US philanthropists warn against capitulating to Trump: 'We need to step up'

Source: The Guardian

Sat 19 Apr 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Sat 19 Apr 2025 13.03 EDT


John Palfrey will not be obeying in advance. At a moment when leaders of tech companies, law firms, media corporations and academic institutions have bent the knee to Donald Trump, the president of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation insists that charitable organisations choose resistance over capitulation. “We have an opportunity to unite and advance,” Palfrey said last week. “There’s a chance here for us to stand together on a series of very important bedrock principles, and do so with linked arms, and do so in such a way that allows us to serve every community in America in a way that will ensure a strong republic for years to come.”

Trump’s return to power has been described as an authoritarian power grab, rewarding compliance and punishing dissent. The Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, ABC News and Columbia University ceded ground or surrendered. Several major law firms offered almost $1bn in pro bono work to curry favour. But this week Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest university in America, pushed back after the Trump administration cut $2bn of its federal grants, earning praise from the former president Barack Obama.

Sixty current and former university presidents co-signed an editorial in Fortune offering support. Philanthropic organisations could be next in the firing line. The MacArthur Foundation, founded in 1978, funds work in fields including social justice, climate change, criminal justice reform, journalism and media, community development and international peace and security. It has assets of about $7bn and is known for bestowing annual “genius” grants on artists, actors and other creative people.

Palfrey recently authored a joint article with Tonya Allen of the McKnight Foundation and Deepak Bhargava of the Freedom Together Foundation warning that charitable organisations could be the next institutions under attack, and announcing a public solidarity campaign to support philanthropy’s freedom to give. More than 300 organisations have already signed on. The trio wrote: “We’ve seen this before in American history and across the globe. Weaponized oversight. Intimidation dressed up as transparency. It is not new. But our response must be: we in the philanthropic community must not wait like sitting ducks.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/19/philanthropy-foundations-trump-resistance

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Link to Fortune EDITORIAL - Harvard’s defiance of Trump’s ‘authoritarian incursion’ supported by over 80 past and present college and university presidents

Link to public solidarity campaign site - A Public Statement From Philanthropy

All those "sponsors" that you see listed at the end of PBS programs like the "John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation" and "Robert Wood Johnson Foundation" (and we know about Bill Gates and Melissa Gates' Foundations) are FINALLY waking up and taking a stand because as noted in the article - THEY are next. They actually co-fund much of what has now been slashed by Muskrat (often doing "matching" grants) and some could be considered "flashing sirens" of "DEI".