Keep politics out of parishes, nonprofits say in letter to Trump

Source: Courthouse News Service

July 30, 2025


WASHINGTON (CN) — Over 1,000 nonprofits launched a national campaign on Wednesday against the White House’s effort to allow churches to engage in partisan politics, pushing President Donald Trump to uphold a decades-old provision of the tax code.

Tax-exempt organizations have been barred from participating in political campaigns for candidates for public office since 1954, when then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson proposed what would be known as the Johnson Amendment.

However, the Trump administration freed houses of worship to endorse candidates in a court filing earlier this month. A slew of nonprofits pushed back on Wednesday, warning that the move fundamentally reshaped how political money flows through the government.

“If successful, it would open the door for political actors to use charitable nonprofits as conduits for anonymous campaign funding, benefiting from substantial tax write-offs while shifting the financial burden onto taxpayers who may disagree with the candidates or causes being supported,” the groups wrote in a letter to the president.

Read more: https://www.courthousenews.com/keep-politics-out-of-parishes-nonprofits-say-in-letter-to-trump/