This story initially was released by Real Clear Wire
By Susan Crabtree
Real Clear Wire
House Republicans are growing significantly annoyed with what they refer to as the State Department’s efforts to hinder their examination into the choice to greenlight $500,000 for a program promoting atheism overseas.
Rep. Michael McCaul, who chairs your house Foreign Affairs Committee, is now mulling his next actions, which might consist of legislation, subpoenas, or other oversight alternatives targeted at requiring the State Department to adhere to the probe’s ask for details, according to panel personnel. McCaul and numerous other House Republicans are requiring more info about the 2021 State Department atheism grant and how the funds are being utilized.
Republican legislators have actually grumbled about what they refer to as the department’s slow-walking of their actions to committee queries and demands over the last 15 months. They are especially disturbed over the firm’s rejection to make crucial authorities readily available for interviews.
Since ending up being speaker in late October, Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and singing Christian, has actually highly supported McCaul’s probe into the $500,000 atheism grant. Johnson and others desire responses from the State Department about the extraordinary grant award that they state is targeted at promoting and broadening the impact of atheists and humanists in the Middle East and North Africa.
McCaul and other GOP House members associated with the probe argue the program might be breaching the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which restricts using tax dollars to promote theocracy or a particular faith due to the fact that the grant offers funds to particular groups however not others in particular nations.
” It’s not made complex– the United States should not be moneying atheism anywhere– not in your home, and not in the Middle East,” Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican from Oklahoma, informed RealClearPolitics. “It’s been over a year, and still no responses from the State Department. What is going on here?”
In the summer season of 2022, Indiana Rep. Jim Banks led the very first effort to push Secretary of State Antony Blinken for responses about the grant. He implicates the Biden administration of “laundering cash to atheists in foreign nations through an unconstitutional and un-American grant program.”
” I’ve sent out numerous queries over the previous year and a half, and the State Department continues to conceal fundamental info about the program from me and the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Banks stated. “This administration has actually overlooked the Constitution, Congress, and the American public in pursuit of its radical, far-left program.”
In August, McCaul and GOP Reps. Brian Mast of Florida and Chris Smith of New Jersey, who heads the panel’s human rights subcommittee, composed to the State Department, pushing the company to adhere to its demands. They likewise grumbled that the files the State Department supplied either stopped working to address their concerns or raised brand-new concerns concerning the company’s grant evaluation procedure. The August letter was resolved to Erin Barclay, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and Rashad Hussain, ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom.
The legislators likewise differed with the State Department’s claim that it does not supply funds to any company with “the objective of utilizing such funds to promote or advance particular spiritual ideologies or beliefs.” The Republican trio stated the declaration “straight opposes the language” in the Notice of Funding Opportunity granting the grant, which they argued “makes it clear that the intent of the financed programs was to broaden atheists’ existence and impact in the appropriate nations.”
The 2021 $500,000 grant, entitled “Promoting and Defending Religious Freedom Inclusive of Atheist, Humanist, Non-Practicing and Non-Affiliated Individuals,” marks the very first time the U.S. federal government has actually carried taxpayer dollars to a company promoting atheism and humanism. The financing alert mentions that the receivers’ programs must be created to affect 2 to 3 nations throughout South and Central Asia or the Middle East and North Africa.
But the legislators argue that the program promotes the interest of one particular spiritual custom– humanism– instead of those of all faith-based minorities. The grant ultimately went to Humanists International, or HI, a U.K.-based company focused on promoting humanism, an outlook or system of idea connecting prime value to human effort instead of magnificent or supernatural powers.
In their August letter to the Department, your house critics asserted that “even a brief check out the operations and mantra” of Humanists International casts doubt on the company’s claim that it is not offering funds to promote or advance particular spiritual ideologies or beliefs.
On HI’s site, the company needs all of its member companies to pay charges and support its 5 goals, the very first of which is “the improvement of humanism,” the Republicans explain. HI’s grant application particularly mentions that it will award sub-grants for “arranging occasions and workshops to promote the favorable elements of humanism and other ethical non-religious worldviews,” consisting of atheism, included McCaul, Smith, and Mast.
Early in the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed a shift far from focusing on spiritual liberty over other human rights.
” Religious liberty is co-equal with other human rights due to the fact that human rights are indivisible,” Blinken stated in May2021 “Religious liberty is not more or less crucial than the flexibility to speak and put together, to get involved in the political life of one’s nation, to live complimentary from abuse or slavery, or any other human. They’re all synergistic.”
Last week, the State Department protected its action to your home Foreign Affairs Committee’s examination, stating it has actually been “robust,” including numerous letters, numerous congressional personnel rundowns, and more than 2,000 files to date. The Office of International Religious Freedom, which handles the grant program, likewise has actually informed House Foreign Affairs Committee personnel various times, a State Department representative informed RCP.
” The Department of State does not specify what is and is not a faith,” the representative kept in mind in a declaration. “Consistent with First Amendment concepts, Department of State programs never ever promote particular spiritual approaches or teachings; rather, they promote the rights of all individuals [to] live devoid of abuse or discrimination on the basis of whatever their selected faith or beliefs might be.”
” Programs are developed to offer tools and assistance to people and neighborhoods dealing with persecution, abuses, harassment, discrimination, and violence on account of their religious beliefs, beliefs or non-beliefs,” the representative continued.
The State Department authorities likewise indicated the contents of the 2016 Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, or IRFA, which mentions “that spiritual persecution and the particular targeting of non-theists, humanists and atheists due to the fact that of their beliefs is frequently prevalent, organized, and abhorrent.” The law likewise mentions that spiritual flexibility consists of the defense of both theistic and non-theistic beliefs and the right not to proclaim or practice any faith.
The Republicans counter that the State Department just offered files to the committee a year and a half after their very first demand, which the instructions did not please the demands and took place before the committee had the appropriate files. The legislators easily acknowledge that the law mentions that nonbelievers and atheists have a right to exist without persecution however likewise argue it states absolutely nothing about needing grants to fund atheistic beliefs or broaden the existence and impact of atheists and humanists overseas.
The Republicans likewise wish to know why the State Department does not specify what is and is not a faith since any group might self-define as spiritual for functions of IRFA and look for spiritual liberty grants.
In the case of this $500,000 grant, the Republicans compete, there’s no concern that it is assisting to promote humanism and atheism overseas regardless of the constitutional problems it raises. In their August letter, McCaul, Smith, and Mast likewise worried that HI works carefully with member companies that submit suits developed to promote humanism locally, “typically to the hinderance of other spiritual creeds.”
The companies consist of the American Humanist Association, or AHA, which shares a Washington, D.C. address with HI and American Atheists.
” Far from advancing spiritual flexibility, AHA typically acts that are antithetical to the concept of spiritual flexibility,” they composed. “HI’s close association with AHA speaks volumes about the real goals of HI and need to be of severe issue to the [State] Department.”
The post McCaul Mulls Subpoena for State in Atheism Grant Probe appeared initially on The Gateway Pundit
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