Trump IRS Nominee Wanted to Shut Down the Humane Society

There are a surprising number of animal activists who held out hope a second Donald Trump presidency would be good for nonhuman welfare or at least less damaging than a Kamala Harris White House. I often had a hard time sorting out whether these campaigners were naive, contrarian, or fundamentally conservative. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The Democrats are indisputably bad on animal issues. But in every measurable sense, they’re far better than the Republicans. For instance, almost all of the politicians who receive 100-percent ratings from the Humane Society Legislative Fund are Democrats. Almost all of those who receive zero-percent ratings are Republicans.

Similarly, almost all of the politicians seeking to advance cellular agriculture are Democrats. Almost all of those seeking to outlaw it are Republicans. Further, the only state in the country that has a ban on fur sales and manufacturing is California, which is controlled by — you guessed it — Democrats. On issue after issue relevant to animal treatment, the choice is clear.

In the latest example of this partisan difference, Trump’s nominee for the head of the Internal Revenue Service, former Missouri Representative Billy Long, previously sought to undermine the nonprofit status of the Humane Society of the United States. In 2011, Long requested the IRS probe HSUS due to the latter’s support for a ballot measure regulating dog breeders.

As journalists David Sirota and Helen Santoro wrote in a piece for The Lever, which broke the story, the former Missouri representative would be in a position to strip the tax-exempt status of groups he disagreed with if confirmed to lead the IRS. This would effectively shut down those organizations. For those unaware, HSUS is the largest and most mainstream animal group in the country.

Assuming Republicans wouldn’t take such a seemingly drastic step seems foolish in the Trump era. They might not, but they very much could. Conservatives have methodically destroyed political guardrails we’ve long assumed to be stable. I invite animal activists to consider how Republicans might treat more progressive groups, if they consider targeting HSUS in this way.

In the past, I’ve talked about nonhuman issues being pre-partisan. That’s true to a certain extent. I imagine party divisions will be much more stark when animal exploitation comes under greater threat, perhaps with the emergence of cultivated meat that tastes the same and is cheaper to produce than slaughtered meat. But, if we’re honest, a great deal of political sorting has already taken place.

Any activist who can’t tell you that is either misinformed or misleading you for whatever reason. Nonprofit animal groups do a lot of good work. One of their biggest weaknesses, however, is their legal need to stick to a bipartisan approach. As Long’s past efforts suggest, maybe this is unavoidable. But there’s no reason unaffiliated activists should adopt that stance.

It’s self-defeating. Individual and corporate change for animals is ineffective and often temporary. Political change, while by no means perfect or necessarily permanent, is more comprehensive and harder to roll back. In order to enact political change, activists need to be clear about which of the two major political parties is more open to helping other creatures.

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