Elections have consequences. The House, which will continue to be under the control of Republicans along with the Senate and the White House next year, is already considering a new bill, the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (or HR 9495), which would grant the US secretary of the treasury the power to strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status if they’re designated to be a “terrorist-supporting” organization — essentially allowing the Trump administration to arbitrarily target nonprofits viewed as political enemies.
Introduced by Republican Representative Claudia Tenney of a district in Western and Upstate New York that hugs Lake Ontario, the bill has been described by Amnesty International USA Executive Director Paul O’Brien as troubling because it provides no safeguards to prevent it from being misused to harass or intimidate organizations for exercising their rights. “In any other context, this legislation would be seen for what it is, a play from the authoritarian leader’s playbook,” he said in a statement.
A coalition of over 150 civil and human rights groups has written a letter to House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R–LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D–NY) explaining that the bill would dismiss due process. “It grants the Secretary of the Treasury virtually unfettered discretion to designate a U.S. nonprofit as a ‘terrorist supporting organization’ and to strip it of its tax-exempt status if the Secretary finds that the nonprofit has provided material support to a terrorist group, even if the ‘support’ is not intentional or connected to actual violence,” the letter reads.
The coalition includes organizations as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers, American Library Association, Arab American Institute, Asian Law Caucus, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Greenpeace USA, Human Rights Watch, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, Oxfam America, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Southern Poverty Law Center, the Sikh Coalition, and dozens of others.
While the bill was defeated by a vote last week that included almost all Republicans with the exception of one, Thomas Massie (R–KY), 52 Democrats broke with their caucus to vote in support of the Republican bill. The last attempt did not pass because the bill required a two-thirds majority, but the new vote slated for Wednesday, November 20, will only require a simple majority to pass.
This is a troubling turn of events, particularly for the arts, where nonprofit organizations are prominent players in the form of museums, alternative art spaces, galleries, and even some publications, not to mention institutions of higher education. If it passes, will this bill muffle artistic expression? My guess is yes. Is this a troubling omen for the increasingly extreme measures we’ll see when Republicans control all three chambers of the US government? I think you know the answer.
