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politics -- time-sensitive
The House of Representatives is about to vote on HR 9495, the "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act". It mashes two bills into one. The "Tax Penalties on American Hostages" part is about not penalizing US citizens who are held hostage or detained abroad for failing to pay US taxes while incarcerated -- a tiny niche concern, but entirely reasonable.
The other half enables the Secretary of the Treasury to strip the non-profit status from any non-profit organization by designating it as "supporting terrorist organizations". As Common Cause points out, it's already illegal for US non-profit organizations to support terrorist organizations; the problem is that the decision of who's "supporting terrorist organizations" becomes entirely up to the Secretary of the Treasury, with almost no due-process or appeals guarantees. Most obviously, support for innocent civilians in Gaza could easily be equated with support for Hamas, but there are also lots of free-speech, environmental, reproductive-rights, anti-police-brutality, etc. organizations that somebody somewhere has labeled "terrorist".
President-elect Trump hasn't yet nominated anybody for Secretary of the Treasury, but considering his other nominations so far, we can be reasonably sure it'll be somebody with little or no expertise in treasury issues, deep hostility to the IRS's mission, slavish personal loyalty to Donald Trump, and a willingness to use the IRS to harass and persecute anybody Donald Trump considers a personal enemy.
My Congresswoman voted in favor of a procedural move to fast-track the bill; I just called her office to suggest that she reconsider her support.
The other half enables the Secretary of the Treasury to strip the non-profit status from any non-profit organization by designating it as "supporting terrorist organizations". As Common Cause points out, it's already illegal for US non-profit organizations to support terrorist organizations; the problem is that the decision of who's "supporting terrorist organizations" becomes entirely up to the Secretary of the Treasury, with almost no due-process or appeals guarantees. Most obviously, support for innocent civilians in Gaza could easily be equated with support for Hamas, but there are also lots of free-speech, environmental, reproductive-rights, anti-police-brutality, etc. organizations that somebody somewhere has labeled "terrorist".
President-elect Trump hasn't yet nominated anybody for Secretary of the Treasury, but considering his other nominations so far, we can be reasonably sure it'll be somebody with little or no expertise in treasury issues, deep hostility to the IRS's mission, slavish personal loyalty to Donald Trump, and a willingness to use the IRS to harass and persecute anybody Donald Trump considers a personal enemy.
My Congresswoman voted in favor of a procedural move to fast-track the bill; I just called her office to suggest that she reconsider her support.
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I gather the House has passed the bill along vaguely party lines, with one Republican opposing it and 15 Democrats supporting it; now it's the Senate's turn.
The two main provisions have nothing to do with one another, and really shouldn't have been in the same bill in the first place, but that's the sausage factory for you...