Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican allies on Capital Hill have made it crystal-clear that civil society as we know it is under threat – and nonprofits ranging from charities to advocacy groups and even universities are in the crosshairs. Trump has started modeling his second term on Project 2025, which included plans to attack nonprofits, researchers, and civil society groups studying and flagging election denier lies. Trump’s cabinet is already filling up with vindictive lackeys with records of targeting nonprofits they disagree with. Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi has years of legal experience defending Trump by suing progressive-leaning nonprofits. IRS Commissioner nominee Billy Long spent his decades in Congress writing letters attacking nonprofits he disagreed with. FBI Director nominee Kash Patel already has an “enemies list” he intends to pursue. State-level Republicans who have spent years prosecuting nonprofits they disagree with, ranging from immigration groups in Texas to religious charities in Indiana, will find an ally in the Trump administration.
Throughout the 118th Congress, Republicans in the House and Senate worked feverishly to target nonprofit organizations they disagreed with. As early as May 2023, the House Ways & Means Committee began investigating nonprofits, naming only progressive-leaning groups as examples for reform. The House Oversight and Education Committees followed their lead, pushing the Treasury Department to investigate progressive-leaning groups. Earlier this year, Senators like Josh Hawley and soon-to-be Vice President J.D. Vance wrote letters pushing the IRS and DOJ to shut down nonprofits involved in funding protest movements they disagreed with – including universities. Just last week, the MAGA House managed to pass anti-nonprofit bill H.R .9495, a “gift for Trump” to go after his political opponents by allowing his team to shut down any nonprofit they disagree with. The stakes couldn’t be higher for the institutions that form the backbone of free speech in this country.
Congressional Republicans Will Continue A Retread Agenda Of Politicized Investigations Of The Biden Family And Others. GOP members of Congress are openly pledging to continue their never-ending string of politically motivated investigations of Democrats when they return to work next year. Oversight Committee Chairman and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan have already promised to continue their investigations and potential prosecutions of members of the Biden family. Comer told Sean Hannity that “in my opinion Joe Biden has committed crimes” and Assistant Whip Nicole Malliotakis emphasized that House investigations of Hunter Biden “must continue” even after his presidential pardon. Jordan has said that his committee will focus on investigating Special Counsel David Weiss for his alleged “sweetheart” treatment of the Hunter Biden prosecution and Special Counsel Jack Smith for his investigations of Donald Trump. In addition to continued investigations of the Bidens, House Administration subcommittee chair Rep. Barry Loudermilk has demanded a select committee to launch yet another investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the capital and of the original January 6 committee and James Comer has already announced his intention to empower conspiracy theorist and extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene with the chair of a subcommittee tasked with assisting Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s efforts to fire thousands of government employees and root out the “deep state.”
Congressional Republicans Have Been Working To Target Nonprofits, Universities, and Protestors They Disagree With Throughout the 118th Congress. In just the past few months alone, GOP members of Congress have launched several efforts to target tax-exempt organizations supporting causes they disagree with. In May, Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding that the DOJ shut down tax-exempt organizations supporting protestors, writing, “No organization may retain its tax exemption if it backs protests at which members are urged to commit acts of civil disobedience. […] In short, by supporting illegal acts while enjoying tax-exempt status, dark money groups and foundations are defrauding the American people…” As a New York Times columnist wrote, “Even if Garland doesn’t act on Hawley’s request, the attorney general in a second Donald Trump administration probably would.” Days later, over a dozen GOP Senators sent a letter to the IRS demanding an investigation into a nonprofit supporting student protestors. Similarly, Senator J.D. Vance introduced a bill in May withdrawing all federal support for, and slapping a 50 percent excise endowment tax on, universities failing to stop student protests. In the House, Rep. Lloyd Smucker also introduced legislation targeting nonprofits’ foreign grants, basing his legislation on COVID-19 conspiracies about tax-exempt grant funding going to “gain-of-function” research related to a lab in the same Chinese city where the pandemic originated.
