Herblock believed that the House Un-American Activities Committee overstepped its bounds first by defining what was un-American and then by acting as a court and judging. Here, he satirizes Congressmen Richard Nixon, J. Parnell Thomas, and Karl Mundt as destroyers of American liberty days before they sent the Mundt-Nixon Bill regulating communist activities to the members of the House for a vote. The bill passed on May 19, 1948, three days after this cartoon appeared, by a vote of 319–58.