Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Organizations should never face IRS scrutiny because political officials disapprove of their views.”
A pair of Senate Democrats on Thursday launched an investigation into reports that the Trump administration is planning to weaponize the Internal Revenue Service against left-leaning nonprofits, targeting the tax-exempt status of groups seen as political enemies of the White House and potentially burying the organizations with huge penalties without adequate due process.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) announced their inquiry in response to recent reporting by the right-wing New York Post, which reported late last month that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the IRS “could revoke the tax-free status of left-wing nonprofits such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.”
RECOMMENDED…
House Democrats Probe Use of Trump’s NSPM-7 to Target ‘Left-Leaning Political Groups’
‘Outrageous’: Trump Officials Investigated Left-Wing Groups After Alex Pretti Killing in Minneapolis
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and Warnock called the story “disturbing” and argued it suggests “political considerations—including the timing of the 2026 midterm elections—are influencing” the administration’s targeting of left-leaning nonprofits. The NY Post, which cited three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, reported that “Bessent’s inner circle is drafting a blueprint that could ultimately strip non-compliant organizations of their 501(c)(3) status.”
“The reviews could result in massive back payments and civil penalties,” the outlet added.
The Democratic senators noted in a letter to Bessent and Frank Bisignano, the chief executive of the IRS, that Section 7217 of the Internal Revenue Code prohibits senior executive branch officials from “directly or indirectly” requesting that the IRS conduct or terminate an investigation into any particular taxpayer.
“The New York Post’s reporting fits a wider pattern of the Trump administration actively using national security directives to weaponize the IRS against protected First Amendment speech,” Wyden and Warnock wrote, citing the presidential memorandum known as NSPM-7. “Rather than targeting actual violence, these directives explicitly conflate terrorism with subjective political viewpoints—such as ‘anti-capitalism,’ ‘anti-Christianity,’ and views on race, migration, and gender.”
Wyden and Warnock demanded that the Treasury Department and IRS turn over the reported “blueprint” crafted by Bessent’s inner circle as well as “all policies, directives, guidance, criteria, and other documents concerning Treasury and IRS implementation of NSPM-7 as it relates to tax-exempt organizations, including criteria for selecting organizations for examination or possible revocation.”
The senators also demanded to know whether any executive branch officials in the Trump administration have “identified or recommended” particular organizations—including any of those named in the Post report—for IRS investigation.
“Americans of every political persuasion must be able to trust that the IRS applies the tax code objectively under one set of rules,” Wyden and Warnock wrote. “Organizations that violate section 501(c)(3) should face appropriate enforcement regardless of their politics—and organizations should never face IRS scrutiny because political officials disapprove of their views.”
The senators launched their probe as two Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced legislation aimed at guaranteeing that the IRS can’t strip nonprofit organizations of their tax-exempt status “without evidence and without a fair process.”
Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), the lead sponsors of the Protecting the Rights of Organizations Fairly (PROOF) Act, note that “under current law, many due process protections that are supposed to apply when the IRS examines most nonprofits exist only in the agency’s own internal manual—guidance the IRS can rewrite or suspend on its own authority through an internal memo with no public comment, no rulemaking, and no vote, and that carries no force of law.”
“The IRS should never be a weapon to punish a president’s political enemies,” Doggett said in a statement on Thursday. “No organization—left, right, or center—should lose its tax-exempt status on an accusation, without evidence, and without a fair chance to be heard.”
“The PROOF Act is simple,” he added. “If the government wants to take away a nonprofit’s status, it has to show its proof and follow the law. Today, it may be an organization to which the Trump regime objects. Tomorrow, it could be any of us.”
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
