By THALIA BEATY, Associated Press

Dawn Price signs rent checks worth about $160,000 every month for 79 people that her nonprofit helps house in Laguna Beach, California.

Usually, she logs into an online portal to withdraw enough from an account funded by a grant from the federal housing agency. But in February, she couldn’t. Access had been temporarily cut off for many housing organizations as part of the Trump administration’s cuts and funding freezes.

“That was just a sea change for us for those dollars to be so immediately at risk,” said Price, the executive director of Friendship Shelter, which started in 1987 as a community organization. Access was eventually restored but the episode took a toll.

“Government moves slowly usually, and I think what was so disorienting early on was government was moving really fast,” she said.

In the early days of his second term, President Donald Trump froze, cut or threatened to cut a huge range of social services programs from public safety to early childhood education to food assistance and services for refugee resettlement. Staffing cuts to federal agencies have also contributed to delays and uncertainty around future grant funds. Altogether, his policies are poised to upend decades of partnerships the federal government has built with nonprofits to help people in their communities.

This vast and interconnected set of programs funded by taxpayers has been significantly dismantled in just months, nonprofit leaders, researchers and funders say. And even deeper, permanent cuts are still possible. That uncertainty is also taking a toll on their staff and communities, the leaders said.

James Carey, housing director for the Friendship Shelter, gives a tour of the one of the apartments that the organization provides for homeless people, Monday, July 7, 2025, in San Clemente, Calif. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “Instead of government largesse that’s often riddled with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration is focused on unleashing America’s economic resurgence to fuel Americans’ individual generosity.”

He pointed to a new deduction for charitable giving included in the recently passed tax and spending law that he said encourages Americans’ “innate altruism.”

But experts say private donations will not be enough to meet the needs.

In 2021, $267 billion was granted to nonprofits from all levels of government, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute published in February. While the data includes tax-exempt organizations like local food pantries as well as universities and nonprofit hospitals, it underestimates the total funding that nonprofits receive from the government. It includes grants, but not contracts for services nor reimbursements from programs like Medicare. It also excludes the smallest nonprofits, which file a different, abbreviated tax form.

However, the figure does give a sense of the scale of the historic — and, until now, solid — relationship between the public sector and nonprofits over the last 50 years. Now, this system is at risk and leaders like Price say the cost of undoing it will be “catastrophic.”

Government funding to nonprofits reaches far and wide

The Urban Institute’s analysis shows more than half of nonprofits in every state received government grants in 2021.

In the vast majority of the country, the typical nonprofit would run a deficit without government funding. Only in two Congressional districts — one including parts of Orange County, California, and another in the suburbs west of Atlanta — would a typical nonprofit not be in the red if they lost all of their public grant funding, the analysis found.

But in Orange County, famous for its stunning beaches, mansions and extraordinary wealth, funders, nonprofits and researchers said that finding surprised them. In part, that’s because of major economic inequalities in the county and its high cost of living.

Taryn Palumbo, executive director of Orange County Grantmakers, said nonprofits are not as optimistic about their resiliency.

“They are seeing their budgets getting slashed by 50% or 40%,” she said. “Or they’re having to look to restructure programs that they are running or how they’re serving or the number of people that they’re serving.”

Last year, the local Samueli Foundation commissioned a study of nonprofit needs in part because they were significantly increasing their grantmaking from $18.8 million in 2022 to an estimated $125 million in 2025. They found local nonprofits reported problems maintaining staff, a deep lack of investment in their operations and a dearth of flexible reserve funds.

The foundation responded by opening applications for both unrestricted grants and to support investments in buildings or land. Against this $10 million in potential awards, they received 1,242 applications for more than $250 million, said Lindsey Spindle, the foundation’s president.

President of Samueli Family Philanthropies Lindsey Spindle speaks with cofounder Henry Samueli at the foundation’s offices in Corona Del Mar, Calif., Monday, July 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Zoë Meyers)

“It tells a really stark picture of how unbelievably deep and broad the need is,” Spindle said. “There is not a single part of the nonprofit sector that has not responded to these funds. Every topic you can think of: poverty, animal welfare, arts and culture, civil rights, domestic abuse… They’re telling us loud and clear that they are struggling to stay alive.”

