By late August the president and Congress had hammered out the Communist Control Act of 1954, which outlawed the Communist Party in America. The CPUSA was not in fact a “party,” Congress asserted, but a criminal conspiracy. Furthermore labor unions that contained any communists would be stripped of their legal standing. The Senate passed the bill 79–0, and the House could find but two nay votes against this assault on the political freedoms of American citizens to organize.
