organizations

It’s unclear how much sway Rios had on voters, but the endorsements appeared to violate a federal law from 1954 that prohibits religious organizations and nonprofits from endorsing or opposing political candidates, which President Trump may once again attempt to repeal amid Republican control of Congress.

The Johnson Amendment — named after sponsor Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a Democratic senator from Texas at the time — states that all nonprofit organizations are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for elective public office,” according to the Internal Revenue Service.

The following year, Trump signed an executive order limiting sanctions against religious organizations for speaking about moral or political issues from a religious perspective.

“If you hire too many political hacks, you might get a lot of responsiveness, but if you cut organizations to the bone, it’s going to be harder for you to achieve your core goals.”

I realized I’d read them in the archives of one man — a man who died less than three weeks before Crusius’ crime but who, decades before, foresaw this collision of climate change and nativist fears coming and used it to set the country on its precarious course, creating the most powerful anti-immigrant organizations in the country today.