Hundreds of nonprofit groups, most of them left-leaning, are becoming a member of collectively to induce President Donald Trump to finish what they name the “unjustified” concentrating on of liberal organizations following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In an open letter issued Thursday and shared first with NCS, greater than 500 groups condemned what they described because the use of authorities energy to threaten their First Amendment rights. Organizations signing the letter ranged from the American Civil Liberties Union and Indivisible to Greenpeace USA and the Service Employees International Union.
Trump and others in his administration have invoked Kirk’s killing at a Utah college campus final week to say they are going to crack down on groups that they view as half of a coordinated left-wing effort to incite violence.
“Political violence has targeted those of every political persuasion and of no political persuasion,” the groups mentioned. “It is un-American and wrong to use this act of violence as a pretext for weaponizing the government to threaten nonprofit and charitable organizations, other perceived adversaries, or any class of people.”
“They did not commit this murder,” the letter added, “and the vast powers of the government should not be abused to threaten their constitutionally-protected free speech and other rights.”
The actions publicly floated by the president and a few conservatives embrace revoking the tax-exempt standing of left-leaning non-profits and launching racketeering investigations of organizations which have helped coordinate or fund protests against Trump’s insurance policies.
So far, Trump has announced that he’s designating the far-left motion Antifa as a terrorist group, though it was not instantly clear how administration intends to hold out the designation.
“The assassination of Kirk was a tragedy for his family and a danger for the nation,” mentioned Lisa Gilbert, the co-president of Public Citizen, which helped manage Thursday’s public assertion from the liberal groups. “It is unconscionable to exploit this dangerous political moment to further divisions and violate rights, when what we desperately need right now is to lower the temperature of our discourse and bring the country together.”
NCS has reached out to the White House for a response.
The letter from the nonprofits follows the same motion Wednesday from greater than 100 philanthropies who banded collectively to defend free speech. In that letter, the foundations defended their work and denounced what they mentioned had been efforts to “exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work of restrict our fundamental freedoms.”
Signatories included the Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic group based by billionaire financier and Democratic donor George Soros, who has been a repeated target of scorn from Trump and the appropriate.