Holding the Line Together: Civil Society & the First Year of the Trump Administration

In Defense of Civil Society, a column from the staff at Protect Democracy, provides timely, research-driven analysis on why protecting American democracy requires protecting civil society and how nonprofits can navigate this moment, stand in solidarity, and continue our mission-oriented work.

Welcome to In Defense of Civil Society, a new column from the staff at Protect Democracy, a cross-ideological nonprofit dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat.

Today marks one year since Donald Trump was sworn into office for the second time. As such, we begin this column by reflecting on the administration’s attempts to demonize and constrain civil society over the past year, how we’re currently faring, and what may lie ahead.

A Frenzied Start

The first days and weeks of the second Trump presidency might fairly be characterized as spectacle. According to the administration’s own tally, “[T]he President signed more executive orders on his first day in office than any other president in history.” These orders covered an extraordinarily wide range of topics, from reshaping the federal workforce to border security to “ending…forced use of paper straws.” The intended effect on civil society and others was to intimidate, overwhelm, and divide our energy and attention.

But the number and breadth of executive actions during the early days of the administration also previewed a common theme. Much of what the administration would do in its first year was aimed at consolidating executive power. In fact, the administration has hewn remarkably closely to what Protect Democracy calls the authoritarian playbook. (We wrote about it back in 2022, and again as a warning about 2025.)

Like other authoritarian leaders around the world, President Trump’s fundamental goal is to maximize his own power, which requires eliminating as many checks and balances as possible.

Civil Society as an Early Target

Nonprofits and other parts of civil society haven’t just been casualties of this agenda. We’ve been targets. The administration has been explicit about it. Just over two weeks into Trump’s presidency, the administration issued a memo to all executive departments and agencies declaring: “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.” 

And so it began.

But why call out NGOs from the start? The authoritarian strategy of consolidating power requires making it more difficult for civil society organizations to fulfill their role in a healthy democracy: bringing neighbors together, supporting and strengthening communities, vetting and disseminating information, helping people to debate ideas and organize around issues they care about, and generally fostering an engaged citizenry.

Nonprofits and other parts of civil society haven’t just been casualties of this agenda. We’ve been targets.

There’s more than one way for an autocrat to constrain civil society. The government might take organizations (or their leaders) off the field directly by, for example, revoking their tax-exempt status or bringing criminal charges. Anticipatory obedience is another way. Autocrats accomplish this by first using government power to threaten or retaliate against a dissenting organization, often starting with the most vulnerable or controversial. Seeing this, others worry they might be next and self-censor or scale back their work, leaving fewer people and organizations standing up to the autocrat. Without broad support (or pressure) from civil society, other institutions that should serve as checks on the executive, such as the courts and media, fail to serve that function, leaving the autocrat better positioned to further consolidate power.

That’s the dangerous cycle the Trump administration has been trying to trigger since its earliest days.

Cutting Off Essential Resources

The administration started by choking off federal funding to nonprofits, focusing in particular on grant recipients whose work is at odds with the administration’s ideological priorities. Organizations whose work centered on (or even merely incorporated) DEI saw funding either frozen or scrutinized. So, too, with immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate justice, among others.

After funding disruptions came a series of executive orders aimed at lawyers and law firms. At the end of February, the president issued the first of several executive orders naming prominent law firms he claimed were part of “undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles” and “engag[ing] in conduct detrimental to critical American interests.” The orders stripped attorneys of their security clearances, blocked attorneys’ access to federal buildings, and threatened government contractors who worked with the firms. Soon after, the president instructed the attorney general to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.”

Few law firms operate as nonprofits, but this series of actions was nonetheless meant as a threat to us. The administration understands that an independent legal profession is critical to maintaining the rule of law, holding governments accountable, and protecting civic space. One of the ways that civil society holds the government to account is through litigation, and that not only requires lawyers, but for many nonprofits, pro bono counsel. The administration understands this, too—the executive orders specifically called out firms’ “powerful pro bono practices.” That’s why we and others urged the legal community not to back down.

