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House GOP Revives Bill to Let Authoritarian Trump Crush Nonprofits
"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.
Nov 18, 2024
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.
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Trump Lackeys Run to Rescue Ailing Bank in Predictable—And Telling—Move
Political reporters must explain the consequences likely to ensue if Steven Mnuchin, Joseph Otting, or their pro-Wall Street doppelgangers return for a second Trump administration.
Mar 15, 2024
Earlier this week, two of Donald Trump’s appointees—former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting—officially joined the board of New York Community Bancorp (NYCB) as part of a deal to buttress the struggling regional lender.
It was only last March that a NYCB subsidiary, Flagstar Bank, acquired many of Signature Bank’s assets from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But in recent months, NYCB has found itself floundering as a result of the post-Covid-19 devaluation of commercial real estate.
NYCB announced last week that multiple institutional investors, led by a private equity firm founded and headed by Mnuchin, raised more than $1 billion to prop it up. In exchange, the bank reconstituted its board—shrinking it to ten members while designating four new directors, including Mnuchin and Otting, who will also serve as CEO.
The announcement of the cash infusion and leadership shakeup had an immediate effect, as NYCB shares quickly rebounded following a steep decline earlier in the day. Investors—including Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital, Hudson Bay Capital, Reverence Capital Partners, and the hedge fund Citadel—stand to make “hundreds of millions of dollars of paper profits if the shares maintain their gains,” according to the Financial Times.
To see Goldman Sachs alum Mnuchin and his pal Otting team up again to lead a financial institution is unsurprising, and yet that doesn’t make it any less troubling. From 2010 to 2015, Mnuchin and Otting worked together as executives at a scandal-ridden bank called OneWest. During that time, they repeatedly violated foreclosure laws to kick elderly people with reverse mortgages out of their homes. Vice President Kamala Harris’ refusal to prosecute the Pasadena-based lender when she was attorney general of California was a colossal and indefensible mistake.
To see Goldman Sachs alum Mnuchin and his pal Otting team up again to lead a financial institution is unsurprising, and yet that doesn’t make it any less troubling.
In 2017, Trump rewarded Mnuchin and Otting for their rapacious conduct by appointing them to his administration. Tapping the predatory pair to regulate the financial industry was brazen, but it made Trumpian sense; his team was a veritable who’s who of revolvers uninterested in curbing the exploitative practices that have made them and their peers so wealthy.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch between Trump and Joe Biden. As campaigns kick into full gear, the news media would do well to reacquaint voters with what Trump appointees were up to before 2017, what they’ve been doing since 2021, and what their potential return to the White House would mean.
The American Prospect’s David Dayen, who reported on OneWest’s cruel repossession machine several years ago, said last week that he hopes “there aren’t any 95-year-olds with an NYCB loan facing foreclosure, that hasn’t historically ended well at a Mnuchin-owned bank!”
As it turns out, NYCB is one of the nation’s largest residential mortgage originators and servicers, with a focus on apartment buildings. It’s also a leading warehouse lender. Mnuchin has promised to pursue “a diversified and de-risked business model that supports long-term profitability,” but that doesn’t tell us what malfeasance he and Otting have in store for the coming months.
The last time Mnuchin and his partners bought a bank in distress, they engaged in ruthless behavior and made out like bandits. In 2009, a Mnuchin-led group of investors purchased IndyMac, a failed residential lender, from the FDIC for about $1.5 billion and renamed it OneWest, after which the bank proceeded to gobble up several competitors that were reeling in the wake of the 2007-2008 crash. When CIT Group obtained OneWest in 2015 for $3.4 billion, Mnuchin alone netted roughly $380 million.
Although it’s hard to predict the extent to which the NYCB investors are poised to capitalize on another real estate-fueled financial crisis, it’s easy to agree with Dayen, who added last week that “putting the OneWest gang back in charge of a bank rather than readying indictments is really distressing.”
In any case, Mnuchin and Otting’s move to join NYCB’s board serves as a reminder that Trump and his appointees have consistently prioritized Wall Street interests—before, during, and after his presidency. As Trump eyes a return to the White House, it’s worth stressing that presidential elections are never only about individual candidates; they’re also about how those candidates would control the vast apparatus known as the executive branch, including the types of regulators they’d likely appoint.
