The Trump administration’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination has made a horrific situation even worse. Instead of trying to mend the country’s deep divisions, President Donald Trump immediately turned the killing into an opportunity to blast those who disagree with him, blaming “the radical left” even before a suspect had been identified. The administration has also repeatedly condemned hate and violence in language that seems likely to act as an accelerant to both. And it has vowed to use the levers of the government to enact measures that would violate free speech, freedom of the press and other democratic principles.
More specifically than ever before, Trump has also singled out philanthropy as part of so-called radical “networks” that he and other administration officials blame, without evidence, for Kirk’s killing and other political violence.
In response, a group of close to 150 funders are pushing back. In an open letter, the funders, including two singled out by the administration, condemn political violence and Charlie Kirk’s killing. Without naming Trump, they also criticize the administration’s campaign to silence and even criminalize those it disagrees with. “Organizations should not be attacked for carrying out their missions or expressing their values in support of the communities they serve,” the letter reads. “We reject attempts to exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work or restrict our fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech and the freedom to give. Attempts to silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving undermine our democracy and harm all Americans… Now is a moment for leadership that drives unity rather than sows further division. ”
The Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation are targets
As IP’s David Callahan has pointed out, it’s no great surprise to find philanthropy in the administration’s crosshairs right now. Rumors of a crackdown on left-leaning nonprofits have been swirling all year, and shortly before Kirk was killed, Trump insisted billionaire George Soros — a reviled bogeyman on the right — and his son, Alex, who now chairs the Open Society Foundations, should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act (Trump offered no evidence to support such charges). And shortly after the shooting, the president was invoking Soros’ name again. Trump called him “a bad guy” who “should be put in jail.” The president has said that Soros has incited violent protests, again, without citing evidence. Open Society Foundations representatives denied the charges.
Earlier this week, when Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s talk show following the right-wing activist’s killing, he took direct aim at the Open Society Foundations, as well as the Ford Foundation. Vance took issue with what he said was the funders’ support for The Nation magazine, which ran an article that highlighted some of Kirk’s inflammatory statements. Vance accused The Nation of deliberately misquoting Kirk, and he also pointed out that those foundations receive “generous tax treatment.” In fact, according to the magazine, The Nation has never received funding from the Open Society Foundations, and is not currently receiving funding from Ford. (This isn’t the first time Vance blasted Ford; in a 2021 speech, for example, he criticized it for backing critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement.)
It’s clear that top officials in the administration intend to use Kirk’s death to justify an agenda that was already in the works: to crack down on institutions they disagree with, American constitutional freedoms notwithstanding. According to the New York Times, the conservative nonprofit watchdog organization Capital Research Center has briefed top White House officials in recent months “on a range of donors, nonprofit groups and fundraising techniques, while also providing research briefs, including one titled ‘Marching Toward Violence,’ that purported to draw a connection between anti-Israel protests on college campuses and terrorism.”
The Trump administration gives itself permission to go after funders
The administration appears to be creating a permission structure for its crackdown by painting liberal organizations and their funders as dangerous and violent. Even though law enforcement investigators believe Kirk’s alleged killer acted alone, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said earlier this week, “We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assasination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”
And even though research — including by think tanks that are far from progressive, like the Cato Institute — shows that far more deadly political violence has its origins in the political right than the left, Trump and Vance are both insisting the opposite. As Trump said last week, “Most of the violence is on the left.” When he hosted the Charlie Kirk show, Vance said, “This is not a both-sides problem. One side has a much bigger and malignant problem and that is the truth we must be told.” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz echoed that claim, as NewsMax reported.
The administration also appears to be deliberately disappearing evidence that contradicts that narrative. As 404 Media reported, the Department of Justice recently scrubbed a study showing that violence by white supremacists and the far right “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism in the United States” from its website.
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Why funders need to present a united front for a free civil society
The recent shooting may provide an immediate justification, but the administration’s plans to go after nonprofits and their funders have been brewing for a while. Long before he became vice president, J.D. Vance was a critic of progressive foundations, as IP reported last year, calling them “social justice hedge funds.” Vance has also called for philanthropy to give away a far larger share of its wealth; as Mike Scutari pointed out, Vance “views a 20% payout as a blunt instrument that would, in effect, bleed the Fords and Gateses of the world dry.”
Republicans in Congress have also pushed legislation, the so-called “nonprofit killer bill,” H.R. 9495, which would allow the Department of the Treasury to strip tax-exempt status from any group it designates a “terrorist supporting organization,” without the lengthy legal process that would typically require. The bill didn’t make it into the final version the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but some nonprofit leaders fear it will resurface, and that the administration could define the term “terrorism” so broadly that it would allow them to cut off funding for any groups they don’t like.
It’s important for philanthropy to keep sticking up for a free civil society, as funders did this week. While it’s tempting to tune out the grievances Trump serves up on a daily basis, it’s extraordinarily reckless to associate philanthropy, without evidence, with a killing that appears to have been carried out by an isolated young man with easy access to an extremist online world — and a gun. Just because we’re used to this administration’s excesses and dishonesty doesn’t mean we can afford to overlook them.
Conservatives would have been justifiably outraged if, for example, Democratic leaders tried to link right-wing funders to the shooting of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in June, the brutal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, or any of the other incidents of violence perpetrated by individuals with right-wing views.
We don’t know how far the administration will go to try to silence the institutions it disagrees with, but philanthropy is likely to remain a target. It’s a scary time, but standing together as funders did in the recent open letter, hosted by the philanthropic solidarity campaign Unite in Advance, as well as campaign’s earlier Public Statement From Philanthropy defending grantmakers’ First Amendment right to give, is the more courageous course — and the only way to preserve a free civil society in the long run, versus complying in advance.
We’ve seen some inspiring examples already: Funders like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation and others have vowed to stand by their organizations’ values and missions. As RWJF chief Richard Besser wrote, “The greatest risk to the world of philanthropy today is not the actions we take, but the ones we don’t.”
