General

Some Early January Thoughts on the FPLG Blog for 2026

01.07.26 | Linda J. Rosenthal, JD

Twelve months ago, we explained: “As the clock strikes midnight this New Year’s Eve, with the final 2024 charitable contributions trickling in, there is one final task for the exhausted but grateful boards and staff of the nation’s 501(c)(3) organizations. It’s the timely delivery of a ‘contemporaneous written acknowledgment,’ commonly referred to as a Donee Acknowledgment Letter.”

Since the annual fundraising frenzy for 2025 would start up again within days, we opened the new blog year with Some Early January Thoughts About Gift Acceptance Policies (January 9, 2025): “Against a background of uncertainty and – perhaps – turmoil, the nation’s charitable nonprofits are now at the start of the 2025 fundraising season.”

There we were, after the tumultuous COVID-19 era, back to discussing the ordinary day-to-day legal-compliance issues for 501(c)(3)s.

Americans were cautiously optimistic that we had turned the corner into that elusive “new normal”: notwithstanding the dark shadow – “perhaps ‘turmoil’’’ – looming on January 20th. After all, the incoming federal administration had loudly telegraphed its intent in the 900+-page Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership.

That massive blueprint promised a stark break from the status quo, from the established federal-government structure and procedures, and from long-standing “public policies.”

2025 Blog “Favorites”

Our blog favorites for 2025 have not been about ordinary, day-to-day subjects. They have not focused on calm information and advice about the ins and outs of nonprofit law.

There were no lighthearted posts like Some Charity Fraud With Your Hot Dog, Sir? (September 1, 2023) [“San Diegans woke up this past Monday morning to a disconcerting story on Petco Park’s food-and-drink concessions operation. No, it wasn’t about the extortionate prices charged to sweltering spectators under the stadium’s hot sun; that’s old news.”

“’It [was]…a years-long lucrative fraud perpetrated in plain sight” by a group of guys who stole the identity of a defunct local 501(c)(3). These brazen miscreants conned their way into a coveted spot in a special program offered by the ballpark owners. It is available to legitimate area nonprofits to operate concession stands in return for a 10% cut of the profits. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the scam was exposed and shut down – in one week’s time – through the efforts of San Diego’s award-winning nonprofit news source, the Voice of San Diego.

Instead, our 2025 blog was filled with the frightening developments of the Trump administration’s Shock-and-Awe 2.0 blitz along with the admirable resistance by the nation’s charitable sector and its allies.

OMB Memorandum (M-25-13)

“Just a week after Inauguration Day, the government launched a particularly destructive missile into the air.” See OMB Memorandum (M-25-13) (January 27, 2025): Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs [2 pp. PDF].

“The Office of Management and Budget directed the heads of each executive department or agency to ‘pause’ spending for a little while so the newly elected folks could mull over whether spending on this or that is a good idea.”

When the National Council of Nonprofits and the Association of Democratic Attorneys General had each filed a federal lawsuit to enjoin M-25-13 and and won temporary restraining orders, we published the first of a series of posts describing these dangerous new policies and telling the story of the pushback against these potentially catastrophic actions by the new administration. See Federal Funding “Pause”: Five-Alarm-Fire, Doused for Now (February 4, 2025).

Nationwide Injunctions and Gaslighting

In April 2025 and May 2025, we discussed additional developments including a third federal lawsuit challenging a separate funding freeze, followed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s initiation of a challenge to the district court judges’ imposition of nationwide injunctions.

There was much more about the ruling against nationwide-injunction bans in August: see here, here, and here. And there was outrage about the high court’s increasing use of shadow docketing: see, eg., Clarity from Trump v. CASA, Inc.? More Like Shadows Amid Gaslighting (September 1, 2025).

There were other broad and threatening moves by the administration against the nation’s 501(c)(3) organizations. See, e.g., National Security Memorandum-7 and our blog posts on this ominous development on September 25, 2025, and October 8, 2025.

Then, in November 2025, we added a wrap-up series on the year’s pushback against the Trump administration’s overreach. See:

The Charitable-Sector Pushback Against the Administration: One Year Post-Election (November 12, 2025)
How a State AG Can Short-Circuit A Fed Executive Order (November 23, 2025)
More About Executive-Order Pushback (November 30, 2025)

Advocacy and Activism on Deck

From the standpoint of sheer numbers, then these posts on the Trump Shock-and-Awe 2.0 blitz must have been our favorite ones from 2025.

They were necessary tasks, not favorites.

In any event, this story certainly did not end on New Year’s Day 2026. The need for more advocacy and activism – including but not limited to litigation – will continue in earnest this coming year on these same issues as well as new ones.

We’ll discuss advocacy topics needing immediate attention including the latest developments on: the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, the Johnson Amendment, the pushback against DEI, the challenge to birthright citizenship, and the threats of revoking 501(c)(3) status for failure to comply with the administration’s positions and policies on the these and other issues.

More ominously, there have been threats of criminalizing opposition in the charitable sector to the Trump agenda.