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"We urge the House of Representatives to reject this dangerous bill and to protect our freedom of speech and our right to dissent," said the president of Oxfam America.
House Republicans have revived and are looking to push through legislation this week that would hand President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration sweeping power to investigate and shut down nonprofit organizations, including news outlets and humanitarian groups.
The bill, H.R. 9495, failed to pass the House last week despite bipartisan support because the Republican leadership attempted to pass the measure using a fast-track procedure that requires a two-thirds majority vote. More than 50 Democrats, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and other prominent members, backed the legislation in last week's vote, along with 204 Republicans.
This time, the GOP is attempting to advance the bill through regular order, meaning it can pass with a simple majority. The Republican-controlled House Rules Committee is scheduled to hold a markup hearing for H.R. 9495 on Monday.
After learning of the hearing, advocacy organizations that mobilized against the bill redoubled their warnings about its dire implications for free expression and the right to dissent—particularly in the hands of a would-be authoritarian who has vowed to prosecute his political enemies.
"The bill we defeated days ago is back," the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights wrote on social media over the weekend. "Representatives are trying to ram through H.R. 9495, a repressive bill that could shut down nonprofits & student groups supporting Palestinian rights."
The legislation, if passed, would give the Treasury Department the authority to unilaterally strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status by designating them supporters of terrorism. As of this writing, Trump has not announced his pick to lead the Treasury Department.
While the bill provides a brief period for an accused nonprofit to defend itself, the ACLU said the provision "is a mere illusion of due process," noting that the federal government would be able to "deny organizations its reasons and evidence against them, leaving the nonprofit unable to rebut allegations."
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, warned in a statement after Republicans revived the bill that H.R. 9495 "would grant the Trump administration, and any future administration, the ability to silence and censor its critics, curb free speech, target political opponents, and punish crucial organizations that speak truth to power and help people in the United States and around the world."
"This bill would increase the powers of the president at the expense of all of our freedoms, and could impact not only organizations like Oxfam, but other nonprofits, news outlets, or even universities who dare to dissent," said Maxman. "It could put our ability to respond to some of the worst humanitarian crises at risk and prevent us from delivering lifesaving aid to some of the world's most marginalized people."
"This bill follows the same playbook Oxfam has seen other governments around the world use to crush dissent. Now we are seeing it here at home," Maxman added. "We urge the House of Representatives to reject this dangerous bill and to protect our freedom of speech and our right to dissent."
It's not clear whether the U.S. Senate, narrowly controlled by Democrats, would bring H.R. 9495 to the floor for a vote if it passes the House this week, or whether President Joe Biden would sign it into law. But Republicans will gain full control of Congress and the White House starting in January, giving them the ability to push the legislation through at a later date.
"Their rush to reconsider this bill is solely to offer Trump more and more power, while Trump's nominees for key national security posts this week indicate how he will be using it," Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), a leading opponent of the measure, toldThe Intercept on Friday.
Administrators, driven by fear, political pressure, and donors, have engineered a power grab bypassing the established structures of governance to securitize campuses and restrict free speech.
In the 1960s, social critic Paul Goodman offered a parable to describe what had gone wrong with American higher education.
He wrote:
Millennia ago, there were wise people who knew many things that they were eager to share. Young people came to them and asked, “Would you teach us?” And they did. Over time more students came to learn. And after learning, there were many more wise ones able and willing to teach. The enterprise grew with more students, more teachers, and more subjects to teach. It became so complicated that the wise ones hired clerks to keep track of who was teaching, what they were teaching, and which students were with which teachers. The problem today is that the clerks are running the show deciding who will teach, what they will teach, and who is qualified to learn.
The lesson conveyed by this parable is relevant to understanding worrisome developments unfolding on U.S. college campuses. Israel’s assault on Gaza, following Hamas’ attack of October 7, spawned a nationwide revolt of the young. While organised groups helped mobilize demonstrations demanding a cease-fire and Palestinian rights, the breadth and depth of the effort was more akin to a spontaneous eruption.
In this regard, it was not unlike earlier spontaneous protest movements that sprang up over the past decade: the Women’s March, the “Welcome immigrants” demonstrations that filled U.S. airports in response to the “Muslim ban,” the student-led “March for our Lives” after repeated mass shootings, and the Black Lives Matter movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd.
The cease-fire/pro-Palestinian movement had much in common with these earlier efforts. Its politics skewed left, it was youth-led, and it was racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse. The difference was that a main locus of its activities was college campuses.
While many have expressed concern that these polices are similar to McCarthy-era repression and intimidation, equally worrisome is what all of this means for the future of the university.
It began with demonstrations, teach-ins, and vigils. But as the war continued into the spring and the world became aware of the mass killings and devastation inflicted by Israel—and the Joe Biden administration’s unconditional support in the face of the enormity of human loss and suffering—the intensity of the student response grew as well. This gave birth to the “encampment movement” that rapidly spread to hundreds of campuses across the country.
From the early stages, the campus anti-war protests were confronted by a number of malign actors who sought to silence or discredit the dissent. Charging that administrations weren’t acting to quash the protests, a number of pro-Israel donors and trustees at some elite universities withdrew their financial support.
While most of the early protests were self-policed, there were often instances where students on both sides of this emotionally charged conflict engaged in hurtful or threatening behaviors. At this point, a second group of malign actors entered the fray.
A few prominent pro-Israel Jewish organisations drummed up an exaggerated campaign charging that the entire protest effort was at its core antisemitic and should be stopped to protect Jewish students who felt threatened or excluded. They published reports, conducted a huge media campaign, and testified before Congress making their case. While some examples they used were clearly hurtful, the bulk of the instances they cited were not, by any reasonable standard, antisemitic.
