OPINION:
At a hearing exploring alleged foreign influence in U.S. politics, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight focused instead on attacking First Amendment protections for American citizens.
“It’s been over 13 years since the Supreme Court unleashed a tidal wave of dark money into politics through the disastrous Citizens United decision,” said ranking member Bill Pascrell. “We’ve seen political 501(c)(4)s pour over a billion dollars into federal elections without any requirement to disclose the funding source.”
That’s for good reason. Americans have a constitutional right to support nonprofit causes without having their identities exposed. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the privacy of donors is critical to free speech. Otherwise, government officials and extremists could silence their critics through harassment and intimidation.
Republicans have long been leaders in repelling this threat to the First Amendment. Yet Democrats in Congress, many of whom fiercely oppose privacy for nonprofit donors, see a new opening in the right’s growing fixation on foreign “dark money.” When Republicans turn a skeptical eye toward nonprofits that occasionally participate in politics or cite the mere growth of the nonprofit sector as cause for suspicion instead of celebration, they embolden efforts to undo key First Amendment victories Republicans have recently spearheaded.
Democrats at the hearing focused on two long-held goals in particular. First, they advocated removing restrictions on the ability of IRS bureaucrats to create new rules for nonprofits’ political speech. That prohibition was a key pillar of Republican reforms following the Lois Lerner scandal, in which tea party groups and their supporters were scrutinized based on their conservative beliefs.
Subcommittee Democrats also took aim at a Trump administration reform limiting the IRS’ annual collection of nonprofit donor rolls to charities whose contributors receive a tax deduction. This, too, is an important protection for nonprofits to speak freely without fear that the IRS will target their donors for audits or other forms of retaliation. Republicans in Congress have previously supported legislation to expand the IRS’s privacy reform to cover more groups.
Democrats hope to change that momentum. So far, Republicans aren’t taking the bait.
“As we protect our electoral process from foreign influence, we cannot sacrifice or risk donor privacy for Americans,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith.
That point was further emphasized by Oversight Subcommittee Chairman David Schweikert and several witnesses at the hearing. The recent rise in antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel serves as another reminder of why Americans’ privacy must be protected when supporting nonprofit causes.
“I do not want to see Jewish donors harassed because they’ve been forced by the government into the spotlight because of their giving to nonprofits that support Israel,” said Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, who testified at the hearing.
Yet it will take more than strong words to ensure that efforts to police foreign influence do not interfere with the First Amendment rights of Americans. While foreign nationals are banned from contributing to campaigns, they are permitted to give to nonprofits. A robust legal infrastructure exists to police illicit foreign political activity, but broader efforts to regulate nonprofits’ political activity are notoriously complex and easily manipulated for partisan gain.
Republicans would earn more trust on this issue if not for the party’s growing embrace of the “dark money” label to attack the left’s network of nonprofits. After all, the “dark money” smear can be and has been applied to any organization that protects its members’ identities from public exposure, including conservative groups. Such rhetoric undermines a commitment to protecting donor privacy as a core First Amendment value.
In a world where nonprofit donors’ names, home addresses and employers are matters of public record, Americans on all sides of our social debates would suffer. We must learn to live with one another and respect differences of opinion, not descend into chaos and acts of retribution. Progressive groups should be challenged on their actions and beliefs, not on the one thing they share in common with their conservative counterparts: a commitment to defending their supporters’ privacy.
It seems the only thing Democrats and Republicans could agree on at the hearing is that “dark money” exists on both sides. That is the way it should be. Protecting donor privacy is not a partisan issue. It’s a core issue to nonprofits and advocacy groups across the political spectrum.
Republicans must take care that their foray into investigating anecdotal allegations of foreign “dark money” in certain progressive nonprofits does not reopen doors they fought so hard to close a decade ago. Regardless of their intentions, their actions are putting Americans’ privacy and First Amendment rights at risk.
• Heather Lauer is CEO of People United for Privacy, a nonprofit that defends the First Amendment rights of all Americans — regardless of their beliefs — to come together in support of their shared values.
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