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San Francisco Chronicle
22-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘System collapse:' Trump budget cuts threaten AAPI nonprofits in Bay Area
Growing up low-income in the Mission District in the 2000s, Gina Gutierrez never felt going to college was an option. But in her junior year, Gutierrez met a college adviser from the Japanese Community Youth Council who made her believe she could become the first in her family to attend college. He helped her secure a full ride to San Francisco State, where she graduated in 2011. 'I don't think I would have gone to college if it wasn't for my JCYC adviser intentionally supporting me,' said Gutierrez, now the program director for JCYC's college access programs. But that program — along with many services run by Asian American organizations in the Bay Area — could be eliminated now that federal funds that pay for it are at risk. The Trump administration has aggressively pursued federal budget downsizing. Millions of dollars in federal funds awarded in grants and contracts to Asian American nonprofits in the Bay Area have been cut already or are at risk. Money to help older Asian American adults learn to use digital technology, combat anti-Asian hate and advise low-income tenants facing eviction funding are just some of the funds being slashed. At least five AAPI-serving organizations based in San Francisco have already been notified of at least $5.6 million in federal grant terminations or slated cuts based on Trump's proposed budget. That includes a $2 million grant that the Department of Justice terminated last month for Stop AAPI Hate, the nonprofit formed in the aftermath of the pandemic, which comprised a third of its 2026-27 budget, said Rose Lee, a spokesperson for the group. Lee called the termination a 'direct attack on our ability to fight anti-AAPI hate and serve our communities.' Trump boasted in a White House press release that his proposed budget, released May 2, reduced non-defense discretionary spending by 23% from 2025, while increasing the Department of Homeland Security's budget by 65% for 'repelling the invasion of our border.' Congress decides on discretionary spending each year while mandatory spending is dictated by laws and includes outlays for Social Security and Medicare programs. Trump administration officials justified the cuts as saving taxpayer money through defunding 'the harmful, woke Marxist agenda.' 'For decades, the biggest complaint about the Federal Budget was wasteful spending and bloated bureaucracy,' said Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. 'But over the last four years, Government spending aggressively turned against the American people and trillions of our dollars were used to fund cultural Marxism, radical Green New Scams, and even our own invasion.' But nonprofits that have relied on federal grants and funding to maintain a social safety net said the federal government is cutting essential services. Cally Wong, executive director of the API Council, a 57-member coalition of nonprofit organizations in San Francisco, said the situation is 'scary,' and she is taking stock of how many members have already experienced cuts or are expecting cuts given the congressional budget proposals. 'I think you're going to see a system that's going to collapse,' she said. California Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla both said they are 'using every tool' to fight back against the Trump administration's proposed reduction in services. 'Unfortunately, the Trump administration has prioritized funding cuts across federal agencies specifically meant to uplift historically marginalized groups like the AAPI community,' Padilla said. Democrats have argued that Trump's budget cuts are funding tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while Trump said it would reduce taxes for all Americans. Malcolm Yeung, executive director of Chinatown Community Development Center, which owns and manages about 3,600 units of affordable housing for 6,000 people across the city, said the federal government has withheld about $85,000 of what's called 'continuum of care' HUD funding to support services for formerly homeless people at one building. To get the funding, San Francisco must agree to federal demands on immigration and diversity, equity and inclusion. City Attorney David Chiu has filed a lawsuit to challenge the move, which he called 'illegal' demands. Yeung said the nonprofit is drawing from its financial reserves to make up for the cuts but that solution is 'not sustainable if the cuts scale up.' Under Trump's proposed budget, the nonprofit is also expecting to lose about $530,000 in community development block grants, which paid for youth job readiness training, services for single-room occupancy hotel residents and tenants at Chinatown's Ping Yuen public housing complex as well as housing counselling to help tenants facing eviction or hazardous housing conditions. Trump officials justified a $3.3 billion reduction in block grant funding by saying it is 'poorly targeted' and 'used for a variety of projects that the Federal Government should not be funding, such as improvement projects at a brewery, a plaza for concerts, and skateboard parks,' according to a budget document. Yeung is most concerned about potentially losing a significant chunk of the $35 million it receives annually in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental housing operating subsidies. 'I think we're in a bigger moment of change than is being discussed,' Yeung said. 'For real people out there, they built their lives around a form of federal government invested in social safety nets that help people to live.' Chinese Culture Center, a legacy institution in San Francisco Chinatown, was notified in April that the National Endowment for the Humanities was terminating a $115,000 grant to document Chinatown's cultural heritage, executive director Jenny Leung said. Leung said the project would have recorded Chinatown's intangible cultural assets, such as local Cantonese opera groups, hobby artists, and oral storytelling, that often aren't preserved in formal archives. The termination letter said that the project 'no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities,' Leung said. The nonprofit also was told that an almost $200,000 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant for training workers and a $50,000 grant for an Artists in Residence program were being revoked, the result of a Trump executive order to reduce federal bureaucracy that Trump 'deems unnecessary.' Twenty one states sued over the order. Although the grants were technically reinstated due to a preliminary injunction this week, the Trump administration is appealing and Leung said she isn't counting on the funds being actually disbursed. Leung said she is adjusting to a new reality where federal grants — which comprised up to 30% of the nonprofit's funding — may be gone. 