Subject: A New Power for Trump to Exercise
While America has experienced many dark moral episodes throughout our history, we’ve always held or at least espoused a basic set of moral principles:

— That all people are born equal under the law; that power should flow up from the people rather than down from elected leaders;
— That a free press, free speech, and freedom from religion are essential to liberty;
— that defending the basic rights of all people to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is the core function of a democratic republic.

Until now.

Republicans in the House of Representatives just inserted into their must-pass “Big, Beautiful” multi-trillion-dollar-tax-break-for-billionaires legislation a provision that would enable the president to designate any nonprofit — from Harvard to the ACLU to your local Democratic Party — a “terrorist-supporting organization” that then loses their tax-exempt status, effectively putting them out of business.

And who decides who gets that designation? The president. And he gets do to it in secret.

This is exactly how both Putin and Orbán first destroyed dissent and free speech in Russia and Hungary.

https://open.substack.com/pub/...