House passes bill allowing Trump admin to declare nonprofits supporters of terrorism

On Jan 20, ACLU will be declared a terrorist organization

Also, probably EFF, Internet Archive, Non-Partisan and Democratic organizations sending mail telling people to vote, etc.

What a shitshow.

So now's the time for Democrats to use the filibuster they were so devoted to keeping.

This time, 183 Democrats and one Republican voted against the bill, and only 15 Democrats voted for it—down from 52 last week. Since then, there’s been a full-court-press civil society campaign to take down H.R. 9495. Nearly 300 organizations—including the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, and the NAACP—have signed a letter pointing out that Trump is likely to use this bill to silence any of his enemies, not just Palestinians and their supporters. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) pointed out, that could also include nonprofit news outlets.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) is one of the dozens of Democrats who flipped their vote on the bill since Trump’s election. (Go yell at Colin Allred, Henry Cuellar, and Vicente Gonzalaz instead)

He gave a personal example of why. One of the organizations whose nonprofit status Trump wants to terminate, Doggett said, “has protested one of my speeches.”

God dammit, Texas.

The broader question I see here is "Why are Democrats supporting Trumps agenda?"

We're in a position where we're a few weeks out from the total collapse of the US political system as we know it and 15 Democrats still think its appropriate to cross the aisle.

We might be able to see this as a signal of things to come. Perhaps, expect Trump to get his agenda passed with the support of the Democrats.

I set up a survey for lemmy users here:

Given the opportunity, do you think Biden would veto bill HR 9495?

I'm interested if the community thinks this Biden would veto this bill or not.

"When [Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)] was first voting against the bill, most Democrats disagreed with her. Since then, they have become concerned that a law they would have considered reasonable under a Harris administration would be dangerously applied under Trump."

No shit. People like Tlaib must be frustrated (having voted against this bill three times)

You know, when they inevitably get this passed Senate next year, maybe the silver lining is so many people are going to be part of a "terrorist organization" they might actually do something radical.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, after all.

Damn. A few days ago I wrote a comment about how crack down and laws against anti genocide protests and groups under Democrat will come back to against other groups under trump. "Today the come after the anti genocide, tomorrow they come after you" I never expected to be this soon.

It is never about protecting people, it is always about controlling people.

downloading intensifies

I'm building an arc.

16TB. I suggest you do the same. Fill it up.

Knowledge, books, truth. Keep it safe.

https://apnews.com/article/nonprofit-bill-terrorism-treasury-trump-aclu-ac88da656ea0d5cf8deb2e7bd045c1a4

For anyone interested in a less bias source.

The handmaids tale is in the same category of future predictor books as 1984.

Schumer will send this bill to Never Neverland. They will have to do it again next Congress.

If this becomes law the charitable-giving industry is going to be slammed. Right now there are lots of ways that you, a donor, can give to your favorite causes via an intermediary, taking a current tax deduction for doing so but (possibly) having the intermediary pay out in the future (an endowment), possibly forever (if endowment growth exceeds charitable outflows). If all of a sudden a large chunk of the nonprofit space are deemed anti-Trump "terrorists" then these intermediaries (public and private foundations and donor-advised funds (DAFs) for example) will suddenly have far fewer recipients to write checks to, and may have no recipients at all in the case where funds are directed to just a few recipients or areas-of-interest by the terms of the donation. Oh sure, the money will be disposed of one way or another, but it might very well not be disposed of in the way the donor intended at the time of the donation, and might well end up being disposed of in a way the donor would never have agreed to. Tough luck donor, you took the tax write-off, you can't get the donation $ back and you can't have it disbursed to non-charities either.

These intermediaries, the foundations and charitable-fund managers, are themselves charities. Their job is to disburse donor funds to a myriad of charities more or less according to the wishes of their donors. So what happens when, say, Fidelity Charitable is deemed a "terrorist" org for sending donor money to the ACLU? If it's stripped of its nonprofit status, it can no longer be a DAF manager, so what then? What happens to the donors and all the assets under management? I suppose there will need to be a follow-on bill that will compel the fund managers under such circumstances to cut checks to Trump and Trump-affiliated orgs (nonprofit or not). I read recently that the sum of DAF assets under management alone is around $250B (2023 numbers I think) so if a substantial amount of those funds are deemed "terrorist" funds, then it'll be mighty tempting for "somebody", somebody bad at business yet well-known for criminality to see about doing some confiscation.

Also, right now, if one is, say, a DAF donor, many of the managers (most?) allow you to make anonymous donations out of your account. But if you are (or were) having checks sent to newly disfavored (i.e. not regime-aligned) orgs, will the manager have to turn your name over to the government? After all, you'd then be a "terrorist" yourself wouldn't you?

I could really see this decimating the charitable-giving industry. Charitable foundations and fund managers have got to be losing sleep over what these laws could entail. As a donor, unless I was already MAGA-aligned and really wanted that tax deduction, why would I bother with all this uncertainty and risk?

Hot take: They're trying to force all nonprofit activity onto crypto. You can only donate if it makes their donors richer.

Oath Keepers?