Government agencies and officials and conservative allies are increasingly targeting nonprofit organizations for their free speech activities, according to an analysis released Oct. 26, Continuing Attacks on Nonprofit Speech: Death by a Thousand Cuts II. Leaders of several affected organizations joined the authors in describing its findings and their experiences in an audio news teleconference at OMB Watch, the publisher of the report. "The Bush administration and conservative allies have proposed or begun implementing a number of actions that taken one by one may not seem broadly significant, but taken together constitute a 'death by a thousand cuts' for advocacy by the nonprofit sector," said Kay Guinane, co-author and Counsel for the Nonprofit Advocacy Project at OMB Watch. Among actions cited are:

• Retaliatory action against government grantees that engage in controversial policy discussions or active advocacy that includes points of view different from the administration, regardless of how well those views are supported by science
• Aggressive application of the global gag rule, and signs of a back-door "domestic gag rule" that illegally imposes government rules on private funds of grantees
• Selective enforcement of laws against nonprofits engaged in direct action
• Overbroad implementation of homeland security policy that chills the nonprofit policy voice.

One example is Advocates for Youth, which was subjected to three government audits within one year in apparent retaliation for criticizing the Bush administration's abstinence-only policies as "having no grounding in science-based public health." In addition to the audits, James Wagoner, the group's President, projects it will receive roughly $700,000 less in CDC AIDS prevention funding in fiscal year 2005. "There is little doubt among our staff that politics and ideology are at play." Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor President Nazih Hassan described government intimidation targeted at Islamic organizations. "The mosque leadership has been quite vocal in its criticism of the wide net that has been cast over the Muslim community. We are very concerned about investigations of our members when we have done nothing wrong and merely spoken out when we disagreed with government actions." Other speakers included: Co-author Robert Bothwell, former executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project on Government Oversight; Ronald Herndon, Chairman of the Board, National Head Start Association and Dr. Nils Daulaire, President and CEO of the Global Health Council. Get the full report and related documents at www.ombwatch.org