Greetings, readers. As I sit down to write this week’s Leadership newsletter, the word is bouncing around my head in a most chaotic manner. 

“Leadership”—it can signal a virtue, or just a plain fact. There is, after all, such a thing as bad leadership. There are leaders who do things like, say, pull the plug on essentially all federal funding, including hundreds of billions of dollars supporting critical nonprofits that sustain our communities—all in order, it would seem, to send a very simple message: “Bow to me.”

So we start first with—what else—our in-the-moment initial coverage of the Trump administration’s move last week to freeze essentially all federal grants and require every recipient to plead loyalty to an anti-“woke” agenda. The attempt appeared to seek to ban funding to any organization suspected of practicing or even endorsing any of the myriad policies, communities, or values the administration opposes. Though the order has since been rescinded, we have a feeling this dance isn’t over.

The sector is responding both on offense and on defense. Center for Effective Philanthropy President Phil Buchanan makes an urgent case to donors to help nonprofits meet this critical moment. And Zane McNeill covers the way people and communities are preparing for attacks on transgender people in the United States. Finally, we’re offering an early bird special on our upcoming sector briefing, “Advocacy in a Second Trump Administration: A Practical Guide for Leaders on Defending Progress and Advancing Justice” on February 20. The special offer ends February 14.

As always, the Leadership desk wants to hear from you. But especially now. Hit me up—with pitches, with reports from the field, with questions we can maybe help answer. And please, be well and keep up the good work!

Isaiah Thompson
Leadership Editor, NPQ