- The House Ways & Means Committee Launched An Effort To Target Nonprofits They Disagreed With. House Republicans have spent the past two years using their committees and investigatory authority to go after nonprofits they disagree with. In July 2023, the House Ways & Means Committee published an open letter announcing a public inquiry into “whether the nonprofit tax code is rife with abuse, allowing nonprofits to be key players in political races, rather than serving charitable causes.” The next month, they announced they were launching a new effort to reportedly “More tightly regulate nonprofit political activity” – but the examples they listed were all progressive-leaning nonprofit groups like New Venture Fund, the Wyss Foundation, and Mind the Gap. They turned a blind eye to MAGA nonprofits like the America First Policy Institute, which spearheaded Trump’s movement to overturn the 2020 election. By November, Ways & Means was holding a hearing on the “nexus” between protest movements and “terror financing” through certain nonprofit organizations. The committee then passed a bill similar to H.R. 9495, giving the future Treasury Secretary free reign to strip away the tax-exempt status of any charity deemed a “terrorist-supporting organization.”
- Top Committee Republicans Used Their Authority To Attack Nonprofits. Following the lead of Ways & Means, the House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), and the House Education Committee, led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) both became involved shortly after. In February 2024, Chairman Comer launched an investigation into the IRS’ treatment of progressive-leaning nonprofit groups. In May, in the wake of a flurry of letters from GOP Senators targeting nonprofits supporting protestors and causes they disagreed with, Comer and Foxx joined forces to push the Treasury Department to “investigat[e] the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating” in college campus protests. As reporters noted: “Many of the groups listed are big names in progressive philanthropy: George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Pritzker family’s Libra Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” After the election, Chairman Comer started pushing the incoming Trump administration’s DOJ to “hold all the deep state actors” accountable.
The House Just Passed H.R. 9495, A “Gift For Trump” To Go After His Political Opponents’ Nonprofits. On Nov. 21, the MAGA House passed H.R. 9495 a bill giving the second Trump administration broad new powers to punish and shut down tax-exempt organizations – including universities, non-profits, and even news outlets. Described as a “gift for Trump” by reporters, reporters pointed to Trump’s previous attempts to designate antifacist and pro-Palestinian protestors as terrorists and radicals, writing “That’s a frightening prospect given…his open desire to quell dissent with violence, and his frequent classification of those who disagree with him as the ‘enemy from within.’ And frankly, considering Trump’s open fascination with illiberal leaders and their authoritarian style, it’s easy to imagine a Trump administration misusing this power.”
- Trump’s Most Ardent Supporters In The Treasury Department Would Have Sweeping Powers To End Nonprofits Under The MAGA Anti-Nonprofit Bill. Trump recently nominated loyalists Scott Bessent and Michael Faulkender as his Treasury Security and Deputy Treasury Secretary, respectively. Bessent, an avid fundraiser for Trump and ardent supporter of his policy agenda, has already voiced plans to consolidate power and use his authority to undermine nonpartisan institutions, musing about appointing a “shadow Fed chair.” Faulkender is the chief economist at Trump’s America First Policy Institute think-tank, which was founded to overturn the 2020 election and has backed and authored Trump’s policy agenda ever since.
- H.R. 9495 Revokes Due Process, Welcomes Abuse, and Removes Checks and Balances. It is already illegal for any organization to provide material support for terrorism. The MAGA bill will allow the Department of the Treasury to withhold tax-exempt status for any nonprofit organization it accuses of being a “terrorist-supporting organization” without being required to disclose evidence against it. As one Representative pointed out, the bill does not even require the administration to disclose the reasons for denying the targeted organization tax-exempt status. The new bill would remove constitutional checks and balances, revoke due process, and remove protections for the Trump administration’s targets. Under the bill, the Treasury Secretary – whom Trump has yet to nominate – would give the targeted organization just 90 days to appeal, placing the burden of proof on the organization, before it would be stripped of its 501(c)(3) status – all with no judicial or legislative review process in place. Without its tax-exemption status, the targeted organization could not get banks to service them or receive donations.
