Today, in a letter addressed to President Joe Biden and the State Department, 15 Congress members on the “Republican Study Committee” claimed the U.S. government is using taxpayer dollars to “promote atheism worldwide.”

If that sounds bizarre to you, you’d be right, because that’s not even close to what’s actually happening.

Here’s the backstory: In April of 2021, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor announced that it would be offering one or two grants totaling $500,000 to groups that wanted to fund a project to “support Religious Freedom globally.” In particular, this money was meant to help people often branded as apostates. Examples of possible projects listed on the website include “legal rights advocacy” (to protect non-theists in majority-religious nations), journalism (to promote dialogue between religion/non-religious people and address mutually beneficial goals of religious freedom for all), and increasing the capacity to document abuses of religious freedom.