Adam Kredo writes for the Washington Free Beacon about one way Republican senators want to limit taxpayer support for terrorist groups.
A coalition of Republican senators led by Rick Scott (Fla.) is pushing a bill that would prohibit the United States from funding a Hamas-tied U.N. agency, according to a copy of the bill obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Scott on Wednesday introduced the Stop Support for UNRWA Act of 2026 to completely ban U.S. taxpayer funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, a body that employed several individuals found to have participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel. In addition to legally enshrining the Trump administration’s move to freeze U.S. support for UNRWA, the legislation would prevent the United States from funding any successor organization that may arise in UNRWA’s place.
The legislation, which has eight GOP cosponsors as of Wednesday afternoon, comes amid an investigation into the agency and other U.N. bodies that the Office of Inspector General in USAID—an investigative entity separate from USAID—has conducted over the past several months. Federal investigators have identified three current or former UNRWA employees who participated in the Oct. 7 attack and another 14 otherwise affiliated with Hamas.
Another provision in the Stop Support for UNRWA Act would strip the agency of its diplomatic immunity under U.S. law, clearing the path for lawsuits against the body to proceed. Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 attack sued UNRWA in 2024, alleging that it ran “a billion-dollar money laundering operation that funded Hamas,” and the bill may prompt U.S. citizens affected by the Hamas attack to bring their own suits.
The bill would also stop the U.S. government from engaging with any U.N. agency, body, or commission run by a country known to support “acts of international terrorism.”
