With the Trump administration by reducing budgets and threatening to revoke the status of tax exemption for non -profit organizations, some social justice organizations in southern California have crouched on the defensive, with the hope of waiting for the storm that passes.
They are not fighting openly against the cuts of President Trump's program. Some have scrubbed their websites of terms such as “equity”, “inclusion” and “transgender”. Others have been told that they should eliminate land recognitions: proclamations that pay tribute to indigenous peoples who were the first human inhabitants of this region.
But other local non -profit organizations intend to fight. They have criticized Trump's policies. They declined suggestions to alter their mission statements. They have gone to court. And one, Giant St. John's Community Health, who has given attention to the working class and immigrants in the region for 60 years, is launching a campaign to call the Republicans of the Congress that believes that Trump's budget cuts are allowing that they will paralyze medical care for the poor.
The venerable health clinics system, based in southern Los Angeles, joined on Thursday to 10 other non -profit organizations in the launch of a media campaign that will focus on half a dozen districts of the House of Representatives where Republican legislators have supported the president's initial budget plan.
The campaign of the newly created health justice action fund will promote the theme “Medicaid is important for me”. The organization plans to spend $ 2 million in the coming weeks to focus requests, telephone banks, social networks and radio ads in six republican legislators throughout the country, telling them that their constituents do not support the cuts of the main federal health program for the poor and disabled.
The Chamber and the Senate controlled by the Republicans have approved a Trump budget frame that requires $ 880 billion in cuts for more than 10 years from the operations supervised by the Energy and Commerce Committee of the Chamber. Trump and other Republicans insist that Medicaid will not have to be cut. But the non -partisan Congress budget office does not agree, saying that the desired savings can only be achieved by cutting Medicaid.
The new campaign to avoid these cuts has been organized by St. John's Health, based in Los Angeles, and its president and executive director, Jim Mangia.
“Medicaid cuts that are proposed by Republicans and President Trump would be devastating with the health of low -income families throughout the United States,” said Mangia, who directed St. John's for a quarter of a century, in an interview. “There are dozens of millions of people who depend on Medicaid and, in California, Medi-Cal, on their basic medical care. Reducing that to finance tax exemptions for billionaires is a perversion of what is supposed to be this country.”
Mangia and its Board of Directors said they understand that their expanding medical care organization, with more than 20 locations in southern California, could be the target of calling the president and his budget.
“Our position is fighting,” said Mangia. “Many community health centers have been scraping their websites and taking words like 'trans' and 'African -American' of their websites. We are not going to do that. We are not going to erase the people we serve.”
The leaders of non -profit organizations that serve the poor, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community have been involved in intense conversations for weeks on how to respond to Trump and their policies, which explicitly point to reducing services to some of those populations.
Republican representative David Valadao represents a district of Central Valley where almost two thirds of residents trust Medicaid.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
When Trump said last week that he could start trying to revoke the non -profit state of some groups, anxiety between spiral agencies to a new maximum, said Geoff Green, executive director of CalnonProfits, which represents thousands of organizations with a tax exempt state.
“There have been financial tensions and budget cuts before,” Green said. “But now it is not just financial stress, it is a direct orientation of its own existence and challenges to the values that are in the core of much of their work.”
The leaders of smaller organizations, in particular, do not feel they have the power or money to take the Trump administration to the courts. Others, who represent immigrants, worry that their leaders or their clients can be the white deportation if they protest publicly.
“For some people in this community, this is like a kind of code change,” said an executive of a non -profit social justice organization, which refused to be appointed. “Some terms can change on their websites, but they will not change their mission. They want to avoid conflicts or attacks, so that they can leave the other end of this and do the good job.”
In one case, a non -profit organization refused to receive a prize sponsored by a member of the California Legislature, because the organization worried that the prize would bring unwanted attention to its service to immigrants.
