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Dear Friend of Press Freedom, 

As March roars in like a lion, we’re here to help you navigate the threats stalking journalists and the press. Here’s the latest.

Hands off Texas’ anti-SLAPP law

The Texas Citizens Participation Act strongly protects journalists and others in Texas who face meritless lawsuits based on speech, known as SLAPPs. But new bills in the statehouse could change that.  

To understand how these proposals would harm Texans’ First Amendment rights if passed, we spoke to Carol Hemphill, who was SLAPPed in Texas for posting a negative online review, and the lawyer who represented her, JT Morris. 

“The public needs to be assured that they are free to speak out about potentially harmful situations without fear of serious financial repercussions,” Hemphill told us. Read our full Q&A here.

Sunsetting Section 230 would stifle free speech

With the largest social media operators in the U.S. either directly intertwined with President Donald Trump’s administration or kissing the presidential ring, you’d think Trump’s opposition would support alternative platforms. Democrats wouldn’t make it so expensive to run a social media platform that only those loyal to Trump can stay in business. Right?

Wrong. As Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Advocacy Director Seth Stern explains in the Chicago Sun-Times, a proposal by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin to sunset Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would do just that. Repealing Section 230, Stern writes, “will only empower the worst offenders and bankrupt their competition.” Read the full op-ed here.

‘Fox & Friends’ no friend to press freedom

Lawrence Jones and his co-hosts at “Fox & Friends” recently suggested that police “go after” Pablo Manríquez, the editor of Migrant Insider, a Washington, D.C.-based newsletter that covers migrant policy and politics. 

Manríquez’s alleged crime? Receiving a tip from a source and breaking the news about planned raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in northern Virginia.

We wrote about how the First Amendment protects reporting about ICE by Manríquez and other journalists — and why “Fox & Friends” may come to regret supporting prosecutions of journalists. Read the whole thing here.

Make surveillance information public

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has pledged to “uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools” like Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

She can start by ensuring that Congress and the American people have information they need to assess the impact of Section 702. That’s why FPF joined a coalition letter led by the American Civil Liberties Union asking Gabbard to publish an estimate of the number of U.S. persons whose communications are collected under Section 702 surveillance and to declassify information about the terrifying spy draft amendment to Section 702 made in the last Congress. Read the full letter here.

What we’re reading

Prosecutors drop case against Stanford student journalist (Columbia Journalism Review). We’re glad charges were dropped following the unjust arrest of this student journalist, but it should have been blindingly obvious from the beginning that he did nothing more than report the news.

Why it matters who asks the questions (The Atlantic). Imagine a world where only sycophants can question the president, and any journalists who dare to ask hard questions get kicked out of the room. That’s the path America is on. 

‘A clear attempt to intimidate the press’ (WBUR-FM). Once again, legendary First Amendment lawyer James Goodale says it best: “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. . . . [I]f you're gonna be in the First Amendment business, you gotta stand up and fight.”

Shell-shocked at CBS (Status). News outlets can't effectively expose corruption when they’re part of it. How can the public trust CBS journalists to cover the same administration that their bosses are bribing?

No entry (Columbia Journalism Review). The pre-ceasefire excuse for barring foreign journalists was that they’d somehow interfere with military operations (as opposed to Palestinian journalists who the IDF seemingly feels free to kill at will). So what’s the excuse now?

Voice of America journalists face investigations for Trump comments (The New York Times). Investigating journalists for accurately reporting comments critical of the Dear Leader is something we used to expect from North Korea, Iran, and Russia — not the United States.

Secret arrests, hidden jail rosters, shrouded records: Immigration court lacks the transparency of other courts, experts say (Cleveland.com). If it sounds un-American, that's because it is.

Requester’s Voice: The Invisible Institute’s Jamie Kalven (MuckRock). “Transparency shouldn’t be just a reluctant concession to the public. It should be a principle of governance.”