Charitable organizations have held a special role in the U.S.

One of the founding stories of the United States is the importance of the voluntary sector, of neighbors helping neighbors and of individuals solving social problems. While other liberal democracies built strong welfare states, the U.S. has preferred to look to the charitable sector to provide a substantial part of social services.

Since the 1960s, the federal government has largely funded those social services by giving money to nonprofits, universities, hospitals and companies. Several new policies converged at that time to create this system, including the expansion of the federal income tax during World War II and the codification of tax-exempt charitable organizations in 1954. Then, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations started to fund nonprofits directly with federal money as part of urban renewal and Great Society programs.

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“It was a key approach of midcentury liberalism of addressing issues of poverty, sort of making a reference to civil rights and racial inequality, but not growing the size of government,” said Claire Dunning, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Conservatives also tended to support working through local, private, nonprofit organizations, though for different reasons than liberals, she said.

With various expansions and cuts during different presidencies, the federal government has continued to fund nonprofits at significant levels, essentially hiding the government in plain sight, Dunning said. The size and importance of the nonprofit apparatus became suddenly visible in January when the Trump administration sought to freeze federal grants and loans.

Dunning said the speed, hostility and scale of the proposed cuts broke with the long legacy of bipartisan support for nonprofits.

“People had no idea that the public health information or services they are receiving, their Meals on Wheels program, their afterschool tutoring program, the local park cleanup were actually enabled by public government dollars,” she said.

A coalition of nonprofits challenged the freeze in court in a case that is ongoing, but in the six months since, the administration has cut, paused or discontinued a vast array of programs and grants. The impacts of some of those policy changes have been felt immediately, but many will not hit the ground until current grant funding runs out, which could be in months or years depending on the programs.

Private donations can’t replace scale of government support

Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach has an annual budget of about $15 million, $11.5 million of which comes from government sources. Price said the government funding is “braided” in complex ways to house and support 330 people. They’ve already lost a rental reimbursement grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the Samueli Foundation stepped in to backfill those lost funds for three years.

That kind of support is extremely unusual, she said.

“We don’t know of any large-scale private philanthropy response to keeping people housed because it’s a forever commitment,” Price said. “That person is in housing and is going to need the subsidy for the rest of their lives. These are seriously disabled people with multiple issues that they’re facing that they need help with.”

She also believes that even in a wealthy place like Orange County, private donors are not prepared to give five, six or eight times as much as they do currently. Donors already subsidize their government grants, which she said pay for 69% of the actual program costs.

“We are providing this service to our government at a loss, at a business loss, and then making up that loss with these Medicaid dollars and also the private fundraising,” she said.

She said her organization has discussed having to put people out of housing back on to the streets if the government funding is cut further.

“That would be, I think, a signal to me that something is deeply, deeply wrong with how we’re looking at these issues,” said Price, adding, “If I was placing a bet, I would bet that we have enough good still in government to prevent that.”

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By DIDI TANG, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to host Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday at the White House, as the two countries are seeking closer security and economic ties in the face of shifting geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific region.

Marcos, who met Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday, is set to become the first Southeast Asian leader to hold talks with Trump in his second term.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., left, speaks during a meeting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, right, at the Pentagon, Monday, July 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Marcos’ three-day visit shows the importance of the alliance between the treaty partners at a time when China is increasingly assertive in the South China Sea, where Manila and Beijing have clashed over the hotly contested Scarborough Shoal.

Washington sees Beijing, the world’s No. 2 economy, as its biggest competitor, and consecutive presidential administrations have sought to shift U.S. military and economic focus to the Asia-Pacific in a bid to counter China. Trump, like others before him, has been distracted by efforts to broker peace in a range of conflicts, from Ukraine to Gaza.

Tariffs also are expected to be on the agenda. Trump has threatened to impose 20% tariffs on Filipino goods on Aug. 1 unless the two sides can strike a deal.