This effort was enough to provide the impetus for a third group of malign actors: Republican members of Congress. For the GOP, this was “a perfect storm.” The cast of villains were “elite” universities with their spoiled upper-class students, those who oppose Israel, and Democrats who tolerate, or even encourage, disruptive behaviors.
Ivy League university presidents were summoned to testify before congressional committees, where they were badgered and confronted by deceptive and misleading questions designed more for media hits than information. The pressures placed on these presidents after they bungled their confrontations before different committees resulted in many feeling compelled to resign.
Republicans sensing victory and smelling blood in the water went further in their campaigns of harassment—threatening funding for colleges that didn’t act as the GOP saw fit and demanding more oversight. They also moved from maligning the movement as antisemitic to also supporting “terrorist ideology.”
Confronted by these multi-layered challenges and fearful of the pressures from donors and congressional meddling, many universities reacted by inviting in police to dismantle the protests—often using brutal force. In a few weeks, police arrested more than 3,000 students nationwide, with universities suspending many and banning several student groups from operating on campus.
When students and faculty returned to their campuses this month, they discovered that college administrators had been hard at work during the summer revamping policies with regard to both allowable protest activity and acceptable speech. While there were some differences from campus to campus, the new regulations had enough in common to lead researchers to uncover an industry of “security consultants” who had been brought in to advise on changing campus policies and practices.
The new procedures place limits on time, place, and duration of protests and require that sponsoring groups secure permission for protest activity and, in some instances, the content of signs to be used. Some faculty have been required to submit their curriculum for review (not only by administrators but by requesting members of Congress). More problematic has been the fact that all of these changes have been made without involvement of the schools’ faculty or student senates or the established faculty/student judicial committees. Instead of dealing with infractions internally, they involve external police enforcement.
While many have expressed concern that these polices are similar to McCarthy-era repression and intimidation, equally worrisome is what all of this means for the future of the university. And this is where Goodman’s parable is relevant, because what we have is a situation where the clerks, driven by fear, political pressure, and donors have engineered a power grab bypassing the established structures of governance and have securitized campuses, restricting both academic freedom and freedom of expression.
And all of this was done to silence a new awakening in support of Palestinian human rights.
"Is this a bad joke?" asked one campaigner.
As Saudi Arabia prepares to host a global internet summit in December, 40 human rights groups on Friday urged authorities in the kingdom to release everyone imprisoned for online expression, including an activist serving a 27-year prison sentence for criticizing her country's severe repression of women.
The 40 groups said in a joint statement that "Saudi Arabia must free all individuals arbitrarily detained solely for their online expression ahead of hosting the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Riyadh, which will take place from December 15-19."
"It is counter to the IGF's stated values for Saudi Arabia to host the IGF," the organizations asserted. "In 2024 it adopted a thematic focus on advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age and Saudi Arabia continues to prosecute, lock up, forcibly disappear, and intimidate people into silence for expressing themselves on social media."
As Amnesty International—which accused Saudi Arabia of "deep hypocrisy"—noted:
Saudi authorities have waged a chilling crackdown against people who demonstrate even the slightest sign of dissenting or critical views online. Among those who have been convicted for their online expression is Salma al-Shehab. She was arrested in January 2021 and, after a grossly unfair trial, sentenced in January 2023 to a shocking 27-year prison term followed by a 27-year travel ban on trumped-up terrorism charges, simply because she tweeted in support of women's rights.
In another deeply disturbing case, in January 2024, Saudi Arabia's terrorism court sentenced Manahel al-Otaibi to 11 years in prison in connection with social media posts promoting women's rights and sharing images of herself online at a mall without wearing an abaya (a traditional loose-fitting long-sleeved robe).
Those targeted also include Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, a Red Crescent worker, who in April 2020, after a grossly unfair trial, was sentenced to 20 years, to be followed by a 20-year travel ban, for his satirical tweets, and Mohammad bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, a retired school teacher, who was sentenced to death in July 2023 for criticizing authorities on X (formerly Twitter) and his online activity on YouTube.
"These cases are emblematic of the Saudi authorities' chilling crackdown on freedom of expression, but they are not isolated examples," the 40 groups said in their statement. "Dozens of people in Saudi Arabia, including visitors to the country, have been detained solely for their online expression."
"Consequently," the signers added, "many civil society organizations and advocates, who would ordinarily attend the IGF, have chosen not to travel to Saudi Arabia, fearing that they cannot safely and freely participate in the conference."
Representatives of some of the 40 groups that signed the statement weighed in on Saudi Arabia hosting the IGF.
"Is this a bad joke?" asked Freedom Forward executive director Sunjeev Bery. "There's a phrase for this: 'rights-washing.' Rights-washing is when a human rights violator tries to hide their crimes by wrapping themselves in human rights language and causes."
"Saudi Arabia's dictatorship is one of the most repressive governments on the planet," Bery added. "Saudi internet users who dare to speak their minds are often arrested, tortured, and jailed for years."
Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said that "Saudi Arabia's authorities have 100 days before the IGF begins to demonstrate that they will ease their draconian crackdown on freedom of expression, and to show that they will use this event as an opportunity to carry out genuine reforms rather than as part of an image-washing campaign."
"In order to prove that their hosting of the conference about the internet's future is more than just a cynical PR exercise, the Saudi authorities must release all those arbitrarily detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression online before the IGF begins," she added.