Come see us in Chicago

Join FPF and other great organizations in Chicago on March 13 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Central Standard Time for an important forum on safeguarding journalism and supporting Chicago area journalists in protecting the integrity of their work. RSVP through an attending organization to register. 

How to share sensitive leaks with the press

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by Jesse Coburn

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is considering taking a first step to using cryptocurrency, according to a meeting recording and other materials reviewed by ProPublica and three officials familiar with the matter. Two officials told ProPublica they believe the initiative may be a trial run for the use of crypto across the federal government.

The discussions have sparked concern among some at the department, especially about the prospect of paying recipients of major federal grants in cryptocurrency, an uninsured digital asset associated with financial speculation, dramatic swings in value and transnational crime.

The focus of the discussions so far has been experimenting with using the underlying technology that makes crypto possible — the blockchain — to monitor HUD grants. Blockchain advocates argue that the technology is valuable on its own for such purposes. But the primary use of blockchain, according to experts, is for crypto transactions.

“It’s just introducing another unregulated security into the housing market as though 2008, 2009 didn’t happen,” one HUD staffer said, referring to the subprime mortgage crisis. “I don’t see any way this will help anything. I see a lot of ways this could hurt,” said the official, who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The HUD discussions have covered the potential use of a stablecoin, a form of crypto that is pegged to another asset to avoid wild swings in value, although such swings have happened in the past.

The blockchain idea is being pushed, a HUD official told colleagues, by Irving Dennis. Dennis, the agency’s new principal deputy chief financial officer, is a former partner at the global consulting giant EY, also commonly known by its original name, Ernst & Young. EY itself is involved in the proposal as well: An executive of the firm discussed the idea with HUD officials last month.

The crypto industry has found an ally in President Donald Trump, whose administration has tapped industry boosters to lead federal agencies, backed off investigations into crypto firms and created a “strategic Bitcoin reserve.” (Bitcoin plunged $5,000 within an hour of the news of the reserve’s opening on Thursday.) Trump himself has significant financial interests in crypto. On Friday, the White House is scheduled to host a “crypto summit” with leading figures from the industry.

The proposal at HUD indicates a new way that the administration may seek to bolster the industry: by incorporating blockchain and possibly cryptocurrency into the routine spending and accounting practices of federal agencies. It’s a move that would align with the apparent desire of Trump adviser Elon Musk to use the blockchain to monitor federal spending.

Dennis and HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett both denied the accounts of their colleagues. “The department has no plans for blockchain or stablecoin,” Lovett said. “Education is not implementation.”

Robert Judson, the EY executive involved in the conversations, confirmed that they took place. “We as a firm were having discussions with select individuals at that agency,” he said when reached by phone. Judson told ProPublica he would seek EY’s approval for a full interview, then didn’t call back.

The White House, EY and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

HUD officials held at least two meetings about the blockchain proposal last month. A list of attendees to the first meeting included staffers from the offices of the CFO and Community Planning and Development. CPD administers billions of dollars in grants that support low- and moderate-income people, including funding to develop affordable housing, run homeless shelters, support disaster recovery, relocate domestic violence survivors and build parks, sewers and community centers. It was the CFO’s office that called for the meeting, one person told ProPublica.

Also listed as a meeting attendee was Judson from EY. For years Judson has advocated for the blockchain, a digital ledger of sorts that creates an immutable record of transactions saved across multiple computers. Boosters of the technology cast it as a way to cut middlemen such as banks and credit card companies out of financial transactions and make those transactions more transparent and secure. Judson has written that the blockchain can help organizations prevent money from being siphoned off for unintended purposes. “As digital assets such as stable coins or digital currencies take hold, more powerful applications will emerge for integrated value exchange,” he wrote. Dennis, who served as HUD CFO in the first Trump administration, also wrote, in a 2021 book, that the agency should use technology such as “blockchain, robotics, and next-generation financial management systems.”

