Musk Calls for Cutting Funds to Lutheran Groups

Lutheran groups in Wisconsin are defending their records of service after coming under attack on social media by Elon Musk, the tech mogul tapped by President Donald Trump to root out waste and inefficiency in the federal government.

Over the weekend, former national security advisor Michael Flynn posted on X, the social media platform Musk owns, accusing Lutheran organizations who receive federal grants of committing “money laundering.”

Musk responded that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, is “rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”

Federal grants totaling billions of dollars each year go to nonprofits to provide a range of community services that states don’t provide themselves, such as housing or food assistance.

Flynn’s post included screenshots of some Lutheran groups that receive federal funds. But it’s unclear how Flynn identified which Lutheran groups to name in his post, or how Musk determined those payments to be illegal.

The two Wisconsin groups included by name in Flynn’s post are Wisconsin Lutheran Child and Family Services (WLCFS), a Christian mental health care provider in Germantown, and the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation in La Crosse, a nonprofit health clinic that no longer has any affiliation with the Lutheran Church.

A spokesperson for Christian Family Services, which oversees WLCFS, said the group understands its government funding to still be in place.

“We have been following the news with interest because we know that any funding we receive – whether from public or private sources – is a privilege and could end at any time,” the spokesperson said.

In a statement, Gundersen’s parent group, Emplify Health, said the group works with officials of all parties.

“Any public funding we receive is through existing public programs, approved through the legislative process, and is used to improve access to healthcare for our patients,” the statement reads.

‘I think he got this one wrong’

Other Wisconsin-based Lutheran service groups that received federal aid in recent years were not included in Flynn’s post. That includes Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

“I actually responded to Musk,” said Héctor Colón, that group’s president.

Colón said he’s interested in Musk’s career trajectory, and said curbing wasteful government spending would support communities that need government resources.

“But I told him, I think he’s got this one wrong,” he added.

Colón said his organization has operated for 143 years and serves about 30,000 people per year, providing youth development, mental health and substance use services, housing coordination and other services.

The group has also helped resettle about 11,000 refugees over the last 50 years — another government project that is largely outsourced to nonprofit groups. That work has also been targeted under the Trump administration, and funding for Colón’s group’s refugee work has been suspended since last month, under a stop work order issued to all American resettlement groups.

“Not only is it the humanitarian thing to do for these individuals, but there’s economic benefits as well,” Colón said. “Right now, there’s a huge shortage of workers. And these individuals come here, they end up loving America, and clearly are on a path to citizenship and buying homes and having jobs and contributing to the broader economy.”

Since his brief stint in Trump’s first administration, Flynn has become a figurehead for the QAnon conspiracy movement. In other social media posts, he criticized money that goes to Catholic charity groups.

Flynn is tied to Christian nationalist groups that often see mainline Protestant groups as anti-Christian, according to Julie Ingersoll, an expert in American religion and politics at the University of North Florida. But many faith-based groups take on governmental priorities or projects, she added.

“Part of our whole system—in which we give tax advantages and all to religious organizations—part of the justification for that is the charitable work that they do,” she said. “(The government) can’t insist that that a group that wants to get funding for some charitable work be a secular group. That’s been considered by the courts to be discrimination against religious viewpoints.”

Indeed, the bulk of governmental refugee resettlement work is done by faith-based groups, primarily those with Protestant, Catholic and Jewish origins. Since 1980, that work has been standardized under the Refugee Act. Refugees have been granted legal status to be in the United States. Community-based groups do the work of getting them set up with housing and jobs, train them about how to set up utilities and bank accounts, and get their kids into school.

“They’re doing work that the federal government isn’t doing and can’t do, and they see it as part of their Christian mission to do good in the world,” said Ingersoll.

Musk calls for cutting funds to Lutheran groups, including in Wisconsin was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.