The GOP Already Has a Roadmap to Shut Down Environmental Groups

Democrats just helped Republicans give President-elect Donald Trump the potential power to shut down nonprofits under the guise of fighting terrorism — while GOP lawmakers have quietly revealed a new blueprint for defunding organizations they disagree with.

Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee laid out a plan to target environmental justice nonprofits and organizations working to transition the economy away from fossil fuels.

That report preceded a major House vote on Thursday in which Republicans and 15 Democrats passed legislation giving the Treasury Department the power to strip nonprofit news organizations, advocacy groups, and universities of their tax-exempt status.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act was originally proposed last year, ostensibly to prevent U.S. nonprofits from supporting groups like Hamas after widespread protests over Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Nicknamed the “nonprofit killer,” it gives the president unprecedented authority to go after political opponents. Advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union warned of the bill’s potential “to grant the executive branch extraordinary power… based on a unilateral accusation of wrongdoing.”

After an essentially identical bill failed to pass last week, the newly approved bill now goes to the Senate for a vote.

In the preceding weeks, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s report focused on the Inflation Reduction Act’s distribution of federal funding, offering a preview of how the new terrorism legislation could be wielded for political purposes. It also highlighted the kinds of organizations that could be targeted, including those that support clean-energy policies like committing investments to renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuel production and use, and expanding public land conservation.

Criticizing the Biden administration’s environmental justice grants for marginalized groups historically inundated by pollution, the report says, “Enriching nonprofit organizations to spread radical, left-leaning ideology is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.”

The plan singles out specific groups that the committee says have pushed a “radical rush-to-green agenda,” including Rewiring America, a nonprofit working on electrification, and New York City-based environmental justice group WE ACT. It castigated, for example, a blog post on WE ACT’s website “criticizing ‘Republican gas stove culture wars,’ and House GOP Members’ ‘preformative [sic], out-of-touch agenda.’”

The committee also denounced a 2019 blog post from climate activist group Climate Justice Alliance that criticized racist policies embedded in New Deal government policies from the 1930s. The post emphasized the importance of “firm commitments to address and erase many of the discriminatory practices of the past in order to secure a regenerative economy that leaves no one behind.”

The committee wrote that such opinions should preclude groups like Climate Justice Alliance and WE ACT from receiving taxpayer funding. Federal programs, they wrote, should “not be funding extremist organizations to advocate for a preferred policy agenda.”

Under the new bill just passed by the House, criteria for designations of “terrorism” are vague. If it passes the Senate and is signed into law, the Treasury Secretary would have broad discretion in the law’s enforcement and wouldn’t be required to share related evidence.

The law could chill free speech by creating financial pressure on organizations that rely on their tax-exempt status to operate effectively. Under the Treasury’s discretion, the bill could be wielded against projects backed by political or corporate interests; for example, groups like WE ACT who oppose oil and gas development could be accused of obstructing critical infrastructure.

As Rep. Angie Craig (D.-Minn.) wrote Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, “I’ve become increasingly concerned that H.R. 9495 would be used inappropriately by the incoming Administration.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the bill “an authoritarian and undemocratic play by Republicans to go after political enemies.”

Vice President-elect JD Vance has previously supported revoking the tax-exempt status of liberal institutions. “We should eliminate all of the special privileges that exist for our nonprofit and foundation class,” he said at a 2021 conference. Later that year, he told Tucker Carlson on Fox News, “We are actively subsidizing the people who are destroying this country,” calling groups like the Ford Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to social justice, “a cancer.”

The “nonprofit killer” bill is part of a larger Republican effort to attack what many on the right call “woke capitalism,” including environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, embrace more diverse workforces, and other efforts. So far this year, conservative lawmakers and their allies have authored legislation that would rollback shareholder rights seeking to hold corporations accountable, leaned on the Supreme Court to gut environmental law, and used dark money donations to help fuel their agenda.

In the future, as the recent House Committee report notes, subversive activities like “public outreach” or “public education” will “demand rigorous scrutiny and meticulous oversight.”