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group that, according to the New York Times report, fueled some of the Department of Justice’s rationale for targeting Open Society — said law breakers must be held accountable.

“Gruesome political violence is clearly on the uptick as of late, and the administration’s actions properly cast a wide legal net in terms of looking into how and why,” he wrote in an email “The government should do so respective of free-speech and all other rights, of course, and philanthropy should be expected to defend its rights.”

Investigations of nonprofits for terrorist ties are not unprecedented, noted Leslie Lenkowsky, professor emeritus in public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University. In an email, he wrote that several nonprofits with ties to foreign terrorist groups were prosecuted after the September 11, 2001, attacks and that the Supreme Court has ruled donors cannot support organizations listed by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, even if these groups also provide humanitarian services.

But that ruling, Lenkowsky noted, focused on foreign actors, not domestic organizations.

“Such groups are protected by the First Amendment and other laws and are allowed to take action on behalf of a variety of controversial causes,” Lenkowsky wrote. “The philanthropic world needs to be watchful, lest in pursuing the legitimate aims of curtailing terrorism and political violence, the Trump administration reaches too far and restricts activities that have long been important to the health of American democracy.”