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** Staff Picks 2025: Isaiah
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December 23, 2025

Dear Readers,

The degree of suffering visited upon everyday people in the United States this year, by our own government, has been difficult to comprehend.

The deliberately inflicted pain ranges from attacks on the LGBTQ+ community to the racist targeting of immigrants and migrants to the heartless layoffs of thousands of federal workers to the arbitrary distress thrust on ordinary people simply trying to afford healthcare for their families.

It’s our job at NPQ to cover the nonprofit sector specifically, but it can feel myopic to focus on our own sector’s experience amid so much pain.

But nonprofits are not just another industry on an economic checklist. It is often our sector that stands up for the rights, dignity, and even survival of all those targeted groups and more, attempting to right the wrongs inflicted on the marginalized, the unwanted, the powerless. What hurts us, as organizations, hurts them, as people. And we must tend to our sector just as we must tend to those our sector serves.

The inauguration of President Donald Trump in January marked the beginning of a siege on institutions that protect vulnerable people, more or less starting with the nonprofit sector. Now, at the end of 2025, our sector finds itself fully under attack by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress. It is a grim state of affairs.

Yet, we remain standing, and fighting back. This year saw nonprofit leaders rise to the occasion of our times, despite or because of the dire risks inherent in this moral resistance.

Groups like the National Council of Nonprofits ([link removed]) , Democracy Forward ([link removed]) , and a multitude of other allies have put their proverbial money where their mouth is, suing the Trump administration over its various assaults, from mass-defunding to executive orders and memoranda aimed at initiating politically motivated investigations of nonprofits whose missions run afoul of the Trump administration’s ideological agenda.

Meanwhile, other organizations like We the Action ([link removed]) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ([link removed]) (of which NPQ is a grantee) are providing legal resources to help ordinary cash-strapped nonprofits preemptively bolster their internal defenses against potential attacks.

Countless other groups have resisted by refusing to abandon their missions, and the people they serve, maintaining their resolve to fight for diversity, inclusion and equity—deep principles that have become the boogeyman of “DEI” to the Right.

It is one of those mysterious truths of life that the most unfortunate circumstances are also often the most profoundly important. It’s often what we do when things are bad, not good, that defines who and what we are.

In this special end-of-year Leadership newsletter, we’re looking back on just some of NPQ’s coverage over the last year (a more complete selection can be found on my Staff Picks list ([link removed]) ) of the bravery, morality, and leadership that our sector has shown and will surely continue to show in the year to come. All is not lost—and the fight is worth it.

With gratitude,

Isaiah Thompson

Editor

Leadership

[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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** Staff Picks: Isaiah
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Disability Under Trump’s Anti-DEI Agenda

by Alison Stine

“People with disabilities make up the largest minority group in both the country and the world.”
Read Article ([link removed])
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Tax Provision Would Give Trump Administration Unilateral Power to Strip Nonprofit Status

by Isaiah Thompson and Rebekah Barber

“This tax bill introduced by House Republicans is a direct assault on organizations that serve the most vulnerable Americans.”
Read Article ([link removed])
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Study Finds Widespread Self-Censorship in the Philanthropic Sector

by Ted Siefer

“Some funders have rewritten home page headers, menus, and even entire blocks of content to remove references to race, diversity, equity, or inclusion.”
Read Article ([link removed])
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Why Protecting Democracy Means Protecting Nonprofits

by Ellinor Heywood and Genevieve Nadeau

“Attacks against civil society—especially nongovernmental organizations—are straight from the authoritarian playbook.”
Read Article ([link removed])
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NPQ Staff Picks for 2025: Isaiah

by Isaiah Thompson

Check out my selections of NPQ’s civic news coverage from 2025.
Read Collection ([link removed])

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Webinar: Do More, Risk Less - January 6, 2026 ([link removed])

Join CLA as we reflect on 2025 lessons learned and how nonprofits can translate that insight into action plans for 2026

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