HR 9495 will be reintroduced for a vote. The “terrorist-supporting organizations” law would be dangerous.

Update, Nov. 21, 2024, at 11:25 am: The bill this piece concerns passed the House This morning largely along party lines, with only one Republican, Thomas Massie, voting nay. However, 15 Democrats joined Republicans in voting yea to pass the bill. The original piece remains below.

President-elect Donald Trump should be expected to try to crack down on civil society in his second term. He has promised to deport protesters, and the prior time he was in office, he mused about having protesters practicing their First Amendment right to free assembly shot in the legs.

Members of Congress, and especially Democrats—ostensibly the opposition party—will thus be presented with a choice: Do they want legislation that embeds him in this goal or that could potentially serve as a check against it?

One such early example is HR 9495, a bill that, through seemingly innocuous language, could very well be used to make things difficult to impossible for nonprofits and their actions, like organizing and advocating—work that is both an important part of a functioning liberal democracy and, sometimes, a crucial pushback on power.

What is HR 9495?

The bill is the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act. It postpones certain tax-filing deadlines for Americans and their spouses who are wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad. Greatyou say. I have no problem with that.

I agree! However, HR 9495 also “terminates the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.” Basically, per the text of the legislation, the treasury secretary can designate any organization as having met certain standards to qualify as “terrorist supporting.” The organization then has 90 days to “demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Secretary” that it isn’t actually “terrorist supporting.” If it can’t do so, it’s designated as such and has its tax-exempt status revoked. Rescinding the “terrorist supporting” designation is also up to the secretary. No evidence or explanation is required.

OK, but I don’t want nonprofits supporting terrorism to have tax-exempt status.

Sure! And that’s fair! But as the American Civil Liberties Union put it, “This legislation would have granted the Secretary of Treasury the unilateral power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization—including news outlets, universities, and civil society groups—by stripping them of their tax-exempt status based on a unilateral accusation of wrongdoing.” And while we think of terrorism As an unambiguous thing, the label can be thrown around for political reasons.

For example, in 2021, Human Rights Watch objected when Israel labeled six Palestinian groups—including Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees—as “terrorist organizations.” Earlier this year, Amnesty International warned that Russia was using anti-terrorism laws to curb dissent (things there have spiraled such that prison sentences are now handed out for posting online). It is not difficult—for me, anyway—to see a Trump treasury secretary using this legislation to go after groups engaged in, say, pro-Palestine advocacy or that oppose police violence against Black Americans. Let’s take, for example, Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt called an on-campus Iranian proxy. Could that group lose its not-for-profit status for supporting terrorism? What about groups that have donated to JVP? In 2020 a police guide suggested that Black Lives Matter activists should be treated as terrorists. What if the secretary feels similarly?

Oh. I see.

Right.

OK, so what happened to the bill?

An earlier iteration of the legislation (which, we should note, is bipartisan) from back in April passed easily—only 11 members voted against it. (Per the Intercept, it then “languished” in the Senate.) This current version, though essentially identical, was voted down just last week, after coverage that pointed out that the bill would expand Trump’s powers, and after lobbying from various groups involved in civil rights in various capacities. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should here note that I have been working as a fellow with the Nexus Project, which works on issues pertaining to antisemitism and Israel, and that people on the political side of Nexus, of which I am not apart, does have people who speak to various Hill offices, including on the importance of checking executive overreach.) More than 100 Democrats who voted for it the first time flipped, and it failed to get the two-thirds majority of votes it needed . Some Democrats, however, still voted for it, and you can see who they were here. Notably, no one in Democratic House leadership voted for the bill.

Oh, so it’s dead! Wait, why are you writing this?

Because yes, it failed, but it’s alive.

I don’t follow.

On Monday, the House Rules Committee passed it. Republicans voted for it, Democrats voted against, but Republicans are in charge and dominate the committee, so it passed. It now goes to the House floor, where it will need just a simple majority to pass. That vote is expected Thursday.

Why does it need a simple majority this time if it needed two-thirds last time?

Last week’s vote was a “suspension vote,” which is a procedure used “to dispose of non-controversial measures expeditiously.” But obviously this turned out to be a more controversial measure than expected, so this time around it will be considered in normal order, per Rules Committee guidelines. That means it needs only a simple majority, which Republicans have. And that vote’s expected this week.

So you’re telling me that after all this, this thing’s going to pass the House?

Probably, yes. And to my mind, the question for the Democrats who voted for it last week is whether they want to be a part of helping turn the power to designate members of civil society as terrorists—without evidence or explanation or really much in the way of recourse —over to Trump and the Republican Party.

What about the Senate? Would it pass there?

No, it wouldn’t pass the Senate—for now. But next session, Republicans will be in control there too.

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