The call that the Vera Institute of Justice had with DOGE lawyers seemed like the early stages of a “hostile takeover” recalls Nicholas Turner, president of the criminal-justice reform organization.
The Trump administration had already sent Turner notice that Vera’s five federal grants, totaling about $5 million, had been terminated.
Then, on April 15, less than two weeks after the grants were cut, DOGE lawyers, representing Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency, the task force Trump created to curtail government spending, were on the line with another request. A DOGE representative, they said, would be detailed to Vera, an independent nonprofit, to watch over its finances and operations.
Once it became apparent to DOGE officials that Vera’s funding had already been eliminated, they wound down the meeting.
The grants that the Justice Department canceled supported programs to train corrections officials and improve prison operations and culture for the benefit of incarcerated people, to help cities expand civilian crisis-response services to reduce the number of mental-health calls police have to respond to, and to support police to better respond to deaf survivors of domestic violence.
Turner is hopeful he can generate enough new support to replace the federal grants and keep the programs running, and he says law enforcement leaders and public officials across the country with a variety of political views welcomed the programs. The attack on Vera, he says, seems more focused on injuring a prominent civil society institution, than defunding specific programs.
The attempted government intrusion into the operations of a nonprofit, Turner says, has all the markings of an authoritarian regime: Cutting off funding was an aggressive “kneecapping” of a leading institution of civil society. That is the point, Turner says — not to end programs that run counter to the policy outlook of the administration, but to dismantle the network of organizations that might check the administration’s attempts to amass more power.
Turner spoke with the Chronicle about his experience, what comes next, and the kind of leadership needed to help the nonprofit sector emerge intact.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You have done several interviews since the administration terminated your federal grants and DOGE approached you about having one of their team members monitor Vera. What does it feel like to speak publicly in today’s climate?
It was hard and nerve-wracking because the risks of being public are substantial and include generating more unwanted attention. But it was a clear and easy decision for us at Vera to be public. It began with the first principles of living up to our values and the commitment to the work that we do.
In a context where there’s the threat of authoritarianism, we felt it was important not to be silent. We’re aware that we’re being singled out, but we know we’re not going to be the last. We know that it is a harbinger for the field more broadly, and so we thought it was important to give sunlight to that.
What sort of preparations did you make even before President Trump took office?
Before the election, we were doing scenario planning for either outcome. In the case of a Trump win, we had to think about organizational risk because there was so much documented about retaliation against enemies. Vera has been written about negatively a lot in conservative media.
We took the administration at its word, and that meant that we had to prepare for the potential loss of funding. I thought it was an absolute certainty that it would happen. It was more of a “when” and not an “if.”
We’ve also had to do a lot of things organizationally that relate to the articulated desire to kneecap civil society organizations. That’s meant assuring that our technology protections are strong, ensuring that our physical security is where it needs to be, ensuring that we would have legal representation. And doing a broader organizational risk analysis to be ready for what might come, well beyond the loss of federal funding.
Do you think the administration was targeting the specific programs it defunded for policy reasons? Or was this an attempt to hurt the organization as a whole?
The grants all deliver safety, accountability, and justice. We’re operating in red and purple and blue states, with government actors in all of those jurisdictions saying, “Yes, we need this help.” I think it is impossible that this is contrary to the administration’s priorities, so from our perspective it was not substantively supportable.
It was a transparent effort to go after Vera. No matter whether it is a Republican or Democratic administration, we will critique policy moves by an administration if they are not evidence-based and if they create unacceptable harm. And we have done that in the context of mass deportation.
We are visible, and we are vocal about policy. Not about people personally, but about policy. And we are among the oldest and perhaps biggest criminal-justice and immigration reform organizations in the country. We were a good example to be the first to be kneecapped. It is painful for us, but this is not about Vera alone. This is about the broad nonprofit sector, which this administration has been clear that it sees as part of the civil society it wishes to take down.
The mere fact that they came to us because they thought we had federal funding is clearly a harbinger for the field as a whole. They said clearly that they saw it as their prerogative to engage with any agency or institution that receives a congressional appropriation. So if you have federal funding, you’re fair game
Do you suspect the administration will attempt to revoke your tax-exempt status as they have threatened with other nonprofits?
There is a lot of anticipation of executive orders coming from this administration, targeting climate groups and targeting immigration groups. And so we think part of the bigger strategy for the administration is to cut funding, and make it painful to have government funding, and then also go after the 501(c)(3) status of organizations in order to cut organizations’ ability to raise private funds. I think that is the game plan, and so we expect to see that across the sector.
What happens with your programs that lost government support?
We are contemplating fighting the decision, despite some presumption of futility in that regard. Right now, we are analyzing the scope of that work to see what we can preserve. And we are hoping to raise money to fill the gap that currently exists. Every year, Vera helps tens of thousands of people who are harmed by the criminal justice or immigration systems to either reduce harm or to divert them out of harm’s way or to put people on paths to social and economic mobility.
The aggressive approach by DOGE and this administration is harming people in all 50 states. The politics don’t matter, it harms all people. We are committed to serving and benefiting Black people and Latinos and people who are experiencing poverty because those three groups are the ones that are most harmed — but we work for all people.
Are nonprofits up to the challenge of driving that message home?
I wouldn’t single out the nonprofit sector as being any less effective in defending itself and justifying its existence than I would higher education, private law firms, or the media. This administration seeks to dominate and amass power and has a pretty sophisticated effort to do so by wielding the legitimate tools of government, including regulation, funding, investigation, and so on — but in ways that are well beyond what has ever been done conventionally.
We are in this historical moment that is unlike anything that we’ve lived through. It’s not unlike post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow, not unlike the response to the restoration of the vote for Black people in the ‘60s. It’s aberrational and powerful, and it’s difficult for any sector to be ready to respond.
How would you characterize the philanthropic response?
The philanthropic response is different than it was in 2017 when it was a bit more full-throated. Now there are many factors for philanthropy to think about. There’s the attack on philanthropy itself, which is obvious, explicit, and loud. And there is this scope of need, which is profound as a result of what DOGE has been doing.
Every sector where there has been cuts has fundamentally upended the conventional thinking that getting government funding was the way towards sustainability and scaling of efforts. And so now foundations are asking, ‘How do we respond to something of that scale?’
That’s producing some delay of concerted action.
At the end of the day, private foundations in America, even in the face of attack, are better prepared with their substantial endowments to take hits than their grantees, who they depend upon for service delivery, policy analysis and innovation, research and evaluation, and advancing best practice. Foundations are better able to take body blows.
The Trump administration’s actions are testing nonprofit leadership. Are civil society leaders up to the task?
What this administration is doing is aberrational and novel and structural. Leadership, which is about individual choices and judgment and actions, is important, but there is a much bigger thing that is at play when you have an entity that is seeking to cut off federal funds, which are the lifeblood of many nonprofits. For many of us, it doesn’t matter what kind of leader you are when you have an administration that is cutting off huge volumes of capital and will go after an organization’s 501(c)(3) status.
Leadership is important in navigating through that, but it is entirely possible for a hugely effective leader who is savvy and has great judgment and is bold and courageous to not succeed.
There is an imbalance of power. We will see some organizations fail and go extinct, and we will see others that will be able to adapt. This is not going to boil down to individuals determining success or failure. So a collective is going to have to be built and strengthened.