Stablecoins are backed by reserves including traditional currency, commodities and Treasury securities. That is supposed to ensure that their value — unlike that of, say, Bitcoin — doesn’t fluctuate. However, on several high-profile occasions, the value of stablecoins has done just that.

At the HUD meeting, attendees discussed a “proof of concept” project in which CPD would begin to track the funding going to a single CPD grant recipient and possibly subrecipients on the blockchain. The need for the project was “not well articulated,” one attendee later wrote in meeting notes.

Following the meeting, a HUD official wrote and circulated a memo within the agency panning the idea. “Without exaggeration, every imaginable implementation of this at HUD appears dangerous and inefficient,” the memo reads.

HUD has no difficulty tracking grant spending, the memo contended, making the new technology unnecessary. Incorporating it would be time-consuming, complicated and require extensive training. And, if the project involved paying grantees in cryptocurrency instead of dollars, it would inject volatility and unpredictability into the funding stream, even if the currency was a stablecoin.

In subsequent discussions with HUD staffers, the memo’s author described the proposal as a “beachhead” at HUD for the introduction of cryptocurrency, which the author compared to “monopoly money.”

CPD officials continued to raise concerns in a follow-up meeting, a recording of which was reviewed by ProPublica. (Judson did not attend this one.) Some attendees saw merit in the blockchain idea, suggesting it could reduce inaccurate data from grant recipients and enable real-time reporting and monitoring of their spending.

“Maybe there is something that we could learn from it,” one said, “especially if we feel like the broader federal government is moving towards some sort of stablecoin option in the future.”

One official asked why the agency was considering the project. “Because it’s sexy,” someone replied. Another said, “Irv has asked us to pursue blockchain, so that’s why we are looking at it,” referring to Dennis.

Many details were left unexplained at the meeting, including, crucially, whether the proposal would involve paying grantees in cryptocurrency. But some signaled that it would.

“You can do it with what would be attached to a stable currency. That would be up to Treasury, and I think they’re already going that way, for what it’s worth,” one official said. “It would simulate the dollar.”

Another added, “It would basically be a cryptocurrency that is linked to the U.S. dollar on a one-for-one basis.”

A finance official suggested the idea could be applied more broadly across HUD. “We are looking at this for the entire enterprise. We just wanted to start in CPD,” he said. The agency is also considering the idea for the Office of Public and Indian Housing, he said, for “tenant eligibility and stuff like that.” That office serves the millions of people who live in public and federally subsidized housing.

This is not the first time that federal officials have considered incorporating the blockchain into the work of the government. Agencies including the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce and even HUD have been involved in a study, a prototype and a working group in recent years. But those who monitor the crypto industry were not aware of as broad an application of the technology in the federal government as what HUD officials have recently discussed.

Some crypto experts were dubious. “It’s a terrible idea,” said Corey Frayer, a former official at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he focused on the crypto markets and financial stability. “It is absolutely wild that anyone with any sense would consider this.”

Frayer, now at the Consumer Federation of America, warned that HUD grants paid in stablecoin could fall in value. He expressed greatest concern about the notion that the proposal could expand to other parts of the agency. If that included, for example, introducing stablecoin into the $1.3 trillion in mortgage insurance provided by the Federal Housing Administration, a fluctuation in the value of the stablecoin could have a major economic impact, he said.

“Imagine a world in which all of the government involvement in the housing industry, all of the funds circulating in that environment, dropped in value by 13%,” he said, citing a 2023 episode in which a stablecoin briefly fell 13 cents below the dollar. “It’s hard to imagine that wouldn’t be catastrophic.”

Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who researches financial regulation and technology, noted that some high-profile attempts to use the blockchain for purposes unrelated to cryptocurrency have failed. She expressed skepticism that the technology would fare better in the context of government grants, where bad outcomes could harm those who depend on HUD funding to survive.

“Blockchain technology has been around for 15 years. No one wants to use it. And so now we have an attempt to force the government to use it,” she said, with “the most vulnerable people” serving “as guinea pigs.”

Mollie Simon contributed research.

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