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<\/p>\nSeth Stern is the director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The House Ways<\/span> and Means Committee last week carried out an attack on journalism that hasn\u2019t gotten the attention it deserves. The committee subpoenaed<\/a> BreakThrough News, a left-wing outlet with deep ties to the Party for Socialism and Liberation that is highly critical of the United States and Israel, along with two other nonprofits with similar ideologies, The People\u2019s Forum and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.\u00a0<\/p>\n The subpoena deserves the same scrutiny as those issued to New York Times reporters<\/a> over their reporting on security issues with President Donald Trump\u2019s Qatari jet, which, after significant pushback in the courts of law and public opinion, the government withdrew<\/a> Thursday \u2014 the same day BreakThrough announced its receipt of the legal orders.<\/p>\n Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for BreakThrough, called the committee \u201ca modern day HUAC,\u201d the McCarthy-era committee on so-called \u201cun-American\u201d activities. Communists aren\u2019t the only ones who should be concerned. As Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, put it: \u201cAttacks on independent, alternative, or radical media have troubling history. It is always the I.F. Stones or the WikiLeaks who are first on the firing line.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ways and Means Committee is claiming its investigation is a tax-related probe into more than $39 million that flowed from Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen and tech financier based in Shanghai, to the groups, which it claims advance Chinese Communist Party-aligned interests. But we\u2019ve seen that playbook before: Around the globe, financial probes have been used as pretexts to stifle journalism and dissent, and there\u2019s every indication that this is the latest example.\u00a0<\/p>\n BreakThrough News has been criticized for favorable coverage of China and other U.S. adversaries, which it indeed publishes<\/a>. But favorable coverage of foreign adversaries \u2014 even in the form of propaganda \u2014 is protected by the Constitution. And BreakThrough\u2019s leadership held those positions long<\/a> before they had any alleged connection to Singham.<\/p>\n \u201c The First Amendment was specifically written to protect journalism that the government does not approve of.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n BreakThrough\u2019s editor-in-chief, Ben Becker, had a common-sense observation: \u201cThe First Amendment was specifically written to protect journalism that the government does not approve of. Journalism approved by the government wouldn\u2019t need protection,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why so many of the country\u2019s decisive free speech cases involved the abolitionist press, the radical labor press and the antiwar press. \u2026 But history looks back on these episodes for what they were \u2014 shameful violations of free speech \u2014 and that\u2019s the same thing that\u2019s happening here.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the committee denies it is engaging in content-based retaliation in its most recent letter, past correspondence<\/a> does little to refute Becker\u2019s framing, citing no evidence of any kind of financial illegality and instead focusing on BreakThrough News\u2019 critical coverage of ICE and Israel and criticizing its connections to the PSL, a lawfully organized domestic political party, which it says, \u201corchestrated the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots in Los Angeles resulting in violence and dozens of arrests last June.\u201d<\/p>\n My Freedom of the Press Foundation colleague Adam Rose, who also serves as press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, found that last part particularly infuriating (PSL and its leadership have not been charged with any offenses relating to violence in LA). The government, Rose said, has \u201cfailed to investigate the documented wholesale violence by federal agents against press and protesters\u201d in LA<\/a>. \u201cMaybe instead of a foreign state, our elected representatives should be more concerned about our own state violence against innocent civilians in our local streets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s another problem with the probe of BreakThrough. Putting aside the subpoenas\u2019 flimsy evidentiary backing, House subpoenas must carry a legislative purpose<\/a>. Why would the committee need a fishing expedition into the finances of a few leftist nonprofits to decide whether legislative reforms are necessary? The committee\u2019s letter claims to have already spotted the gap in nonprofit tax law they contend Singham is exploiting, and it cites plenty of public reporting<\/a> on his network, so it\u2019s unclear what other information its members need that could conceivably justify congressional action as extreme as subpoenaing news outlets. If the best argument they can come up with for their contemplated legislation is that three obscure organizations were funded by an American citizen living abroad, maybe they should find other fish to fry.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Breakthrough\u2019s chief correspondent Rania Khalek recently said<\/a>, \u201cI think this is really just about trying to bury us in legal proceedings until we\u2019ve basically run out of money or stop reporting out of intimidation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BreakThrough is far from the first victim of this censorial playbook. Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s government in the Philippines, for example, filed a series of tax evasion cases against Rappler, the investigative outlet led by journalist Maria Ressa, due to its alleged acceptance of foreign investments (Ressa is a former board member of The Intercept). Advocates described the cases as part of a broader legal campaign designed to wear the outlet down<\/a>. It took years and a change of administration before courts acquitted<\/a> Ressa and Rappler. Authorities in Azerbaijan<\/a> have also repeatedly brought pretextual financial charges including tax evasion against investigative journalism they sought to suppress.<\/p>\n There are also examples closer to home \u2014 not just from Red Scares decades ago, but in present-day Florida. A 2025 state law<\/a> restricts nonprofits from accepting funds from broadly defined \u201cforeign sources of concern\u201d tied to countries like China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran, while a related \u201cHonest Services Registry\u201d asks charities to affirm they\u2019re free of such foreign influence. A separate domestic terrorism law lets state officials designate organizations as terrorist groups \u2014 organizations like the Muslim civil rights group CAIR and the amorphous non-entity the government calls \u201cantifa\u201d have already received<\/a> the designation.<\/p>\n Florida First Amendment Foundation executive director Bobby Block explained the agenda in an email: \u201cMake people wonder whether joining an organization, donating to a cause, attending a protest or expressing an unpopular viewpoint could put them under a government microscope, and some will simply decide to remain silent. That\u2019s the chilling effect the First Amendment is supposed to protect against.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Combined with the administration\u2019s crackdown<\/a> on purported domestic terror<\/a> outlined by National Security Presidential Memorandum 7; Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s bizarre memorandum<\/a> claiming a Cuban conspiracy to spread communism stateside; and the countless other suppression of dissent we\u2019ve seen from Trump allies, all of them predictably targeting speakers whose politics differ from the president\u2019s \u2014 it\u2019s not hard to spot the endgame.<\/p>\n\n