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council on american-islamic relations
'Nonprofit Killer' Pulled From GOP Tax Bill—For Now
"Because authoritarians love using censorship to silence opposition, it's likely gonna keep rearing its head," warned one rights group.
May 19, 2025
While welcoming the removal of legislation in House Republicans' budget reconciliation package that would empower U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems supportive of a terrorist organization, rights groups on Monday urged vigilance, warning that GOP lawmakers could slip the contentious provision back into a future draft of the legislation.
In an unusual late Sunday night session, the House Budget Committee voted 17-16, with four Republicans voting "present," to advance the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—named in an act of GOP fealty to Trump's description of the proposal—which would extend the president's 2017 tax cuts that have disproportionately benefited ultrawealthy households and corporations while slashing vital social programs upon which tens of millions of people rely.
The latest version of the proposal no longer contains an amendment based on the language of the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or H.R. 9495—which critics have dubbed the "nonprofit killer."
"The removal of the nonprofit killer bill from the House Republicans' advanced tax package is a promising sign, not a victory."
According to the advocacy group Free Press Action, the bill allows the treasury secretary "to accuse any nonprofit of supporting terrorism—and to terminate its tax-exempt status without due process."
Civil liberties defenders say the proposal's lack of clarity regarding the determination of whether and how a nonprofit supports terrorism would enable Trump to follow through on his threats to cancel the tax-exempt status for organizations with which he disagrees, including universities, advocacy groups, media outlets, charities, religious institutions, and others.
Organizations that support Palestinian rights or oppose Israel's annihilation of Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—have been particularly concerned about the bill, citing the Trump administration's moves to defund universities and other institution that oppose crackdowns on Gaza protests and the arrest and detention of foreign nationals, including green-card holders, for constitutionally protected protests.
The Nonprofit Killer Bill was pulled from the GOP tax package, but this is no victory. It could return at any moment. If we want to protect the right of nonprofits to speak truth to power, we must act now. 🛑 Tell Congress: Keep the Nonprofit Killer Bill OUT 👉 action.cair.com/a/nonprofit-killer-bill
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— CAIR (The Council on American-Islamic Relations) (@cairnational.bsky.social) May 19, 2025 at 12:58 PM
While welcoming the removal of the measure from the reconciliation package, groups including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) warned of the possibility that Republican lawmakers could re-insert the provision in the reconciliation package, which is scheduled for consideration by the House Rules Committee later this week.
"The removal of the nonprofit killer bill from the House Republicans' advanced tax package is a promising sign, not a victory,"CAIR government affairs director Robert S. McCaw said Monday."This provision could come back at any time, and if Americans want to preserve the right of nonprofits to speak truth to power, now is the time to flood Congress with messages demanding they keep this language out of the bill."
"We are defending nothing less than the future of nonprofit advocacy and our core constitutional freedoms," McCaw added.
While it is uncertain why the proposal was removed from the reconciliation bill, ACLU senior policy counsel Kia Hamadanchy toldThe Intercept that "it's possible they took it out to rewrite it in some way, because we know that this package is going to be amended."
"But for now, it's not in the text of the bill, and that's an improvement from where we were at last week," Hamadanchy added.
Addressing everyone who contacted their federal lawmakers or took other action in opposition to the bill, the digital rights group Fight for the Future said on the social media site Bluesky that "pressure from YOU is making a difference."
"We killed this bill in the fall, but because authoritarians love using censorship to silence opposition, it's likely gonna keep rearing its head," the group added, referring to the legislation's failure to receive a Senate vote before the previous congressional term ended.
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Congress Urged to Act Now as Israel Moves to 'Occupy and Flatten' Gaza and Starvation Worsens
"Please speak up forcefully and demand an end to this madness before there is no one left to save," said one advocacy group.
May 16, 2025
Human rights defenders implored U.S. lawmakers to speak out against the far-right government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it ramps up its 588-day assault and siege on the Gaza Strip, where at least 115 Palestinians were killed by Israel Defense Forces strikes on Friday amid worsening mass starvation.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group, on Friday sent an open letter authored by its director of government affairs, Robert S. McCaw, urging every member of Congress to "please vocally speak out against the start of the Israeli government's plan to 'occupy and flatten' Gaza while herding any surviving Palestinians into camps before eventually expelling them from their land."
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in recent days as Israeli forces pressed ahead with Operation Gideon's Chariots, a plan to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization of the strip as advocated by numerous Israeli government officials.
Local and international media reported that at least 115 Palestinians including children were killed by Israeli attacks since dawn Friday, with air, artillery, and tank strikes concentrated in Beit Lahia and the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
"Netanyahu has declared that there is 'no way' Israel will stop the war, even if all hostages are released, and he has vowed to completely reoccupy Gaza and force remaining Palestinians off their land," McCaw wrote. "His Cabinet has formally approved a full-scale ground invasion and permanent military occupation of the Gaza Strip. One senior Israeli minister openly stated that Gaza will be 'completely destroyed.'"
"This is it. Now or never. We implore you to condemn Netanyahu's plan, demand a permanent end to this genocidal war, and pledge to oppose further weapons sales to the Israeli government unless its human rights abuses stop," the letter continues. "As long as the Israeli government believes it will continue to receive unlimited American financial, military, and diplomatic support, Netanyahu has no reason to risk his grip on power by changing course."
Israeli and international critics accuse Netanyahu of risking the lives of 23 living hostages still being held by Hamas by prolonging the war in a bid to forestall a reckoning in his
criminal corruption trial.
"Netanyahu has made clear what he plans to do: destroy Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, even if it means starving and slaughtering the Israeli hostages along with them," CAIR said. "There is no more time left to sit on the sidelines, make symbolic statements, or hope something better will happen."
