Palestinian solidarity demonstrators protest at the University of Michigan, Oct. 13, 2023, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Many see the ‘non-profit killer’ bill as an attempt to silence the movement in support of Palestine, but its reach could go much further. | Jacob Hamilton / Ann Arbor News via AP
Shortly after the election this fall, the House passed a dangerous piece of legislation that many call the “non-profit killer” bill. The bill has an incongruous title: the “Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”
It would give the Treasury Department the authority to unilaterally accuse non-profit organizations of supporting “terrorism” and revoke their non-profit status. Critics, like the ACLU, say this would give presidents the power to shut down organizations that criticize them.
When the bill was introduced in the spring, it was largely viewed as an effort to silence pro-Palestinian activism. At the time, dozens of House Democrats supported it alongside most Republicans. However, after Donald Trump’s White House win, amid fears that the incoming president would use it to bludgeon his perceived enemies, it passed with significantly less Democratic support.
But, really, it should never have been introduced or passed, no matter the political winds. The bill is considered unlikely to pass the Senate this year, but it could be reintroduced next year and signed by President Trump.
This would have a dangerous chilling effect on speech.
Consider the Florida woman Briana Boston, who recently said, “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next,” during a phone call with a health insurance representative after her coverage was denied. It was a reference to what the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson wrote on bullet casings in a now-infamous targeted assassination.
Boston has no history of violence, nor does she own firearms. But she wasn’t only arrested—she was charged with threatening to commit an act of terrorism.
What she was really “guilty” of was expressing vitriol against corporate CEOs for an inhumane business model. It’s not hard to imagine such a scenario applied to non-profits in the coming years.
Non-profits are effectively the voice of civil society in the United States. And even without HR 9495, they already have severe limits on their speech. In order to keep their non-profit status, groups have to follow strict guidelines published by the Internal Revenue Service when speaking about elections.
As a journalist who works in the non-profit world, I’ve seen the resulting self-censorship firsthand. Many journalists and non-profit leaders feared compromising their institutions if they warned about Donald Trump’s fascism or even criticized President Joe Biden’s policies regarding Gaza ahead of the 2024 election.
Meanwhile, for-profit industries have enjoyed continuous and ever-growing impunity to advocate for whatever they want, no matter how destructive.
For example, the health insurance and fossil fuel industries play with people’s lives by denying coverage and spewing carbon, respectively. However, they have been given the right to spend enormous amounts of their ill-gotten gains on campaign contributions, putting an outsized thumb on the democratic scale.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, they have greater means to make anonymous donations to Political Action Committees to lobby the government and help elect politicians.
The Supreme Court has long considered corporations to be, in a legal sense, people. In contrast to such abstract entities, we humans can be jailed, silenced, or even killed by corporate-controlled systems—and the non-profits representing our interests can be officially sanctioned for “political speech.”
Today, corporations have greater means to speak more freely than the rest of us, and they are increasingly grabbing political power to cement their stranglehold.
Trump’s incoming administration will likely be filled with billionaires. And his proposed Treasury Secretary pick—who would ostensibly oversee the department making determinations under HR 9495—is a long-time hedge fund investment manager named Scott Bessent. Trump has also openly promised to bend regulations for billionaire investors.
In this context, HR 9495 is not only a danger to civil society’s right to speech but a serious escalation in favor of corporations.
Institute for Policy Studies / OtherWords
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