Civil Society in the Second Trump Administration: Reckoning with the Meaning of "Nongovernmental"

100 days in, President Trump has profoundly disrupted civil society. This presents a massive set of challenges – and two opportunities.

Donald Trump’s first 100 days reflect a paradox. On the one hand, he has overturned features of the world that long seemed fundamental. These include, to take just a few examples, the federal civil service, the NATO Alliance, the global evolution toward freer trade, even our neighborly relations with Canada.

On the other hand, Trump has done all of this via his own hand. He has not needed to pass legislation to foment these disruptions. Indeed, he has neither bothered with nor been bothered by Congress. And he is stiff-arming the courts. Nowhere is this more true than with the upheaval he has unleashed in civil society.

The Trump Administration’s turn against civil society is visible in several high-profile episodes: The early attempt, still being litigated, to freeze federal funding for nonprofit contractors and grantees. The pointed attacks on Columbia and Harvard. The evisceration of grant programs at AmeriCorps and the national endowments for the arts and humanities, etc.

In this newsletter, I want to tie the disruptions in different parts of civil society back to a seemingly innocuous adjective the second Trump Administration has adopted.

The urtext here is President Trump’s February 6th Memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies on the subject of “Advancing United States Interests When Funding Nongovernmental Organizations.” Consisting of just four sentences, I expect its message will reverberate for years to come:

“The United States Government has provided significant taxpayer dollars to Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), many of which are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people. It is the policy of my Administration to stop funding NGOs that undermine the national interest.

I therefore direct the heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to review all funding that agencies provide to NGOs. The heads of agencies shall align future funding decisions with the interests of the United States and with the goals and priorities of my Administration, as expressed in executive actions; as otherwise determined in the judgment of the heads of agencies; and on the basis of applicable authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms.”

When I first read the order, I was curious about President Trump’s use of “nongovernmental” in lieu of the more conventional “nonprofit” as an adjective for the organizations his Administration is targeting. Just two weeks earlier, for example, he had ordered his agency heads to identify “large non-profit corporations or associations” that warranted investigation for their support of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Why the sudden switch to “nongovernmental”?

A kernel of truth from Elon Musk

At the time, I surmised it was because Elon Musk and DOGE had just finished, to use his phrase, “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Nongovernmental is more commonly used as an adjective to describe civil society organizations working in the global development field, so I presumed that particular context had influenced the phrasing of the February 6 memorandum.

I realized the plot had thickened later in February when I listened to Joe Rogan interview Musk for his podcast. The conversation quickly turned to DOGE’s work, and Musk went on an extended rant about “NGOs.” (I will spare you the gory details and not include a link because I have a personal policy of not spreading mendacious conspiracy theories on the internet).

Still, even an irreparably broken clock is right twice a day. So my ears perked up when I heard Musk say that,

“The whole NGO thing is a nightmare. It's a misnomer because if you have a government funded nongovernmental organization, you're simply a government funded organization. It’s an oxymoron.”

There it was, a kernel of truth, albeit one buried in so much other BS. There is an inherent tension when nongovernmental organizations residing in an ostensibly independent sector rely on funding from the federal government for their financial lifeblood.

The Trump Administration has seized upon this contradiction and is exploiting it as a rhetorical cudgel. Hence in a May 2 letter conveying the Administration’s FY2026 Budget Plans, OMB Director Russell Vought previewed dramatic cuts in “spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education.” If these entities are nongovernmental organizations, why should the federal government be funding them in the first place?

Of course the longstanding answer has been that federal agencies or their designees have contracted with NGOs to implement countless policies approved and funded by Congress. Put differently, the federal government has outsourced and delegated the implementation of many of its laws to the NGOs that have entered into these contracts. In other cases, the government has made grants to NGOs for things that Congress has likewise approved and funded via laws setting up such grant programs.

The problem is that the Trump Administration rejects – and is running roughshod over – this longstanding answer. It wants to freeze and slash spending for policies it does not endorse. It also wants to control and punish those it perceives to be its opponents in civil society, which turns out to be a very long and growing list.

Moreover, because President Trump and his aides regard the executive branch he controls as the sole and legitimate determinant of the national interest, the Administration feels free to do as it sees fit. A compliant Congress has thus far not stood in his way. The other branches of government can pound sand so far as the Administration is concerned.

Where do we go from here?

One near-term response is to litigate in the attempt to recover the status quo ante. NGOs that have had their federal funding eliminated, impounded, or threatened by the Trump Administration in unconstitutional or unlawful ways naturally want to see it restored and preserved. Fighting back via the courts is a strategy that prominent and deep-pocketed institutions like Harvard and trade associations representing the interests of their member nonprofits should pursue. Their efforts to protect current funding flows will also defend freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the rule of law as embodied in federal statutes. They thus act on behalf of all of us who believe in and benefit from these good things.

Make no mistake, this strategy is a rearguard action. At best it will preoccupy and force a modicum of compliance on a cynically begrudging administration. Yet this approach could buy some time for others to reimagine what a more autonomous civil society might look like, and for a range of NGOs to update their theories of change and action to fit the fundamentally altered landscape. Even if it is successful, the rearguard litigation will not eliminate the need for these new ideas and approaches.

The bipartisan consensus and inter-branch commitments that sustained funding of nonprofits across a range of domains have eroded and in many cases collapsed.

Any civil society leader or board member who presumes that the relative levels and stability of federal funding that their organization may have enjoyed in recent years can be extrapolated to the years ahead is setting themselves up for a rude awakening. The bipartisan consensus and inter-branch commitments that sustained federal funding of nonprofits across a range of domains have eroded and in many cases collapsed. They are not coming back anytime soon. Indeed, the growing fiscal pressure on the federal government, destined to be increased by Trump Administration policies, will only tighten the budget squeeze.

I see two silver linings in the thunderclouds now roiling overhead. I will sketch them out here in closing, then explore each at greater length in my next two newsletters.

The first silver lining stems from the fact that the current upheaval calls us to return to first principles regarding the nature of civil society and the proper relationship between associations within it and the central government. I am not the first person to call for this return. For several decades now, across the ideological spectrum, wise observers of civil society and democratic government have warned about the growing co-dependence and excessive intermingling between these domains. The frantic noise we hear are all the chickens these critics anticipated fluttering home to roost amid the present storm. Revisiting their warnings can help us get to a viable point of departure for the work of reimagining that lies ahead.

The second silver lining stems from another undeniable fact. As Jack Goldsmith has recently put it, “we have to deal with presidential power.” We noted above how the mounting dominance of the president over not only the executive branch but also the entire federal government threatens liberty and the pluralism it secures. As is his wont, President Trump has turned his amplifier up to 11, egged on and enabled by the Project 2025 coalition, an endeavor amply funded by philanthropy. But Democratic presidents have not shied away from upping the volume on this same knob. They too have been pushed and backed to the hilt in their unilateralism by philanthropists and the advocates and activists in their coalitions. All to say, many of the calls are now coming from inside the house of civil society. We can at least put a stop to those.

P.S.: I’d be very interested in your reactions to this assessment given I cannot help but feel I am seeing through a glass darkly on these swirling events. Please hit reply to this email or drop a comment below to let me know what may resonate with you and / or – especially – what does not.