Trump Aims To Destroy American Civil Society. Here’s Why He Must Be Stopped.

The United States has the largest GDP in the world, and the largest GDP per person of any country with more than 50 million people. While private business drives a great deal of this country’s wealth and prosperity, our public and nonprofit sectors — the intersection that we sometimes call civil society — provides the stability, structural investment and social integration that a truly liberal democracy needs to reach its full potential and highest aspirations.

For little more than a week, President Donald Trump and his gang of extremist gangsters has been trying to destroy it.

The goal has always been clear: destroy functioning government, cripple the nonprofit sector and obliterate the hard-earned bonds and benefits of 80 years of post-war American progress.

There’s no hiding from this, because it will touch every aspect of life in the U.S. Just this week, the Trump Administration illegally halted Medicaid and Head Start payments, halted veterans benefits, stopped SNAP benefits for hungry families, launched invasive immigration raids designed to terrorize communities, froze federal grants to nonprofit organizations providing direct service, cut off loans to small businesses, attacked advocacy organizations, banned transgender people from serving in the military and even went so far as trying to silence the history of the Tuskegee Airmen as part of his capricious and bigoted campaign to end DEI programs.

Makes the price of eggs seem minor.

These sadistic orders and actions affect the lives of tens of millions of Americans. Over 70 million people receive Medicaid benefits. The number of citizens impacted by Trump’s craven funding freeze is undoubtedly a majority.

I’m particularly worried about the effects on civil society, even over the short-term. Our nonprofit sector is more than 5% of GDP, and contributes $3.7 trillion to the economy each year, employing more than 10% of the workforce. Every year, Americans contribute more than 2% of GDP to charities, investing in the health and well-being of their neighbors and trusting nonprofits to fill the gap in service often left by the government.

As a consultant and analyst working in civil society — and with nonprofit organizations providing direct services and working to improve our system of justice — I find it hard to overstate just how important noncorporate commitments are to a fairer society. Yet it’s clear that for the far right, motivated by xenophobia and a desire for stripped down powerless liberal order, nonprofits and the partnerships of civil society are the enemy. They seek friction free power, and our system of institutions and quasipublic organizations blocks the greatest excesses of both hardcore libertarians and hardcore haters. (Yes, there’s an overlap).

As Democracy Docket and legal and justice organizations are showing, there is still life left in the U.S. court system — and frankly, given current radical majorities in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, the courts are our best public options for throwing sand in the gears of the extremists seeking to destroy civil society. But I think there’s a strong adjunct role for most of us building anti-MAGA strength in the 21 months left till the U.S. midterm elections in 2026. 

1. Our nonprofit sector must band together to oppose the dismemberment of American society. This means working within sectors, but also across sectors — health care with higher education, justice reform with direct services to underserved populations and the arts with everybody. We are starting to see more coalition work (particularly in my home metro area of New York) and collective action, rather than pure competition for grants and philanthropic dollars. This is a time to ramp up more of this, and be ready to stand in partnership with the best of government — and in stoic opposition to the worst.

2. Political donors of the center-left should adjust their giving habits to support more oppositional causes, perhaps shifting from purely candidates and committees to investments in independent media, regional 501c4 organizing work and legal funds fighting Trump orders directly. This goes for the big donors from groups like the Democracy Alliance to small donors used to responding to the ever more tasteless email campaigns of the big congressional committees and PACs. This is the time to change the model.

3. Individuals must speak up and speak out in their communities. Yes, the latest outrage can be numbing — don’t spend a day on Facebook debating the ludicrous “Gulf of America” malarkey — but the attempted structural changes should be loudly and vociferously opposed. Talk to friends. Use social media wisely (pick your platforms well). Know your material, and be blunt with both public officials (especially Democratic leadership) and with the news media. Most of all, don’t wait with your head under the covers, because that simply won’t work. Sometimes we’re called to act, and that time is now.

During last year’s campaign, many of us argued for the preservation of democracy and the rule of law. But too many voters heard some form of esoteric political science theory. Or they believed Trump wouldn’t dare to follow his worst instincts and put a deeply evil cadre of loyalists in charge of the federal government. Now that storm is here, the Jan. 6 thugs have been pardoned, the federal government is under attack from within, and American civil society faces a grave crisis — and a fight for survival.

That very civil society Trump wants to destroy holds dear a goal of improving the lives of everyone in this country. At this moment, I am still reminded of this quote by the great New Deal labor leader Sidney Hillman, and even as the radical storm clouds grow darker, we can hold this deeply American ideal close:

We want a better America, an America that will give its citizens, first of all, a higher and higher standard of living so that no child will cry for food in the midst of plenty.

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Tom Watson is a veteran consultant to nonprofits and civil society organizations, and an instructor in the nonprofit management graduate program at Columbia University.