Donald Trump has yet to take office, but Congress is already advancing legislation that would expand his powers to target his political opponents. In fact throughout his campaign, the former president frequently pledged to combat “enemies from within” using military force. Now, this proposed law could grant him unprecedented authority to take action against nonprofits he opposes.
Specifically, this week the House will vote on a bill granting the Treasury Department the authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit organization declared a “terrorist-support organization,” thus giving the agency considerable freedom.
The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (H.R. 9495) was originally conceived to protect Americans held hostage by foreign terrorist groups or unlawfully detained abroad from IRS fines and tax penalties. Consequently, by combining these provisions into a single bill, the GOP plans to make opposition more challenging.
Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), reportedly said that, “They attached it to a super popular bill that everyone likes because they want to make it hard for people to vote against it.” She added, “The reality is that if they really wanted the hostage thing to become law, they’d pass that by itself.”
Hamadanchy claimed in The Intercept, that this bill is “about stifling dissent and to chill advocacy, since people are going to avoid certain things and take certain positions in order to avoid this designation.”
The bill would concretely empower the Treasury secretary to warn nonprofits that their tax-exempt status may be revoked, giving them 90 days to appeal before losing their 501(c)(3) status.
Therefore, its vague wording could be used to affect organizations that support Palestinian rights, reproductive rights and environmental protection.
Therefore, if the House passes it, the resolution will move on to the Senate, which voted for an earlier draft that did not include the provision on nonprofit organizations. If the House had made no changes to the legislation, a majority vote would have been enough to send the bill to the president’s desk and make it law. But now, because of the changes and the fact that Republicans are trying to accelerate its passage, the resolution will require a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate before it can be sent to the White House, where President Biden is likely to veto it.
