A contingent of Democratic lawmakers rallied Tuesday evening to vote down a controversial bill that would have granted President-elect Donald Trump broad powers to censor and punish his political opponents.

Despite previous bipartisan support, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act — which would allow the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it designates as a “terrorist supporting organization” — hit a roadblock in Congress in the form Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who led the charge against the bill in large part due to Trump’s reelection.

“All of us support stopping terrorism,” Doggett said Tuesday. “[But] if he is on a march to make America fascist, we do not need to supply Donald Trump with any additional weapons to accomplish his ill purpose.”

In a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, 145 Democrats and one Republican voted “nay” — barely enough to deny the bill the two-thirds majority it needed to pass under “suspension of the rules,” a procedure used to fast-track bills with broad bipartisan support.

An earlier version of the bill had passed the House with near unanimous support before it languished in committee in the Senate. It was revived as H.R. 9495 with nearly identical language in September and combined with a similarly stalled provision to provide tax relief to Americans held hostage and unjustly imprisoned abroad.

“H.R. 9495 is a repackaged version of legislation that was originally filed months ago with good intentions, including that of some of my Democratic colleagues,” Doggett said prior to Tuesday’s vote. “With Trump’s election, the conditions have changed; the dangers of........

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