- Hundreds of Civil & Human Rights Groups, Nonprofits, and Unions Opposed The Bill. A coalition of over 180 non-profit organizations, including top civil rights organizations, human rights groups, and unions like the NAACP, ACLU, AFL-CIO, and UAW, sent a letter to Congress outlining why the bill is a dangerous step to allow Trump to stifle dissent. An Indiana University scholar of nonprofits wrote, “I believe that this is part of a strategy to preempt opposition to Republican policies and encourage self-censorship. It’s a way for the GOP to try to restrict what activists and nonprofit organizations can say or do. And, essentially, it’s a threat to political opponents of President-elect Donald Trump. This kind of law could become a blunt sword that can be used against everybody.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) reportedly said the bill could end up “capsizing” all rights to due process.
Trump Has Embraced Project 2025, Which Released Plans To Attack Nonprofits, Researchers, and Civil Society Groups Studying and Flagging Election Denier Lies. In October 2023, the founding president of a super PAC run by the think-tank behind Project 2025 published an op-ed accusing “left-wing dark money” nonprofit groups of “fund[ing] weaponization against conservatives.” Addressing the so-called weaponization of government is a top priority of the second Trump administration. Project 2025 pushes for the DOJ to “conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all federal grant disbursals to “ensure that hard-earned taxpayer dollars are going only to lawful actors who support federal law enforcement and demonstrate the ability and willingness to engage in lawful activities.” The Brennan Center for Justice also found that Project 2025 “would supercharge attacks on researchers and civil society groups that study and flag election falsehoods” by using the DOJ to target, investigate, and prosecute groups opposing the Trump administration’s lies.
State-Level Republicans Are Already Prosecuting Nonprofits They Disagree With. State-level Republicans are already working to sabotage nonprofits they disagree with – and these same Republicans will find an ally in the Trump administration. Scholars recently found that at least 22 states, primarily where Republicans control a trifecta, “have either passed new laws restricting protests or tightened laws that were already on the books, increasing the severity of possible punishment. These laws restrict public advocacy and organizing.” Just a few months ago, MAGA Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an effort to shut down a prominent charity for social media posts speaking negatively about Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In the past, Paxton has reportedly attempted to shut down other charities assisting immigrants, leading to an outcry from civil rights groups. Similarly, Indiana’s GOP Attorney General Todd Rokita recently launched a probe into various companies and nonprofits in the state, accusing them of having allegedly conspired to bring noncitizens across state lines.
Trump’s Nominee For IRS Commissioner Billy Long Has A Record of Targeting Nonprofits He Disagrees With. Trump recently nominated Billy Long to lead the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which has sweeping authority over tax-exempt organizations. In 2011, former Missouri Representative Billy Long joined an effort to push the IRS to launch a probe into the tax-exempt status of a nonprofit that he disagreed with, the Humane Society of the United States, after the group supported a ballot initiative to regulate Missouri dog breeders. In 2015, Rep. Long also signed a letter demanding that the IRS investigate the tax status of the Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic group founded by former Democratic President Bill Clinton and co-headed by then-Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton from 2013 to 2015.
Trump’s Attorney General Pick Led A MAGA Law Firm That Sued Dozens of Nonprofits Trump Disagreed With. Trump’s Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, former Florida Attorney General, led America First Legal, a firm founded to challenge the 2020 election that has backed Trump’s legal agenda ever since. America First Legal has launched dozens of lawsuits against nonprofits supporting causes ranging from pro-Palestinian protestors to democracy groups exposing Trump’s election denial falsehoods.
Trump’s Nominee To Run The FBI Has An Enemies List. Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director has vowed to “come after” members of the media and non-profit groups that “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” Patel has also published a 60-person list of “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State” who could be targeted for investigations and prosecutions under his tenure. If confirmed, Patel could have broad powers to target and harass civil society and non-profit groups with politically motivated investigations.