Officials say the Trump admin is withholding $20M approved by Congress for the Open Technology Fund, forcing the fund to halt 49 of 60 internet freedom projects
The Trump administration is withholding $20 million in funding approved by Congress for a U.S. Internet freedom organization … Tweets: @hsu_spencer and @evacide Tweets: Spencer Hsu / @hsu_spencer : NEW Trump administration withholds $20 million from @opentechfund, crippling international, U.S.-led Internet freedom effort and anti-censorship and anti-surveillance tools used by activists and journalists in Iran, China and elsewhere. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Eva / @evacide : I cannot stress enough how key OTF has been to funding the tools people all over the world rely on for security and anonymity online, and how harmful it is to withhold those funds. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
The funding freeze lands on top of months of institutional chaos at the fund that bankrolled Signal: in June 2020 the entire leadership team was abruptly fired and its CEO resigned. The withheld $20 million converts that governance turmoil into an operational crisis, with Michael Pack's USAGM holding back money Congress already appropriated.
The move sets up a direct collision between the executive branch's new management and Capitol Hill's power of the purse — a fight the fund escalated weeks later when it took USAGM to court.
First-order effects
- 49 of the fund's 60 active projects stop work immediately, cutting off development and maintenance of the anti-censorship and anti-surveillance tools activists and journalists in Iran, China, and other tightly controlled countries rely on daily.
- Grantees who had built security tooling around OTF grants face an abrupt funding cliff with no replacement source named.
Second-order effects
- The fund's response — suing USAGM over the withheld money — turns an internal budget dispute into a legal test of whether political appointees can redirect congressionally appropriated funds.
- Pack followed the freeze with documented attempts to cut the fund's budget entirely, forcing Congress and civil-society groups to decide whether to defend the program through appropriations fights rather than rely on agency goodwill.
Third-order effects
- The squeeze proved durable: by 2025, eliminating USAGM cut the fund's budget outright, and reporting in early 2026 found the broader Internet Freedom program — which had dispensed more than $500 million since 2016 — effectively gutted, leaving populations under repressive regimes without U.S.-backed access tools.
- A program once treated as settled bipartisan policy became structurally dependent on whichever administration controlled USAGM — an argument for statutory protection if such programs are ever rebuilt.
The trend: U.S.-funded internet freedom infrastructure is being dismantled through successive administrative actions, shifting the burden of supporting censorship-evasion tools away from the American state.