8mo ago

Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies

theintercept.com Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies

A bill that would let Donald Trump unilaterally revoke tax-exempt status from nonprofits is being fast-tracked through Congress.

DONALD TRUMP HAS made no secret of his desire for revenge.

On the campaign trail, he joked about being a dictator on “day one” in office, pledged to jail journalists, and threatened to retaliate against political foes who he felt had wronged him.

Now, just days after he secured a second term in the White House, Congress is already moving to hand a resurgent Trump administration a powerful cudgel that it could wield against ideological opponents in civil society.

Up for a potential fast-track vote next week in the House of Representatives, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as H.R. 9495, would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.”

Politics @beehaw.org

Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies

theintercept.com /2024/11/10/trump-nonprofit-tax-exempt-political-enemies/

34 7

United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies

theintercept.com /2024/11/10/trump-nonprofit-tax-exempt-political-enemies/

110 9

32 comments

Thanks, abstainers. Really showed us what a great America you lot believe in.
- Don't worry, they're just thinking long-term. They've got a plan to make everything better in 12-16 years, just you wait and see! Any day now!
- I didn’t abstain, but the blame doesn’t lie entirely with them. This feels like 2016 all over again, down to blaming the voters instead of the party.
  People want change and are unhappy with the state of things, so the Democratic Party runs a status quo candidate against a (psychotic liar) who is making promises about change.
  At least a charismatic candidate like an Obama (who doesn’t actually rock the status quo boat too much) would have rallied voters. Why is the Democratic Party so bad at this?
  
  None of that is even the beginning of an excuse for going out of your way to burn your own and your neighbor's house down.
  "They should have been 1000x better than the alternative of burning everything, instead of merely 10x better". This shit just doesn't fly.
  And yes the Democrats are guilty of being better than Republicans by an embarrassingly thin 10x margin. Any decent party is 1000x and that should have happened, too.
  
  The fault fall on both the DNC and the voters.
  The DNC for being god damn awful at campaining and the voters for seeing the situation and still decide not to go vote.
  Both can be true.

Just as the founding fathers envisioned.

Always the plan.
- Or concepts of it.

How can they give him anything when he isn't the president yet?
- Because the Republicans control the House. They can start working on bills now and pass them next year.
  Bills generally take a while to pass, so getting the work done now means more time for the Don to send his enemies to the gulag.
  
  You don't need control of the House to work on bills that you don't even intend to pass until the next session of congress, though. There's nothing stopping the Republicans, Democrats, or even average citizens from writing bills right now that are intended to be voted on by future sessions of congress.
  And the House of Reps voting on the bill next week is also meaningless, because the bill has a 0% chance of passing this session with the democrats in control of the senate - and the House of Reps would then have to pass it again once a new session starts. Which, they probably will - but that doesn't make the vote next week somehow less meaningless. So the headline is pure clickbait: Congress isn't about to "gift" Trump anything. The gifts will come next year.

But someone yesterday told me that it won't be all that bad because John Thune made a minor criticism of something Trump wanted which means that congress is not on his side.
Do... do you mean to tell me he really is going to turn the U.S. into a fascist dictatorship?

Write your representative and senators today about invoking the 14th amendment. Worst that happens is nothing changes. Took me less than five minutes.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.senate.gov/senators/

Right wingers only see problems when it happens to them personally. So the only way to get rid of Trump is to give him enough rope to hang himself. This is just a tiny string in that rope. I'm hoping he gathers up enough to end up like Mussolini.

I hope he starts with Pelosi and the Clinton's... If he took down Cheney too I wouldn't mind.
- After what the Clintons did to Haiti...

He really did go through all that shaming and embattlement. Think of the stress and the assassination attempt. There should be a price paid to the victor when the opponent he overcame would have done to him even more than he already went through. He will bring the fight to the Deep State. Listen to the actual policy decisions.
Just for a couple of examples, tell me you don't you think that the policy for the IGs to be physically separated from who they are regulating and for Federal institutions to be decentralized from the NW corridor aren't great ideas in so many ways.
- Breaking up the Deep State by having the World's RICHEST Man who is the CEO of MULTIPLE Businesses with Government Contracts being in Charge of Oversight and Regulation? Like that Deep State?
  
  Then you are not paying attention. Look how the corporate Democrats cozyed up to the neocons and the Cheneys. They really don't like Trump. The CIA establishment is deep blue. The party switched.
  C. Wright Mills https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27993/chapter/211702330
  I don't care if people can't tolerate different perspectives on the left and feel the compulsion to cast out and silence dissent.
  That is genuinely what it looks like to me. I pay attention.
- the Deep State
  Please define.
  There should be a price paid to the victor when the opponent he overcame would have done to him even more than he already went through.
  What the fuck are you talking about.
  Think of the stress and the assassination attempt.
  You mean by that conservative kid who was acting alone? That assassination attempt?
- My, my, America is fucked in the head since clearly a sizable number of voting people think like this, while Democrats, liberals and progressives quabble over issues that seem more like worrying whether they are wearing the right color shoes.
  
  Democrats, liberals and progressives quabble over issues that seem more like worrying whether they are wearing the right color shoes.
  When the entire upper echelon of the national party is content and happy because they're suckling from the corporate teat that tends to happen. We've tried to run pro working class candidates but the national party absolutely loves to rat fuck them.
- Why doesn't he just use the presidential weather machine against his enemies? Wouldn't he get the keys to it during transition?
  
  His sharpie broke
- Stupidity level: Expert.
- Tell me about the work camps
- They can't talk to who they're regulating and he's going to break up any coherent structure... and that's good??
  
  The wealthy love periods when our economy collapses, it gives them the opportunity to buy all of the assets from everyone down below for pennies on the dollar. Five years later they've made 20x what they spent and can sell that back to the poor schmucks for twice what it's worth.
- Hey look it's a terrorist, blocked

32 comments