According to engadget, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the philanthropy of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, has completely severed its ties with the pro-immigration advocacy group FWD.us. Zuckerberg co-founded FWD.us back in 2013, and until now, CZI had provided over half of the group’s roughly $400 million in total donations. For the first time in 2025, CZI provided zero funding. Furthermore, CZI’s chief of staff, Jordan Fox, resigned from the FWD.us board in late 2024, and no one from CZI will fill the vacancy. This split follows a reported late-2024 meeting between Zuckerberg and Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who questioned Zuckerberg’s ties to the group.
Principles are flexible
Here’s the thing about this story: it’s not surprising in the slightest, but it’s a crystal-clear case study in corporate realpolitik. The article lays out a pretty damning timeline. Zuckerberg meets with Stephen Miller—an architect of the Trump administration’s most hardline immigration policies, including the controversial use of foreign facilities for deportees. Miller reportedly brings up FWD.us. Then, suddenly, Zuckerberg’s money and people vanish from the organization he helped create.
And it’s not just the charity. Look at what happened at Meta itself right as Trump was returning to power. The company dismantled its DEI programs, called fact-checkers “too politically biased,” and changed rules to allow more hateful speech on immigration topics. Zuckerberg then told the New York Times this was just an “adjustment” to the new landscape, and praised the new administration on an investor call. So the FWD.us move is just the philanthropic arm of a full-spectrum alignment operation. It’s hard to see it as anything but currying favor.
What happens next?
The immediate question is whether other tech giants follow suit. The article frames this as part of a “broader pattern of Big Tech bending the knee,” and that’s probably accurate. When the most visible founder in the space so publicly shifts his charitable and corporate policies, it sends a signal. The risk, of course, is that advocacy groups working on issues out of favor with the current administration get frozen out.
FWD.us says it will press on with new donors, and maybe they will. But losing your primary funder is a massive blow. Meanwhile, the actual policy landscape is getting harsher, with questions about deportation numbers and ongoing hardline tactics. The tragic irony is quoting Zuckerberg’s own 2013 words, where he called immigration reform “one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time” and talked about the heartbreak of talented immigrant children without opportunity. That guy seems to have been left in the Obama era. The 2025 model is focused on navigating regulatory winds, whatever they may be. It’s a stark lesson that for massive corporations—and their attached philanthropies—principles can be secondary to preservation and access.
