the House Ways and Means Committee was holding a hearing on How the Tax Code Subsidizes Hate

[livingston]

"It is important for us to consider how our policies can help reduce hate and violence through any vehicle," Rep. Danny K. Davis insisted. "Any mechanism, any apparatus, any way that we possibly can."

The mechanism and apparatus being considered was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

The Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee was holding a hearing on How the Tax Code Subsidizes Hate. Its theme was removing tax-exempt status from groups it didn’t like.

The Democrats running it didn’t issue a full list of allegedly discriminatory groups they wanted the government to discriminate against, but the Committee’s Twitter list of ‘hate groups’ seem to overlap with a list assembled by the Southern Poverty Law Center and curated by Philanthropy Magazine.
Sultan Knish: House Dems Plot to Use IRS to Suppress Conservatives

 

[livingston]

Rep. Suzan Delbene had tweeted, “Over five dozen hate groups in the U.S. are paying zero taxes”. But once the hearing began, her idea of a hate group that she wanted the IRS to go after was the NRA.

Delbene was one of several House Dems who were interested in using the IRS to target the NRA.

By that point there wasn’t even a pretext that the How the Tax Code Subsidizes Hate hearing was about hate, instead of using the IRS to suppress the political opposition. The NRA is closely involved in congressional elections. Proposals by members of Congress to use a government agency to go after the NRA is a blatant case of officials suppressing funding and organizations tied to their political opponents.