On Thursday 15 Democrats and nearly every Republican voted to pass H.R. 9495. : the bill that would allow the president to SHUT DOWN any nonprofit organization whose First Amendment-protected speech he deems a threat to the country.
Now, this dangerous legislation heads to the Senate for a vote.
The American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Greenpeace USA, and Planned Parenthood are among the groups that oppose the measure. In a letter sent to congressional leaders earlier this week, the coalition said the bill “creates a high risk of politicized and discriminatory enforcement.” It also argues the executive branch already has “extensive authority” to prohibit transactions with entities that it deems are connected to terrorism.
Federal law currently prohibits knowingly providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, and the Internal Revenue Service has a process in place to revoke an organization’s tax-exempt status. Section 501(p) of the Internal Revenue Code “provides for the automatic suspension of the tax-exempt status of an organization upon designation or identification by the federal government of the organization as a terrorist organization.”
The IRS defines a terrorist organization as a group that is designated or identified as supporting or engaging in terrorist activity. To revoke tax-exempt status, the IRS says it conducts an examination of the organization, issues a letter to the group proposing revocation, and then allows the organization to “exhaust the administrative appeal rights that follow the issuance of the proposed revocation letter.”
On paper, H.R. 9495 seems harmless, even helpful. But in reality, this bill will give a future Trump administration unilateral power to strip tax-exempt status from nonprofits that have “provided support for terrorist organizations”.
It’s already completely illegal for nonprofits to support terrorism.
So, what is the bill actually doing? It allows Trump’s Treasury Secretary to effectively shut down any nonprofit they want with zero due process, zero evidence, and zero explanation of why they’re doing it.
In the likely event that Trump appoints a loyalist in the mold of his previous Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz, this bill would hand them a blank check to retaliate against, and effectively shut down, any nonprofit that he doesn’t like – with virtually no oversight!
That means that if the Trump Administration wants to retaliate against Common Cause – or any other group that dissents from his anti-democracy agenda, they could take away our non-profit tax status without any justification