Dems, Don’t Give Trump the Tools to Crush Protest Groups He Doesn’t Like

You could see this one coming.

It seems like about five years ago—in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours—but it was just last April when student protests over Israel’s post-October 7 attacks on Gaza and the deaths of Palestinian civilians roiled dozens of college campuses from coast-to-coast.

The tent encampments and student-led marches, from the Penn campus here in Philly to UCLA some 3,000 miles away, hearkened back to the youth unrest of the 1960s, but things were a little different this time. In an overheated election year, with some leading politicians accusing the protesters of antisemitism, university leaders were quicker to call in the police, who didn’t hesitate to make arrests or use force.

it’s hard to know much reluctance to take to the streets is also driven by the fresh memories of the riot cops on campus last spring and their aggressive tactics, which led to more than 3,100 arrests.

At the time, a few pundits warned that the aggressive police-state tactics felt like a grim foreshadowing of what could await all protesters—not just those in opposition to Israel’s far-right government and its war tactics—if an authoritarian Donald Trump won the November election. One wrote: “By the time a returned-to-the-White-House Trump makes good on his vow to send out troops and tanks to put down any January 20, 2025, inauguration protesters, America might be numb to such images.”

OK, I cheated: That pundit was me. But now that Trump is indeed the president-elect, with a vow of retribution against his political enemies, there’s growing concern that the incoming administration will clamp down hard on the right of dissent that is supposed to be guaranteed in the First Amendment. In a 4:00 am posting to his Truth Social website, the 45th and soon-to-be 47th POTUS confirmed that he plans to use the U.S. military for his sweeping mass-deportation agenda, which did little to calm fears that troops could also put down protests.

Meanwhile, and even more urgently, a bipartisan bill is racing through the current lame-duck session of Congress that—in an echo of the police-state style crackdown against the Gaza protests, which were often in Democratic-run jurisdictions—could have a much more sweeping impact.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act—also known as H.R. 9495—emerged from the uproar over the Gaza protests to give an administration’s treasury secretary, without further input from Congress, the ability to potentially devastate nonprofit groups by stripping their nonprofit status if they determine the group is “a terrorist supporting organization.” The bill’s bipartisan backers proposed the measure with more radical pro-Palestinian groups in mind, and also tied the bill to an understandably popular second measure that removes the threat of tax penalties for Americans held hostage overseas, including as many as four to seven now in Gaza.

Some 52 Democrats, including the staunchest supporters of Israel’s conduct, joined the GOP House majority last week in an effort to fast-track the bill that needed a two-thirds majority and fell just short. This week, the bill is moving toward final House approval that would only require a simple majority—even as progressive Democrats are increasingly alarmed that the incoming Trump administration will use to measure to punish other left-leaning groups that have nothing to do with Palestine.

“I think in view of Trump’s election, this bill basically authorizes him to impose a death penalty on any nonprofit in America or any civil society group that happens to be on his enemies list and claim that they’re a terrorist,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, told The Washington Postin voicing the growing liberal alarm over the measure. The congressman said those fears would apply to “a hospital performing an abortion, a community news outlet that he doesn’t think is giving him sufficient attention—or basically anyone, certainly groups that might be trying to assist migrants in this country.”

The measure is also opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the international anti-famine organization Oxfam International, which chillingly compared H.R. 9495 to what it’s confronted around the globe trying to function in authoritarian regimes. “This bill follows the same playbook Oxfam has seen other governments around the world use to crush dissent,” its American CEO said last week in a statement. “Now we are seeing it here at home.”

Mother Jones also notes in a new piece that the anti-Gaza-protest playbook will likely inspire a Trump regime in other ways, including following through on his campaign threats to deport campus protesters. Cornell University grad student Momodou Taal—a protester whose student visa was revoked but has dodged deportation, for now—told the magazine that last spring’s crackdown set an awful precedent, saying: “I think what [President Joe] Biden has allowed for is that the clampdown is made easier for Trump now because the groundwork has already been laid.”

Indeed, Cornell’s moves to suspend Taal and other pro-Palestinian students who disrupted a job fair in September is just one part of a campus crusade against dissent and, arguably, free speech that seems to have succeeded in sharply reducing protests against the killing of civilians in Gaza—or against anything else for that matter.

In the two weeks since Trump’s election to another term, protests have been—with a handful of exceptions involving the socialist far left—a dog that hasn’t barked, in sharp contrast to Trump’s initial victory in 2016. Mostly that’s because many who formed a “Trump Resistance” eight years ago have concluded that mass protest isn’t the most effective tactic, but it’s hard to know much reluctance to take to the streets is also driven by the fresh memories of the riot cops on campus last spring and their aggressive tactics, which led to more than 3,100 arrests.

But this much is clear: If Democrats are serious about serving as the last line of defense against Trump’s most monarchical tendencies, the last thing they should be doing right now should be giving the incoming president a tool to quash protest groups he doesn’t like, using dictatorial fiat. Over the last 14 days, I’ve received a ton of reader emails asking what they can do to make a difference and not surrender to the end of American democracy as we’ve known it. Here’s one simple and easy thing: Call your member of Congress and urge them to oppose an un-American piece of legislation called H.R. 9495.