“At the end of the day, it is about protecting the most vulnerable of us,” said the Social Justice Executive. “Some organizations have more privileges, they have more resources. They can afford to go to court. They can be bolder.”
The public lawyer is among the public interest law firms whose contracts the Trump administration has threatened the termination. The possible loss of $ 1.6 million endangers the representation of the company based in the angels of hundreds of immigrant children, unaccompanied minors who often do not have support for adults.
The executive director of a public advisor, Kathryn Eidmann, said she believes that her organization has the duty to call what she sees as an injustice: to leave vulnerable children without legal representation.
“We have the responsibility to defend our mission and defend our clients and the rule of law,” said Eidmann. The public lawyer is trying to intervene in the Court on behalf of the “Sanctuary” cities such as Los Angeles, which have been threatened with a loss of federal funds, and the company has reached the defense of law firms aimed at providing probo representation to unpleasant groups with the Trump administration.
The public advisor and other firms of non -profit lawyers continue to wait to see if the Trump administration will honor the temporary restriction order of a judge, which requires that the funds continue to flow to those who represent immigrant children. Until Wednesday, the financing had not been restored, said a spokesman for a public advisor.
Another non-profit organization of the area of the threatened area with the loss of federal funds under Trump's anti-dei impulse is the Land Land Land Los Angeles Land Trust.
The group had won a subsidy of $ 500,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to help ensure that reurbing along the Los Angeles River in the northeast of Los Angeles protects housing, jobs and services for the families of the working class. But the money stopped flowing this year, without any explanation of the EPA, said Tori Kjer, executive director of Land Trust.
“For them, this is probably a loss of money,” Kjer said. “For us, it is an equitable development and construction in a way that supports everyone.”
Kjer said that a personnel member of a member of the Liberal Chamber urged his group to take a low profile and, for example, eliminate the recognition of indigenous lands that are in the line of signature of all their emails. She refused to do that.
“We are not going to change our paths due to Trump,” Kjer said. “In California, as a state and in this region, we are still very progressive. If we cannot maintain this type of work here, we are in real problems. We feel that we need to resist, if even in a small way.”
The campaign to protest against the possible clippings of Medicaid will focus on six districts of the Chamber where the use of the health system financed by the federal government is high and where the Republicans have, in the best case, a limited electoral advantage.
The target districts include David Valadao in the Central Valley and those of Ken Calvert in the Coachella Valley. Almost two thirds of Valadao's components use Medicaid, while around 30% in the Calvert district do so.
Residents in these districts will listen to how Trump's budget plan threatens to reduce Medicaid for “daily people”, and how substantial reductions could threaten to close rural hospitals that are already struggling to reach the end of the month.
The Health Justice Action Fund was created as a 501 (c) (4) by St. John's and another 10 medical care providers, who have chosen to remain anonymous. The regulations that govern such funds allow them (unlike non -profit organizations) to participate in unlimited lobbying and some political activity.
The president and executive director of St. John's Community Health, Jim Mangia, on the right, in a panel in 2022 with the then Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and the mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
The rules also allow taxpayers to remain anonymous, what Mangia said it is necessary for some of their partners, who believe they will be attacked by reprisals if it is clear that they tried to frustrate Trump's policies.
Republicans from the House of Representatives who have been pressed on their position have maintained, despite an opposite opinion of experts, that Trump's cuts can be executed without taking services from Medicaid recipients.
Valadao was among a dozen Republicans from the House of Representatives who sent a letter to the party leaders who say they would not support the White House Plan if they will force the cuts to Medicaid. Republican leaders have assured their wobble colleagues who intend to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, not reduce Medicaid's benefits.
Mangia said that the campaign that he and his allies are pounding should make it very clear to the Republicans of the House of Representatives that Medicaid cannot be cut.
“There is a very scary environment at this time,” said Mangia. “But someone had to intensify and defend Medicaid and basic medical care that provides so many people. We were not going to let this happen without fighting.”
