LA Times: Fight or flight? Some California nonprofits won’t remain silent in face of Trump budget slashing
Published in the Los Angeles Times
By James Rainey
April 24, 2025 3:00 AM
People wait to get the mpox vaccine at St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles in 2022. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
A coalition led by the L.A. nonprofit St. John’s Community Health is launching a media campaign opposing Medicaid cuts that will focus on half a dozen U.S. House districts.
The group plans to spend $2 million in the coming weeks.
With the Trump administration slashing budgets and threatening to revoke tax-exempt status for nonprofits, some Southern California social justice organizations have gone into a defensive crouch, hoping to wait out the passing storm.
They are not openly fighting President Trump’s program cuts. Some have scrubbed their websites of terms such as “equity,” “inclusion” and “transgender.” Others have been told they should drop land acknowledgments — proclamations paying tribute to the Indigenous peoples who were this region’s first human inhabitants.
But other local nonprofits intend to fight. They have slammed Trump’s policies. They declined suggestions to alter their mission statements. They have gone to court. And one, giant St. John’s Community Health — which has provided care for the region’s working class and immigrants for 60 years — is launching a campaign to call out congressional Republicans it believes are enabling Trump budget cuts that they believe will cripple healthcare for the poor.
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