Rep. Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who heads the panel's human rights subcommittee, are reviving a nearly year-long inquiry into a 2021 State Department grant they say is designed to expand the influence of atheists and humanists in the Middle East and North Africa.

The GOP House members argue that the program could be violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which bars the use of tax dollars to promote theocracy or a specific religion.

McCaul, Smith, and Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, last week sent a letter to Erin Barclay, the State Department's acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs, and Rashad Hussain, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The letter accuses both officials of "continued noncompliance" with their document requests regarding the atheism program.