By THALIA BEATY
NEW YORK (AP) — The nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice says staff from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency contacted them to assign a team to the organization and told them they planned to similarly install teams with all nonprofits receiving funds appropriated by Congress.
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Nick Turner, president of the New York-based criminal justice nonprofit, said Wednesday the nonprofit’s attorneys asked the DOGE staffers what legal basis they had to investigate a nonprofit and informed the staffers that the U.S. Department of Justice recently terminated grants to Vera. The DOGE staffers then withdrew their request to assign a team, according to a transcript of the call provided by Vera.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately return requests for comment.
Vera, which has an annual budget of around $45 million that mostly comes from private funders, advocates for reducing the number of people imprisoned in the U.S. They consult with law enforcement and public agencies to design alternative programs to respond to mental health crises or traffic violations, and also support access to lawyers for all immigrants facing deportation.
Nonprofit advocates say DOGE’s request threatens the basic freedoms of civil society.
“It would clearly undermine a core tenet of civil society: its independence from the state,” said Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “Regulatory oversight is one thing, but this would seem to go into much further, darker territory, where the government threatens the functioning of nonprofits that it does not agree with.”
Vera’s president said in an interview it is speaking publicly about DOGE’s request so other nonprofits can prepare.
“I think it is a terrifying harbinger of what might be a DOGE agenda to start infiltrating nonprofits that receive federal funding,” Turner said. “It could be a misunderstanding. It could be an aggressive overreach,” but it seemed clear that DOGE believed receiving any federal funding would be a reason to install a team at a nonprofit.
Not the first threat from the White House to nonprofits
Diane Yentel, the president and CEO the National Council of Nonprofits, called the request from DOGE to Vera a blatant abuse of power that should alarm all Americans.
“This action by DOGE sets a dangerous precedent, leaving any recipient of federal funding — nonprofit, for-profit, and individuals alike — vulnerable to the whims of this destructive group,” Yentel said in a statement. Her organization sued to prevent a freeze of all federal funding.
In February, the White House directed federal agencies to review all funding for nonprofits because many “actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people.”
The Trump administration has also sought to cancel other funding previously allocated by Congress and awarded to nonprofits, though the courts have paused some of those actions.
DOGE has also taken control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent nonprofit created and funded in part by Congress that worked to promote peace and security around the world. Employees and board members of USIP have sued the administration, arguing that the nonprofit is independent and not a part of the executive branch.
DOGE staffers referenced USIP as an example of DOGE assigning a team to a nonprofit that receives Congressional funds, according to the call transcript provided by Vera.
Many nonprofits receive federal funding
The federal government offers hundreds of billions of dollars in funding to nonprofit organizations in every state.
Researchers at the Urban Institute found that 103,475 nonprofits received $267 billion in government grants in 2021, according to an analysis of nonprofit tax forms. The analysis excludes the many small nonprofits with few assets that file less detailed tax forms.
Vera said the terminated grants from the Justice Department totaled around $5 million over three years. Those funds would have provided sign language interpretation for victims of crimes who are deaf, helped to develop responses to human trafficking and changed the way prosecutor offices work to reduce the number of people entering the legal system.
The Justice Department notified Vera it terminated the grants because it had change its priorities to “more directly supporting certain law enforcement operations, combatting violent crime, protecting American children, and supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault, and better coordinating law enforcement efforts at all levels of government.”
Turner said he believed the administration targeted Vera because it’s outspoken about its mission to pursue racial justice and support immigrants, policies the White House opposes.
“The Trump administration is obviously doing everything that it can to hobble and handicap civil society, whether it’s in academia or law firms or foundations and now has obviously opened this front on nonprofits,” Turner said.
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. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