Philippine and U.S. flags are displayed during a meeting between Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the Pentagon, Monday, July 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

“I intend to convey to President Trump and his Cabinet officials that the Philippines is ready to negotiate a bilateral trade deal that will ensure strong, mutually beneficial and future-oriented collaborations that only the United States and the Philippines will be able to take advantage of,” Marcos said Sunday when he was departing for Washington, according to his office.

Manila is open to offering zero tariffs on some U.S. goods to strike a deal with Trump, finance chief Ralph Recto told local journalists.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hinted that a trade agreement with the Philippines was in the works. “Perhaps this will be a topic of discussion,” she told reporters Monday when asked about tariff negotiations.

The White House said Trump will discuss with Marcos the shared commitment to upholding a free, open, prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific.

Before a meeting with Marcos at the Pentagon, Hegseth reiterated America’s commitment to “achieving peace through strength” in the region.

“Our storied alliance has never been stronger or more essential than it is today, and together we remain committed to the mutual defense treaty,” Hegseth said Monday. “And this pact extends to armed attacks on our armed forces, aircraft or public vessels, including our Coast Guard anywhere in the Pacific, including the South China Sea.”

Marcos, whose country is one of the oldest U.S. treaty allies in the Pacific region, told Hegseth that the assurance to come to each other’s mutual defense “continues to be the cornerstone of that relationship, especially when it comes to defense and security cooperation.”

He said the cooperation has deepened since Hegseth’s March visit to Manila, including joint exercises and U.S. support in modernizing the Philippines’ armed forces. Marcos thanked the U.S. for support “that we need in the face of the threats that we, our country, is facing.”

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China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have been involved in long-unresolved territorial conflicts in the South China Sea, a busy shipping passage for global trade.

The Chinese coast guard has repeatedly used water cannon to hit Filipino boats in the South China Sea. China accused those vessels of entering the waters illegally or encroaching on its territory.

Hegseth told a security forum in Singapore in May that China poses a threat and the U.S. is “reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China.”

During Marcos’ meeting Monday with Rubio, the two reaffirmed the alliance “to maintain peace and stability” in the region and discussed closer economic ties, including boosting supply chains, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

The U.S. has endeavored to keep communication open with Beijing. Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met this month on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They agreed to explore “areas of potential cooperation” and stressed the importance of managing differences.

Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

By JANIE HAR and TERRY CHEA, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco is set to ban homeless people from living in RVs by adopting strict new parking limits the mayor says are necessary to keep sidewalks clear and prevent trash buildup.

The policy, up for final approval by San Francisco supervisors Tuesday, targets at least 400 recreational vehicles in the city of 800,000 people. The RVs serve as shelter for people who can’t afford housing, including immigrant families with kids.

Those who live in them say they’re a necessary option in an expensive city where affordable apartments are impossible to find. But Mayor Daniel Lurie and other supporters of the policy say motor homes are not suitable for long-term living and the city has a duty to both provide shelter to those in need and clean up the streets.

Carlos Perez stands inside an RV, where he lives with his brother, Selvin, left, in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

“We absolutely want to serve those families, those who are in crisis across San Francisco,” said Kunal Modi, who advises the mayor on health, homelessness and family services. “We feel the responsibility to help them get to a stable solution. And at the same time, we want to make sure that that stability is somewhere indoors and not exposed in the public roadway.”

Critics of the plan, however, say that it’s cruel to force people to give up their only home in exchange for a shot at traditional housing when there is not nearly enough units for all the people who need help; the mayor is only offering additional money to help 65 households.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, says city officials are woefully behind on establishing details of an accompanying permit program, which will exempt RV residents from parking limits so long as they are working with homeless outreach staff to find housing.

“I think that there’s going to be people who lose their RVs. I think there’s going to be people who are able to get into shelter, but at the expense” of people with higher needs, like those sleeping on a sidewalk, she said.