Unfortunately, while a number of firms stood strong, many struck deals with the administration, including agreeing to devote substantial pro bono resources to the president’s preferred causes. And even among firms that did not capitulate, many have been hesitant to represent clients or bring cases challenging the administration.

Narrative Shift to “Domestic Terrorism”

Summer saw less focus from the executive branch on civil society and more on slashing the professional civil service and deploying the National Guard to American cities. But the administration’s allies in Congress picked up the mantle.

House committees held public hearings—“Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild,” for instance—that advanced themes the administration had been pressing around the alleged misuse of federal funds (especially related to immigration), and launched fishing expeditions into hundreds of nonprofits. Those narratives earned limited traction, and the investigations seemed to go nowhere.

Like these other authoritarian regimes, the administration’s narrative focus on violence and terrorism is really an attempt to spread fear and division.

Then, in September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, and the Trump administration found a public narrative that it hoped would stick. The administration seized on the specter of political violence to resurrect the “Antifa” bogeyman and paint organizations on “the Left” as part of a network of dangerous extremists, including—tellingly—blaming antifascist rhetoric for inspiring the shooter.

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller put it this way:

With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.

Within two weeks, the president issued an executive order purporting to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization (a legal fiction). Days later, he issued a national security memo (NSPM-7) instructing the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to coordinate “a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation.”

NSPM-7 and a subsequent directive by Attorney General Bondi both articulate an ideological focus on “the ‘anti-fascist’ lie” and “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” as animating violence.

This focus on domestic terrorism is yet another part of the authoritarian playbook. To expand their own power, authoritarians often paint their critics and political opponents as dangerous enemies. They propagandize crime and exploit incidents of violence (sometimes ones they themselves have incited) to stoke fear, hoping that the citizenry will turn their attention away from the government’s abuses and prioritize their perceived safety over their civil liberties. Law enforcement abuses then gradually become normalized.

Authoritarians abroad have similar tactics to constrain civil society actors and other political opponents. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has used a “foreign agent” law, requiring any nonprofit in the country that receives even minimal international funding to register as a foreign agent. For Russians, the term evokes Soviet-era stigmas of “spies” and “enemies of the people.” In the wake of the 2016 Turkish coup, Tayyip Erdoğan used national emergency authorities to crack down on his political opponents. He later called the coup a “gift from God,” allowing him to “cleanse” the state. And in Hungary, Viktor Orbán has mounted his own smear campaign against philanthropist George Soros (a favorite target of the Trump administration and its allies), accusing him and the Hungarian civil society organizations he supports of wanting to funnel terrorists into the country through widespread illegal immigration.

Like these other authoritarian regimes, the administration’s narrative focus on violence and terrorism is really an attempt to spread fear and division.

Flashpoint in Minneapolis

Following the September executive actions, there were occasional reports that the administration still planned to make good on the promises of NSPM-7. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said publicly that the agency was “operationalizing” to track down those responsible for Kirk’s murder and had “started to compile lists, put together networks.” There were also news reports that the administration was overhauling the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal division to more readily investigate left-leaning organizations.

To be sure, several organizations have come under government scrutiny, or worse. But if the administration is implementing NSPM-7 at scale, the evidence has yet to materialize. Nonetheless, the administration has continued to dangle the threat. And recent events in Minneapolis have given the administration another opportunity, or so it seems to think.

The administration initially trained its attention on Minneapolis, at least in part, because of highly publicized allegations of fraud that it could blame on immigrant communities. Then, almost immediately after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, high-level officials claimed that she was a domestic terrorist and part of a left-wing “network” of activists. Without evidence, President Trump called Good and her wife “professional agitators” and said that authorities would “find out who’s paying for it.”

The FBI reportedly is investigating potential ties between the Goods and groups organizing protests against the administration’s extreme immigration enforcement tactics. The vice president also announced plans to create a new division within the Justice Department, but overseen by the White House, that will not only investigate fraud, but also “financing networks and the domestic terrorism networks that legitimate this violence, that fund this violence and then of course engage in the violence.”

