The Nonprofit Killer

H.R.9495 is a civil rights disaster. By Luke Pickrell

Last week, the House passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (H.R.9495). Speaking with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Darryl Li, an anthropologist, lawyer, and legal scholar teaching at the University of Chicago, called the bill “a civil rights disaster” and the “most dangerous domestic terrorism law in a generation.”

Before Thursday’s vote, a coalition of nearly 300 civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental, and educational organizations expressed opposition. Many voiced frustration but were not surprised that several Democrats voted in favor.

As everyone recognizes, the bill gives the president new power to muzzle, punish, and effectively shut down tax-exempt organizations. This is a flagrant attack against the meager civil rights and freedoms that exist under our undemocratic Constitution, including freedom of speech and the right to due process.

Speaking with Goodman, Li said he hoped the 60-vote threshold (due to the filibuster) in the Senate would kill the bill regardless of which party held a majority. He said stopping the bill will require “all hands on deck and as much pressure as possible on the Senate Democrats.” Others have called the bill flagrantly unconstitutional or expressed confidence that the legislation will end up in court, maybe even on the Supreme Court’s docket.

Unfortunately, Li and other constitutional defenders have the wrong idea. There’s simply no constitutional path out of this mess. As socialists and democratic republicans, we must do as French socialist Jean Jaurès advised and defend the “modest guarantees” that the working class has “little by little conquered through centuries-long effort and a long series of revolutions.” But as Daniel Lazare and many others have argued, workers must mobilize in defense of these rights without defending the undemocratic Constitution that paved the way for Trump and burdens us with a malapportioned Senate, a gerrymandered House, an unelected federal judiciary, and an unusable amending clause. Instead of defending the Constitution, we must demand the expansion of civil rights and freedoms until we have a complete system of political and social equality.

Widespread opposition to the bill augurs well for a future political movement. A general ideology of democratic republicanism has the potential to overcome the idea that politics is simply coalitions of identity groups and unify various organizations under the banner of universal and equal rights for all — a potential that, as Gil Schaeffer has persuasively argued, the ideology of socialism or communism alone lacks. Each one of the hundred-plus groups opposing the most recent attack on civil liberties is a potential ally in our struggle for a new political system. All of these allies will have to be brought into the coming fight.