"Netanyahu has made clear what he plans to do: destroy Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people."
"Children are being blown to pieces every single hour with American weapons," the group noted. "Babies are starving to death while food rots at the Gaza border. Mothers and fathers are dying with them, and the Israeli captives held in Gaza are at risk of starving to death or being killed by the Israeli government's indiscriminate bombing campaign."
"Please speak up forcefully and demand an end to this madness before there is no one left to save," the letter implores.
Earlier this week, Ben Cohen, co-founder of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream company, was arrested after disrupting a Senate hearing, shouting, "Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S." as he was hauled off by police.
"Congress and the senators need to ease the siege," Cohen added. "They need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food to starving kids!"
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, published Monday, states that 244,000 people in Gaza are now in Phase 5, defined as such "an extreme deprivation of food" that "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident."
At least scores of Palestinians—including a minimum of 57 children and 14 elders—have died of severe malnutrition combined with lack of medical care throughout Gaza, United Nations experts and human rights groups said in recent days.
Already suffering under an Israeli blockade imposed in 2007 after Hamas took power in the coastal enclave, Gazans have been ravaged by hunger and illness due to the "complete siege" imposed by Israel immediately after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. The siege was tightened on March 2, when Israel stopped all lifesaving supplies—including food, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas—from entering the strip.
Israel's blockade, use of starvation as a weapon of war, killing or wounding of more than 187,000 Palestinians—including thousands missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble—mass forced displacement of more than 2 million Gazans, and eliminationist statements by Israeli leaders and others are all being reviewed in The Hague as part of the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court, also in The Hague, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation.
Also on Friday, CAIR welcomed a resolution signed by 27 Democratic and two Independent U.S. senators calling on the administration of President Donald Trump to "use all available diplomatic tools" to secure an end to Israel's assault on Gaza, the hostages' release, and a lifting of the siege in order to allow "urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to address the needs of civilians."
While many Israelis and their supporters around the world deny that there is mass starvation in Gaza, both Trump and Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, have acknowledged that Palestinians are starving. On the final day of his Mideast tour Friday, Trump said in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates that "a lot of people are starving" in Gaza, and "we're going to get that taken care of."
However, Huckabee recently admitted that a U.S.-Israeli plan to deliver limited humanitarian aid to parts of Gaza would initially only feed around 60% of the population. The United Nations and humanitarian groups operating in Gaza have rejected the plan.
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Israel Bombs Gaza Hospitals, Killing and Wounding Dozens of Palestinians
"Attacks on hospitals must stop," said the head of the World Health Organization. "The aid blockade must end to allow immediate entry of food, medicines, and equipment."
May 13, 2025
U.S.-backed Israeli forces bombed two hospitals in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing and wounding at least dozens of Palestinians including patients, forcibly displaced people, medical staff, rescue workers, and a well-known journalist.
Early Tuesday, Israel bombed the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, killing at least two people including photojournalist Hasan Eslaih, who was receiving treatment after surviving a previous Israeli attempt to assassinate him last month.
Gaza officials said Eslaih, who was the director of the Alam24 News Agency, is at least the 215th media worker killed by Israel since October 2023. Eslaih lost a finger and was badly injured in an April 7 Israeli strike on a tent outside the same hospital in which numerous people were burned alive. More than a dozen patients were reportedly injured in Tuesday's attack.
"The burn unit was struck, 18 hospital beds in the surgical department, eight beds in the intensive care unit, and 10 inpatient beds were destroyed," World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the attack. "This is huge blow to the already overwhelmed health system."
"We repeat our call: Attacks on hospitals must stop," Tedros added. "The aid blockade must end to allow immediate entry of food, medicines, and equipment to support patients and the rehabilitation of hospitals. The best medicine is peace."
Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill said following the attack that "the U.S. is facilitating these war crimes and most Western journalists remain totally silent."
Later on Tuesday, Israel bombed a courtyard and surrounding areas of the European Hospital, also in Khan Younis, killing at least 28 people and injuring scores more. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged the attack, claiming it targeted "Hamas operatives who were inside a command and control complex built within an infrastructure under the hospital."
British surgeon Tom Potokar was inside European Hospital when it was bombed. He said that "this is where kids with cancer are waiting to be evacuated and supposed to be 'deconflicted."
According to the Gaza Government Media Office, 38 hospitals, 81 health centers, and 164 medical facilities have been destroyed, damaged, or rendered inoperable since Israel launched its assault on the coastal enclave after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the strikes,
saying on social media that "these attacks are unacceptable and must end. Healthcare is not a target."
Attacks on medical facilities are war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
The Gaza Health Ministry decried "the repeated targeting of hospitals and the pursuit and killing of wounded patients inside treatment rooms," adding that such attacks confirm "Israel's deliberate intent to inflict greater damage to the healthcare system."
In the United States, the advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement that fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "bombs hospitals, slaughters Palestinian civilians, destroys homes, and seeks to starve and ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza, all in a brutal campaign to continue Israel's genocide and stay in office indefinitely."
CAIR added that U.S. President Donald Trump "must act to stop these crimes against humanity, which our nation has unfortunately enabled for decades, and finally allow the Palestinian people to live in peace and freedom."
IDF strikes have obliterated Gaza's medical infrastructure along with the rest of the densely populated strip. Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
The commission's report detailed hundreds of IDF attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities and the killing or wounding of around 1,700 medical workers, calling such killings "widespread and systematic."
Israel's 585-day onslaught and siege—which officials say has left more than 186,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened—is the subject of an ongoing genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague by South Africa.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court, also in The Hague, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and starvation as a weapon of war.
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