This would give the state immense power to ban any kind of non-profit organization that they don’t agree with. Even if they don’t go after all the left-wing organizations, that threat hanging above their heads would seriously limit the scope of their mission and most would probably be forced to remain very small and unnoticed. Obviously this violates the 1st Amendment, but I doubt that the government or the SCOTUS would see it that way.
The House already passed it with overwhelming bipartisan support!!
I’m talking here about a bipartisan legislation the House passed last week (382-11) & that was intro’d last week in the Senate – HR 6408 & S. 1436
Reminder: US charitable organizations — like ALL US entities — are already barred, by law, from providing material support for terror & already face intense scrutiny.
The goal of the new legislation is to dispense with the due process (incl the need for evidence) afforded under law to targeted groups, empowering a single US official to act as prosecutor, judge, jury, & executioner of US orgs whose viewpoints that official disagrees with.
https://twitter.com/LaraFriedmanDC/status/1783129420598837506
It’s a pretty short, and your link has a copy of the text. It looks like the Secretary (of the Treasury?) is given the power to terminate the non-profit status of any organization. The only requirements are to mail a letter to said organization stating that the Secretary think y’all are terrorists. The organization is given 90 days to convince the Secretary that they aren’t terrorists, otherwise non-profit designation is terminated. An extra-judicial appeals process through the (massively underfunded) IRS is defined. The last section basically states that terrorist designation is still appealable through judicial system. Fuzzier on the implications of this last section. I’m not trained as a lawyer, so take all this with a massive grain of salt.
Hmmm. So we can just start mailing letters to the treasurer saying NED and all the nonprofit Israel orgs are terrorists maybe?
No. The Treasury is the one who mails the letters. Basically the non-profit gets notified that they’re losing tax-exempt status by mail. They then have 90 days to convince they Treasury Secretary that they are not in fact terrorists.
Darn