Last month, 23andMe announced it was filing for bankruptcy, and dozens of states are suing to stop the company from selling off personal data. Yet, unlike for-profit businesses, lawyers in nonprofit organizations cannot just stop representing clients when funding ends. We continue the representation until the matter is concluded. This is a quagmire; immigration cases such as a U Visa can take 30 years to process from start to finish.
We also have a duty of confidentiality of information. This means that we cannot disclose information about representation. I remember learning, as a young attorney, that much like a doctor or therapist, if I saw a client in public, I could not speak to them or disclose that I knew them, unless they initiated that contact. The fact that I was a lawyer and guarded their secrets means everything.
While 23andMe may attempt to sell personal data to recover its losses, nonprofit and legal aid attorneys do not have an income-generating method to recover their losses. We cannot disclose client information, nor can we sell it in a public marketplace. When an agency such as DOGE seeks confidential IRS records to uncover immigration status, this protection means more than ever. Forcing an attorney to disclose client information is not permissible in the attorney-client relationship.
As an attorney currently serving as Executive Director of the nonprofit Survivor Justice Center, I have learned that in addition to representing clients and holding that duty, I am also running a business. Grant funding is not a viable business model, especially in today's market. Nonprofits need to be economically sustainable so that we can represent our clients. The recent funding cuts are making our work more difficult.
My staff asks me what the plan is if we lose all our immigration funding. I say, we are not alone. Last month, close colleagues at several immigration organizations who represent minors in removal proceedings lost over 50% of their budgets, due to federal executive orders, and many staffers were laid off. But the clients remain. I asked those organizations about their plans. One option is more pro bono representation. However, firms require the expertise of nonprofit lawyers for case supervision. If you lay off all the Legal Aid lawyers, who will supervise the pro bono cases? Another strategy is hoping that clients will eventually obtain private counsel. The frank worry: Many will not be able to afford it and will lose their cases.
This problem is continuing and severe. The funding cuts for our organization started with the VOCA cuts. And then, our Office of Victims of Crime Human Trafficking Funding was cut. And then, our California Department of Social Services' Immigration Services Funding was cut. And then, our America Rescue Plan funding ended. 35% of our remaining funding is federal.
Workers on the front lines provide direct services, which is tough and fraught with vicarious trauma and potential burnout, especially now that ICE is raiding domestic violence shelters. But in leadership, the pressure increases ten- or 20-fold. The pressures -- auditing, billing, budgeting, HR, donors, board- come from all sides. And yet my empathy and focus should be with both staff and the clients we serve.
Nonprofit Executive Directors already do multiple jobs. I am committed to the cause and our mission. But my most focused commitment is to the movement, staff, and team. I will uphold this obligation by protecting client privacy and continuing to fulfill my commitment to the work.
I am not a magician; I cannot answer every question or fix every issue. Even before today, there was data on the difficulty of doing immigrants’ rights work. I choose to be optimistic. I know I am often called on for my vision, and I understand; I am looking for leadership to inspire me. And I have it, in a strong network of Executive Directors. I am connected on listservs to almost every legal aid ED locally, statewide, and on a national level- from the legal services sector to the domestic violence and sexual assault movement. All organizations are more willing than ever to share documents. We have agreed to open-source our information and avoid wasting time unnecessarily. We are being creative. We support each other in innovative ways - sharing space, collaborating on grants, and making introductions where needed - and the occasional tears are shed or happy hours are had.
It is time for nonprofit leaders to come together through networking, developing collaborative and organic relationships, and establishing structures to sustain the work. I love the expression- Elbows up, we are ready to lock arms and push back.
I ask everyone to come together from a place of abundance and join in the idea that we can come from a place of abundance and work together, and figure out how to make the work sustainable and support our clients
In the meantime, I ask my team to take care of themselves. We practice self-care through wellness time. We changed vacation for exempt staff to self-managed time off. We encourage work from home. We support flexibility. COVID has brought this ability to our sector, and we continue it because it works for the team and our amazing clients.
Elbows Up!
Carmen McDonald is an attorney who serves as Executive Director of the Survivor Justice Center; she is a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project and Blue Shield California.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.