Trump explores targeting left-wing groups, including revoking tax-exempt status, as part of effort to curb political violence

WASHINGTON — In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting earlier this month, President Donald Trump and members of his administration have publicly discussed punitive steps against left-leaning organizations they accuse of fueling political violence. The most consequential option under discussion would target the groups’ tax-exempt status, effectively choking their fundraising and operations. Vice President J.D. Vance, while hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast last Monday, named the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations (funded by George Soros) as part of a network the administration intends to scrutinize, saying, “We are going to go after the NGO network that foments and facilities and engages in violence.” A White House official told TIME that the administration is exploring a wide variety of options to address left-wing political violence and the network of organizations that fund it, with specifics still being discussed.

Legal experts say revoking tax-exempt status would be existential for many charities. Tax-exempt status allows donors to deduct contributions and anchors a nonprofit’s fundraising. Without it, groups may have to sell endowments, reduce programs, and face higher tax bills on funds they hold in endowments. To qualify for exemption, an organization must describe itself to the Internal Revenue Service and show it advances charitable, educational, scientific, or religious purposes. The IRS already has tools to suspend exemption if a group supports or engages in terrorist activity. The challenge, experts say, is that such a step would confront First Amendment questions and likely trigger lengthy litigation. “The typical IRS investigations are based on how the money is being used and whether the money is being used to further exempt purposes or if overall the organization is not actually operated for its exempt purposes or providing private benefits or is self dealing, or something like that,” said Roger Colinvaux, a law professor at The Catholic University of America. “Viewpoint should not matter in those investigations.” A lawyer like Ofer Lion notes that losing tax-exempt status would be “the end of the road” for many groups.

The administration’s approach comes as Trump has shown an increasing willingness to use federal power to police speech. On Wednesday, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show hours after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized comments Kimmel made related to Kirk’s shooting on a podcast. Carr has influence over local stations’ broadcast licenses as well as a merger being pursued by the owners of some ABC affiliates. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” Carr said. As Trump traveled back to Washington on Air Force One, he told reporters that if stations “give me only bad publicity—press—and they’re getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

During Vance’s stint as a podcaster last Monday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said that one of the last messages Charlie Kirk sent him was to say that the Trump administration needs a strategy to go after left-wing organizations promoting violence. “I will write those words on my heart and I will carry them out,” Miller said.

The threats alarmed many of the country’s major philanthropies. In response, 158 philanthropic organizations published an open letter Wednesday saying that political violence has “no place in our democracy” and that organizations “should not be attacked for carrying out their missions or expressing their values in support of the communities they serve.” The letter’s signers included the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations, as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Bush Foundation. “Attempts to silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving undermine our democracy and harm all Americans,” the letter stated.

There is a long history of political players improperly deploying the IRS for political purposes, says Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “The IRS has been misused repeatedly for politically motivated audits/reviews from the McCarthy era onwards,” he wrote in an email. A more recent example, Eddington noted, was the Obama-era scandal over IRS audits of various Tea Party groups, with many of the groups alleging they were being unfairly singled out. The Trump administration settled a lawsuit over the IRS investigations in 2017. Congress was concerned enough about White House involvement in IRS activities to pass a law in 1998 that explicitly prohibits “executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations.” The law makes it illegal for a President, Vice President or any employee in their offices “to request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.”