On Wednesday, during a hearing on nonprofits titled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild,” president of the National Council of Nonprofits, Diane Yentel, accused Republicans of “weaponizing the federal government to chill dissent.” That charge was dismissed by GOP lawmakers, who alleged a “money laundering” scheme was funneling taxpayer dollars to Democratic activists.
The mutually provocative hearing was convened by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to examine federal funding of nonprofits. In a series of executive orders, President Donald Trump has frozen or canceled billions of dollars in grants to organizations providing services like food assistance, HIV research, and domestic violence prevention.
“It can be hard to tell where the government ends and where the NGO begins,” said Greene in her opening remarks, gesturing toward a poster board of what she described as a corrupt cycle in which taxpayer-funded “slush funds” benefit nonprofits that ultimately employ, lobby, or indirectly support the coffers of Democratic officials. “The left’s NGO scheme seeks to destroy our country and fundamentally alter the American way of life.”
Daniel Turner, head of the conservative energy lobbying group Power the Future and one of three Republican witnesses, repeatedly pointed to Power Forward Communities — a green energy coalition that received $2 billion in climate funding under the Biden administration — as prime evidence of corruption, with Republicans tying the group to former Democratic House minority leader Stacey Abrams, though she received no money from the grant.
“If you thought USAID was riddled with fraud, wait until you see these NGOs,” said Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who, like several of his Republican colleagues, acknowledged his affection for some charitable groups, like Habitat for Humanity, but criticized other nonprofits as lawless grifters undeserving of their “hunky-dory” reputation.
A steady if at times exasperated Yentel, the lone witness called to testify by the Democratic minority, pushed back against what she called “censorship disguised as accountability.”
“This is not a smokescreen,” she said, emphasizing that the vast majority of nonprofits are small, apolitical organizations that receive only modest amounts of federal funding, if any at all. “These actions are not about government efficiency, nor reform. The weaponization of the federal government to chill dissent is wrong, whatever party is in control.”
Personal Attacks
The hearing at times turned personal, with some Republicans and fellow witnesses challenging Yentel’s credibility and motivations. Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas repeatedly interrupted her attempts to explain that Power Forward Communities was a coalition of established groups. He then produced a poster displaying what he claimed was her executive compensation from her previous role leading the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Soon afterward, in a pointed line of questioning, Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas grilled Yentel on whether she thought President Trump was a racist, her stance on gender-affirming care for trans youth, and her position on programs run by her coalition’s tens of thousands of member organizations.
“You are a radical far-left activist, and you are masquerading as somebody promoting nonprofit, nonpartisan institutions,” he concluded, positioning Yentel as the embodiment of Republicans’ broader attack on the nonprofit sector, painted by the same partisan brush.
Democratic lawmakers, for their part, confronted Mark Krikorian, a Republican witness and executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, over his organization’s ties to far-right figures and his praise for the El Paso shooter’s manifesto as “remarkably well-written” following the 2019 mass shooting that targeted people of Mexican descent.
The hearing comes on the heels of a similar hearing in March probing the public broadcasters PBS and NPR, which culminated last month in Trump’s executive order to cut federal funding to both networks, which sued the administration for the defunding in response.
Democrats repeatedly warned that the same tactics — using selective examples of alleged bias to justify wholesale defunding — are damaging nonpartisan nonprofits providing essential services, while safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid face potential cuts. The threat to nonprofits also extends to well endowed organizations, with Trump already threatening to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status over its handling of campus protests, a precedent that some leaders fear could be used to strip any organization of its 501(c)(3) designation.
“This is about Trump and Republicans punishing people who disagree with them,” said Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. “It’s about trying to intimidate every charity and nonprofit in this country and spark a fear that if you speak up, if you do something the Republicans don’t like, you could be next — a hospital that provides abortion care, a local food pantry that feeds immigrants, or an advocacy group that fights for civil rights.”
