New Action, Fast Reaction Request: Today! Tonight. Tomorrow. This week! Tell Your Representative to Withhold Support on H.R. 9495 We need to protect our nonprofits from Federal Executive Overreach Friend, Recently, civil society organizations, have ramped up calls for opposition to H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act. Members of the House should understand this bill poses a problem for transparency, a advances executive overreach, and challenges free speech. Civil society successfully opposed its passage last week, pushing Congress to reject the measure. Yet the bill is slated for a second vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week. - Markup began today, Monday, November 18,
- A floor vote is expected on Tuesday or Wednesday.
- Only a simple majority will be required to pass.
Diverse civil society actors have expressed deep concerns about H.R. 9495's potential to grant the executive branch extraordinary powers. It could allow the federal executive to investigate, harass, and, in effect, shutter any nonprofit organization based on unilateral accusations of wrongdoing. This includes news outlets, universities, and civil liberties organizations. H.R. 9495 makes it too easy to penalize civil society actors, non-profits, and community-based organizations—churches and congregations among them and institute what seems like a secret process, vulnerable to politicized motivations. We agree with James Madison on this matter, when he wrote: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” - All of us at Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice | 