None of this language is accidental or coincidental. The shooting in Minneapolis has the potential to spark significant public opposition to immigration operations in particular (which are already increasingly unpopular), but also the administration more broadly—not unlike the deadly clash at Kent State in 1970. Even Republican lawmakers are expressing concern. The administration clearly means to deflect attention from its own actions.

More than that, though, it hopes to exploit yet another incident of violence to crack down on dissent (including now investigating local officials who have spoken out). It’s not a given that the administration will succeed—in fact, the strategy may be backfiring—but the situation is dynamic, and events are continuing to unfold.

Key Takeaways from 2025

There’s a lot to say about the first year of this administration. But in the spirit of learning from the past and to help chart the path forward, we have three main takeaways from 2025 for civil society:

1. The fear is the point.

The administration’s focus seems to wander at times, and we’ve seen a pattern of rhetoric without clear action. That can make navigating this current moment especially difficult, and has the effect—most likely intended—of keeping civil society on alert and afraid. Because that fear often leads organizations to take themselves off the field in whole or in part, accomplishing the administration’s goal of removing checks and balances without having to follow through on all of its threats.

At the same time, we cannot assume that the threat to civil society isn’t real. We’ve seen very clearly that the administration will take action against its perceived enemies—see, for example, the administration’s repeated attempts to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James, its indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, and its investigations into Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin. Indeed, the administration’s campaign of retribution thus far has been very real.

2. The administration has inflicted significant harm.

Already, this administration has inflicted tangible harm on the nonprofit sector. Funding disruptions, cancellations, and restrictions have caused nonprofit organizations to slow hiring or reduce staff, and to scale back programming. This, in turn, puts more pressure on entire sectors, including organizations that do not rely on federal funding, to do more with less.

The effects of the administration’s actual and threatened abuses of law enforcement and regulatory powers are less clear, but still meaningful. A recent analysis suggests that many nonprofits have deleted key words like “diversity,” “disadvantaged,” and “underrepresented” from their mission statements, job titles, and even organizational names. Anecdotally, we hear that organizations are making additional changes to their websites and other public materials, like removing staff names and photos, and spending much more time and resources on security and other preparedness—much of which is good practice at this moment, so long as the work continues. There’s also concern about private donors becoming more cautious in their giving.

3. Civil society has stood relatively firm.

Notwithstanding the harm, and unlike some other institutional actors who have been quick to capitulate to the administration (many law firms and universities, for example), nonprofits at the core of civil society have largely stood strong throughout this past year.

Many have been on the front lines of fighting back, in the courts and on the streets, including organizing historic public protests despite warnings by the administration. Both philanthropy and nonprofits are increasingly leaning into mutual support by creating and sharing resources and engaging in various forms of solidarity. That includes standing up the NGO Solidarity Network, a coordinated network of more than 150 nonprofit organizations—a sort of NATO for nonprofits—that shares critical information about threats to nonprofits, ensures access to practical resources for organizations in need, and develops strategies for collective action.

The Critical Years Ahead

The coming years will test civil society with new, more formidable challenges. It may become even more difficult to resist the administration’s attempts to divide and conquer, and to push back against the dangerous cycle of anticipatory obedience. The lessons of the past teach us that, in the face of rising autocracy, the path forward lies in brave, collective action.

That will be especially important in 2026 and in 2028. Not only with respect to the Trump administration, but also with autocratic movements afoot at the state and local levels. (We’ll have more to say about that in future articles.)

At the end of the day, our most important bulwark against autocracy is free and fair elections. That means that eligible voters must be able to cast their ballots and have their votes counted. It means that the candidates who receive the most votes must be certified as the winners and sworn into office. But it also requires meaningful electoral competition.

Voters will have meaningful choices only if candidates are willing to throw their hats in the ring, if people can share information and debate ideas freely, and if we can all criticize the government (as well as those running for office), including in the form of peaceful protest—all without fear for our safety or freedom.

Protecting civil society is key to ensuring free and fair elections. That’s why we can expect the Trump administration to continue, or even escalate, its efforts to silence dissenters and further constrain civil society—and why we have to work together to make sure it doesn’t succeed.