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CfA's December 15, 2023 Newsletter

With your support, Campaign for Accountability is working to expose corruption and hold the powerful accountable.

This Week's Updates:

CfA Responds to Circle’s Denial of Terror Financing Entanglements
In early November, CfA wrote to Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) alerting them to apparent entanglements between US-based crypto company Circle, Asian blockchain network TRON, and TRON’s unscrupulous founder, Justin Sun. Despite Sun’s questionable behavior—publicly known before Circle strengthened ties with him—Circle issues its USDC stablecoin on his TRON network. Some of this USDC was caught up in a July 2023 Israeli asset seizure of TRON wallets linked to the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In a letter to the Senators disputing CfA’s concerns, Circle’s Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Global Policy Dante Disparte did not deny that USDC was among the currencies that passed through the seized wallets. Instead, he argued that USDC made up only a small portion of the total assets – a confirmation that its integration with TRON can, indeed, make Circle’s currency more attractive to bad actors.

Yesterday, CfA issued a response to Circle’s denial: “Rather than addressing the matters CfA raised, Mr. Disparte sidestepped the primary allegations and instead denied claims CfA did not make,” CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith wrote in a new letter sent yesterday to Sens. Brown and Warren. “How and to what extent crypto currencies may be financing terrorist organizations and America’s enemies is not only an important banking issue, but also a critical national security matter.”

How Florida’s Anti-Abortion Centers Operate in the Shadows
This week, Reveal News published evidence of serious disfunction within the Florida Pregnancy Care Network (FPCN), a nonprofit charged with administering state funding for anti-abortion clinics known as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). In April, Florida passed $25 million in funding for FPCN to accompany a six-week abortion ban, which will go into effect if the state’s supreme court rejects a challenge to the original 15-week ban. Unlike real reproductive healthcare clinics, CPCs are largely unregulated and have no legal obligation to provide accurate information to their patients. This lack of oversight endangers pregnant women, who can receive inadequate care or medical misinformation intended to deter abortion. In Florida’s case, FPCN appears to have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to a clinic that lost its nonprofit status and was facing large tax liens from the IRS. According to Reveal News, FPCN only audited clinics for one financial quarter and gave them 30 days’ notice about upcoming reviews.

Florida isn’t the only state with a history of giving taxpayer money to clinics accused of misusing funds. In 2020, CfA called on Pennsylvania officials to investigate an anti-abortion group called Real Alternatives for failing to provide adequate patient care; their contract was finally terminated in October of this year. Prior to that, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer heeded CfA’s calls to strip funding for Real Alternatives from her state’s budget.

YouTube Quietly Hides Channel Monetization Indicator
On Tuesday, Wired reported that YouTube had removed a piece of code that indicated whether or not a channel was monetized through the YouTube Partner Program, which enables creators to earn a cut of ad revenue generated by their videos. In order to qualify, channels must be “advertiser friendly” and abide by YouTube’s Community Guidelines, which forbid hate speech and “deceptive content with risks of egregious harm.” Former beneficiaries of the YouTube Partner Program include misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, while anti-LGBTQ figures like Matt Walsh continue to profit from their channels. Unfortunately, Community Guidelines don’t actually keep this content off of YouTube. A search for “Andrew Tate” delivers videos that seem to have evaded YouTube’s policies by featuring Tate as a guest. Others are simply reposted from Tate’s Rumble account, or turned into “motivational” montages by fans. YouTube profits from the ads placed on these videos, which is bad enough, but channel monetization creates an incentive for users to repost content from Tate and other banned individuals.

A 2022 report from CfA’s Tech Transparency Project uncovered a large number of YouTube videos uploaded by anti-government militias, which used the platform to promote their activities and attract new recruits. Some of the videos received tens of thousands of views, and depicted training sessions or simulated ambushes. YouTube monetized this content with ads, even though it had removed similar channels run by groups like the Oath Keepers. Even if these channels were not part of the YouTube Partner Program, they provided a dangerous platform for those wishing to spread anti-govenment ideas–especially in the wake of January 6th. Now, thanks to this policy change, it will be impossible for journalists and independent researchers to determine if other YouTube creators are profiting from dangerous or hateful content.

What We're Reading
US SEC denies Coinbase petition for crypto rulemaking
FTC is investigating Adobe over its rules for canceling software subscriptions after years of customer complaints
Illinois agrees to stop enforcing a controversial new law cracking down on crisis pregnancy centers

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Be on the lookout for more updates about our work in the upcoming weeks. Thanks again for signing up to be a part of CfA!

Sincerely,

Michelle Kuppersmith
Executive Director, Campaign for Accountability

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