Treasury is 100% right to crack down on activists – Latest News
Left or right, taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize political activism they oppose, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is drafting plans to guarantee they don’t by revoking tax exemptions from bogus political “charities.”
As The Post’s James Franey stories, Bessent and the IRS are taking a arduous take a look at the conduct of up to a dozen or so high-profile lefty nonprofits — together with George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations — with an eye towards probably revoking their tax-exempt standing.
That may imply a $165 million windfall in new tax funds from these teams — and, more important, finish taxpayer subsidies for doubtful and even rancid political activism.
“The woke left wants to ‘tax the rich,’ but these same lefty groups will do anything they can to avoid paying their own taxes, including breaking the law,” snarked one source accustomed to Treasury’s plans. “It’s hypocrisy at its finest.”
To qualify for a 501(c)(3) tax exemption, nonprofits sometimes should operate “exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes”; they’re expressly prohibited from extreme lobbying or selling “propaganda,” laws or political candidates’ campaigns.
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Treasury is reportedly trying to deal with nonprofits which might be political activists in disguise as companies or political machines for tax functions, as per the law.
That’s applicable. Open Society, after all, famously makes use of its billions to fund teams that back far-left causes — together with criminal-justice reforms, climate change, legal privileges for unlawful immigrants, DEI and more.
Why shouldn’t it have to pay its “fair share,” fairly than drive different Americans — most of whom object to a lot of its agenda — to choose up the tab?
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CAIR, too, spends a lot of its time and money slamming a key US ally, Israel. That’s not political?
It’s additionally been accused of having ties to Qatar and was named an unindicted co-conspirator within the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial.
Just this month, prosecutors charged the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center’s ex-finance officer, Heidi Beirich, with main a scheme that “knowingly misled donors” and funneled money to “senior leadership” at a white supremacist group. (Her lawyer insists she’s harmless.)
Plus, the SPLC promotes blatantly political positions, like ending “unjust imprisonment,” eliminating “economic inequality” and laws to “expand access to the ballot box.”
It has fiercely attacked critics of causes it helps, together with DEI, school-based lefty indoctrination applications, permitting boys into women’ sports activities and loos.
In 2023, it tarred innocent pro-child activists at Moms for Liberty as a “hate” group.
And but it’s someway tax-exempt.
The Soros “charity” vehemently insists Treasury has no excuse for taking a look at it; CAIR and the SPLC declined to remark on the problem.
The probe might goal different lefty teams, together with MediaJustice, which lobbies for racial-equity insurance policies within the telecom industry, defunding police tech and censoring online “disinformation,” in addition to labor-backed entities just like the Service Employees International Union’s Strategic Organizing Center and the anti-Amazon Athena Coalition.
Bessent and his crew are on the right observe: Private teams have each right to promote their political agendas — however no right in any respect to taxpayer help for that activism.
Especially when the taxpayers discover these agendas so abhorrent.