'I'm anticipating half of the nonprofits in the next three to five years will not be there,' she said. 'I think it'll have a very devastating effect on the API community.' Winnie Yu, chief programs officer at the nonprofit Self Help for the Elderly, said she thinks the federal government has signaled it does not prioritize funding services for older adults. 'What we fear is that more cuts are coming,' Yu said. Her nonprofit, which is about 22% federally funded, already lost a grant for $200,000 annually for four years to help low-income Asian American older adults learn to use digital technology. Japanese Community Youth Council will lose $2.6 million in funding from the Department of Education under President Trump's current proposed budget. That money funds about 30 staff who provide college advising and preparation services for about 3,000 San Francisco public school students annually, a majority of whom are low-income youth who will be the first in their families to graduate from college. Gutierrez, the program director for JCYC's college access programs, said that the program she now runs made her success possible. Right as she was starting her junior year in high school, her mom died. One of her brothers was in prison and the other was suffering from bipolar disorder. She was taken in by an aunt. She imagined she'd have to start work right out of high school. Instead, she went to college thanks to the help she got in writing her scholarship application essay. 'We really do change students' lives,' Gutierrez said. 'Programs like these are truly valuable. They are a force to be reckoned with and if we lose something like that, it's going to drastically affect the community, students and possibly generations ahead.'
San Francisco Chronicle
08-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bay Area reacts to first American pope: ‘We are being given a seat at the big boy table'
As the first American pope greeted the multitudes at St. Peter's Square Thursday, many Catholics and non-Catholics 10,000 miles away in the Bay Area celebrated the selection of the moderate if not liberal-leaning pontiff — who recently chastised Vice President J.D. Vance 's biblical knowledge in a tweet. Chicago native Robert Prevost, now christened Leo XIV, is the 267th pope, elected by the church's cardinals to lead the 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, while holding significant cultural and political sway among the most powerful leaders. Leo XIV, who spent much of his career in Peru and has dual citizenship there, replaced Pope Francis, who broadened the church's views on LGBTQ issues, while also advocating for action on climate change, immigration and human rights. In Oakland, Keith Bachman, an Oakland native visiting his parents from Portland, decided to visit the Oakland Cathedral with his sister during their morning walk near Lake Merritt after hearing the news of a new pope. 'We hope that the movement for social justice that Francis started continues,' he said, adding he didn't know much about Prevost. 'We certainly need more people holding up fairness and justice.' The choice of an American pope, albeit one with a long missionary sojourn in Peru, was unexpected. The United States is predominantly Protestant, as opposed to the Catholic-majority countries that have produced more popes. Former President Barack Obama offered his sentiments via social media shortly after the announcement. 'Michelle and I send our congratulations to a fellow Chicagoan, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV,' he said. 'This is a historic day for the United States, and we will pray for him as he begins the sacred work of leading the Catholic Church and setting an example for so many, regardless of faith.' In San Francisco, Father Michael Liliedahl, who is in residence at St. Stephens and director of campus ministry at San Francisco State, said he was indeed surprised by the choice. 'I never expected to have an American pope in my lifetime," he said, adding the fact that the new pope was born and raised in Chicago and educated at Villanova sends the message that the US counts, 'We are being given a seat at the big boy table. The church has always been a very European centered organization.' But Liliedahl also pointed out that Pope Leo the 14th had done most of his ministry in Peru. "You can tell his time in Peru and the small villages he worked in had a profound impact on him,' he said. 'At the very very beginning he talked about peace, bringing peace to the family, bringing peace to the world." Liliedahl noted the new pope's choice of the name Leo. 'Both Leo I and Leo XIII talked about the dignity of the human person,' he said. 'I think there is a great continuity from Francis who would stand up for the human person whether that person be a migrant, the refugee, the unborn, the death row inmate, the outcast, the poor." Leo XIV has not been afraid to stand up against those sitting in the highest seats of power. In February, he twice repudiated the views of Vice President Vance, a Catholic, who had argued that prioritizing one's own country is a just and natural 'ordo amoris,' or order of love. '[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,' Vance said. 'JD Vance is wrong,' Prevost wrote in a Feb. 3 tweet. 'Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love.' Prevost then followed it up with another post on Feb.12, citing a letter from Pope Francis that also challenged Vance: 'Christian love,' the former pope wrote, 'is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.' 'For many of us, the name Leo XIV happily brings to mind Leo XIII's Rerum novarum which was a blessing for working people,' she said. 'And it is heartening that His Holiness continued the blessing that Pope Francis gave on Easter Sunday: 'God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail.'
