Trump admin to target far-left Soros group, SPLC, CAIR in crackdown on 'bogus charities': report

The Trump administration is set to go after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in a major tax crackdown, according to a report from the New York Post.

The crackdown will be part of the president's efforts to crack down on "bogus charities" that are abusing the tax code. Treasury officials have been preparing to audit the various left-wing organizations as part of that push, per the report.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and aides have been drafting a plan that would strip those "charities" that are non-compliant with the tax code of their 501(c)(3) status, which allows for heavy tax benefits. Sources that spoke to the outlet said that massive back payments and fines could result from the audits.

The plans from the Treasury Department use the tools from an executive order from Trump that was signed in 2025 to target nonprofits that operate with “substantial illegal purpose." The order also targets tax-exempt organizations that are allegedly tied to violence or extremism.

One source compared the Treasury to "a dog with a bone" and added that groups in non-compliance are "on borrowed time."

“There’s a lot of internal pressure to get it done, but some people are still moving too slowly at the IRS,” the source told the Post. “That is expected to change very soon.”

However, the crackdown is facing legal pushback. The left-leaning organization Protect Democracy sued the Treasury and IRS, alleging that the Trump administration is using the tax code to target organizations over political views.

There has been pressure from some administration officials to get “a good chunk of the crackdown" done before the midterms, as the Democrats have a good shot at taking back control of Congress, per the outlet. However, others have argued that the Trump administration should delay enforcement until later in the president's term, saying that the formal crackdown could lead to longer legal battles. The outlet reported that there are fears that cracking down on political organizations such as the SPLC and the Soros network will lead to a slew of legal action and prevent the administration from going after foreign groups like CAIR.

An analysis from the New York Post shows that if the SPLC, CAIR, and Open Society Foundations were to all lose their tax-exempt status, roughly $165 million would be owed in combined taxes, with the Soros network accounting for $163.6 million of that figure.

A spokesman for the Open Society Foundations said in response, “Threatening any nonprofit’s tax status for political reasons would be nothing more than an illegal attempt to target and stifle work that the administration disagrees with.” CAIR and the SPLC did not respond to the Post for comment.