by Brianna Herlihy on Fox News
A new bill that would strip the tax-exempt status of nonprofits found to be materially supporting terrorists – which passed the House with broad bipartisan support – is facing lobbying efforts to sink it by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The bill, introduced by Reps. David Kustoff, R-Tenn., and Brad Schneider, D-Ill., passed the House of Representatives in April by a sweeping vote of 382-11. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Angus King, I-Maine, have pushed a companion version of the bill. A spokesperson for Cornyn called the legislation a “commonsense” proposal to ban tax breaks for anyone who “bankrolls terrorists.”
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The ACLU has joined calls for Congress to kill the bill from groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) – the center of a recent lawsuit alleging that it and National Students for Justice in Palestine are “collaborators and propagandists for Hamas.”
The ACLU claimed in its letter that “there has been no evidence presented as to the necessity of this legislation, and the lack of guardrails creates the potential for a future administration to weaponize this legislation to further its own political motives to target U.S. nonprofits, exposing them to stigmatizing and financially devastating punishments.”
It also claimed the bill raises due process concerns, alleging it “switches the burden of proof about whether a nonprofit provides material support from the government to the nonprofit.”
However, Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values disagrees. “A tax exemption from the federal government is not a right, it’s a privilege. The burden of proof is on the organization to demonstrate that it is not using its tax exemption to engage in activities forbidden by a tax-exempt organization.”
“If this legislation isn’t necessary, how is it that American Muslims for Palestine are still tax-exempt? Within 36 hours of the atrocities of October 7, AMP’s campus arm, Students for Justice in Palestine, had already emerged with a detailed ‘Day of Resistance’ toolkit for campus chapters to hold activities in support of Hamas,” said Menken.
“They declared that they not only support the messaging of Hamas, but they part of it,” Menken said, referring to the toolkit document released by the groups.
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Photo Credit: Tim Evanson on Wikimedia Commons