San Francisco, like other U.S. cities, has seen an explosion in recent years of people living out of vehicles and RVs as the cost of living has risen. Banning oversized vehicles is part of Lurie’s pledge to clean up San Francisco streets, and part of a growing trend to require homeless people to accept offers of shelter or risk arrest or tows.

Strict new rules

The proposal sets a two-hour parking limit citywide for all RVs and oversized vehicles longer than 22 feet or higher than 7 feet, regardless of whether they are being used as housing.

Parked RVs are seen on Lake Merced Boulevard in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Under the accompanying permit program, RV residents registered with the city as of May are exempt from the parking limits. In exchange, they must accept the city’s offer of temporary or longer-term housing, and get rid of their RV when it’s time to move. The city has budgeted more than half a million dollars to buy RVs from residents at $175 per foot.

The permits will last for six months. People in RVs who arrive after May will not be eligible for the permit program and must abide by the two-hour rule, which makes it impossible for a family in an RV to live within city limits.

It first cleared the Board of Supervisors last week with two of 11 supervisors voting “no.”

RV dwellers can’t afford rent

Carlos Perez, 55, was among RV residents who told supervisors at a hearing this month that they could not afford the city’s high rents. Perez works full-time as a produce deliveryman and supports his brother, who lives with him and is unable to work due to a disability.

Carlos Perez poses for a photo outside his RV, where he lives, in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

“We don’t do nothing wrong. We try to keep this street clean,” he said, as he showed his RV recently to an Associated Press journalist. “It’s not easy to be in a place like this.”

Yet, Perez also loves where he lives. The green-colored RV is decorated with a homey houseplant and has a sink and a tiny stove on which Carlos simmered a bean soup on a recent afternoon.

He’s lived in San Francisco for more than 30 years, roughly a decade of which has been in the RV in the working-class Bayview neighborhood. He can walk to work and it is close to the hospital where his brother receives dialysis multiple times a week.

Motorists travel past RVs parked on Lake Merced Boulevard in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Zach, another RV resident who requested being identified by his first name to not jeopardize his ability to get work, started living in the vehicle a dozen years ago after realizing that no matter how hard he worked, he still struggled to pay rent.

Now he works as a ride-hail driver and pursues his love of photography. He parks near Lake Merced in the city near the Pacific Ocean and pays $35 every two to four weeks to properly dispose of waste and fill the vehicle with fresh water.

He says Lurie’s plan is shortsighted. There is not enough housing available and many prefer to live in an RV over staying at a shelter, which may have restrictive rules. For Zach, who is able-bodied, maintains a clean space and has no dependents, moving to a shelter would be a step down, he says. Still, he expects to receive a permit.

“If housing were affordable, there is a very good chance I wouldn’t be out here,” he said.

City recently closed its only RV lot

RV dwellers say San Francisco should open a safe parking lot where residents could empty trash and access electricity. But city officials shuttered an RV lot in April, saying it cost about $4 million a year to service three dozen large vehicles and it failed to transition people to more stable housing.

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The mayor’s new proposal comes with more money for beefed-up RV parking enforcement — but also an additional $11 million, largely for a small number of households to move to subsidized housing for a few years.

Officials acknowledge that may not be sufficient to house all RV dwellers, but notes that the city also has hotel vouchers and other housing subsidies.

Erica Kisch, CEO of nonprofit Compass Family Services, which assists homeless families, says they do not support the punitive nature of the proposal but are grateful for the extra resources.

“It’s recognition that households should not be living in vehicles, that we need to do better for families, and for seniors and for anyone else who’s living in a vehicle,” she said. “San Francisco can do better, certainly.”

PARIS (AP) — The United States announced Tuesday it will again pull out of the U.N.’s educational, scientific and cultural agency because of what Washington sees as its anti-Israel bias, only two years after rejoining.

A man enters the UNESCO headquarters Tuesday, July 22, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

This will be the third time that the United States leaves UNESCO, which is based in Paris, and the second time during a Trump administration. President Donald Trump had already pulled out during his first term and the United States returned after a five-year absence after the Biden administration applied to rejoin the organization.

The decision will take effect at the end of December 2026.