Mnuchin and Otting’s move to join NYCB’s board serves as a reminder that Trump and his appointees have consistently prioritized Wall Street interests—before, during, and after his presidency.
This year, we don’t have to rely on prognostication, as is usually the case with at least one candidate. We can contrast the personnel choices that Trump and Biden made during their respective first terms. By nominating bona fide vultures like Mnuchin and Otting to oversee the financial sector, Trump made it abundantly clear that he intended to facilitate plunder.
Even though Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has her own objectionable ties to corporate interests and major blind spots, her tenure atop the department has been preferable to that of Mnuchin. And whereas Trump picked Otting to chair the OCC, Biden nominated a legitimate progressive. Sadly, Saule Omarova was forced to withdraw following a vicious right-wing smear campaign full of red-baiting. Opportunistic Senate Republicans and a handful of Senate Democrats used Omarova’s upbringing in the Soviet Union to falsely equate her profoundly democratic desire to subordinate finance to the public interest with Stalinism.
The point is that while another Trump administration is guaranteed to oil the wheels of upward redistribution and graft, a second Biden administration could advance a downwardly redistributive agenda. But voters will not know this distinction without informative coverage of Trump’s cronies and their corporate agenda.
For their part, journalists covering the 2024 campaign should remember that their job is to convey to voters how the country is likely to differ depending on whether Biden or Trump wins. Given that Trump has vowed to impose the GOP’s fascist agenda with dictatorial force, the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s high time for political reporters to start probing who would benefit if the likes of Mnuchin, Otting, and Trump’s other Wall Street allies are given another chance. Here’s a tip: it won’t be the average working American.
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IRS Could Collect $561 Billion From Rich Tax Cheats—Unless GOP Guts Funding
"Congressional Republicans' efforts to cut IRS funding show that they prioritize letting the wealthiest Americans and big corporations evade their taxes over cutting the deficit," said the director of the National Economic Council.
Feb 07, 2024
The Internal Revenue Service says it could collect around $560 billion largely from rich tax cheats and big corporations over the next decade—as long as congressional Republicans don't succeed in clawing back a recent funding increase that allowed the agency to ramp up enforcement.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 without any Republican support, gave the IRS an $80 billion funding boost after years of budget cuts inflicted by the GOP.
The cuts severely compromised the agency's ability to audit the wealthy and big businesses, which often have more complex returns. According to an IRS and Treasury Department analysis released Tuesday, "the audit rate on millionaires fell by more than 70% from 2010 to 2019, and the audit rate on large corporations fell by more than 50% over the same period."
The IRA funding boost has given the agency much more capacity to pursue rich tax cheats. Last month, the IRS said it has collected more than $500 million from wealthy tax dodgers since 2022.
"Anyone trying to rescind funding from the IRS just wants to let wealthy and corporate tax cheats off the hook."
The new Treasury-IRS analysis estimates that if the IRA funding boost remains in place, federal revenue would increase by as much as $561 billion over the next 10 years—a significant return on the IRA's $80 billion investment.
"The administration has proposed extending and maintaining IRS investments after the IRA funds are exhausted, which would enable the IRS to collect $851 billion over 2024-2034," the agencies said.
But if $20 billion of the $80 billion funding boost is rescinded, the IRS would bring in over $100 billion less in revenue over the next decade than it would with the increase intact, the analysis shows.
"This analysis demonstrates that President Biden's investment in rebuilding the IRS will reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars by making the wealthy and big corporations pay the taxes they owe," Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, said in a statement Tuesday. "Congressional Republicans' efforts to cut IRS funding show that they prioritize letting the wealthiest Americans and big corporations evade their taxes over cutting the deficit."
As part of a debt ceiling agreement with Republicans last year, President Joe Biden and Democratic congressional leaders agreed to rescind $20 billion from the IRS funding boost enacted by the IRA—a deal that drew outrage from progressives.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers subsequently agreed to implement the $20 billion rescission all at once in 2024 instead of spreading out the cuts over two years, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has made clear that he intends to pursue additional IRS cuts, which would further undermine the agency's ability to crack down on tax dodging and modernize its technology.
"Anyone trying to rescind funding from the IRS just wants to let wealthy and corporate tax cheats off the hook," the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness wrote on social media Wednesday.
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