“The Open Technology Fund provides a lifeline for people living under oppressive regimes, including citizens of China, Hong Kong, and Iran, by allowing them to safely communicate with the outside world and each other,” said McCaul, who also serves as the chairman of the House GOP’s China Task Force.

“Unfortunately, this critical programming is on the brink of collapse. I ask that [U.S. Agency for Global Media] live up to its grant agreements and release these funds as soon as possible.”

Separately, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate commerce committee’s Internet subpanel, said, “Any interruption of OTF’s work would strengthen these adversaries’ efforts to undermine free speech and limit access to information — and even endanger activists and journalists working on-the-ground to advance freedom in their societies.”

A spokesperson for Michael Pack, President Trump’s newly appointed director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and the agency did not respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon.

The warnings from Congress come amid a deepening power struggle between the Open Technology Fund and Pack. The agency oversees U.S. government-funded news outlets including the fund, VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcast Networks.

Critics say the moves by Pack, a conservative filmmaker and ally of former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, have aided religious freedom advocates supporting the use of censorship circumvention software developed by Falun Gong, a banned religious group in China that supports Trump.

But fund supporters and critics of the Falun Gong software, called Ultrasurf, say its promoters are misguided and its adoption would set back by years the fund’s effort to develop and support free, open-source tools such as Signal and Tor, which permit users to encrypt communications and anonymously access the Internet despite government controls.

The agency has withheld $10.7 million of the fund’s $20 million allocation for 2020 and $9­ million of prior year allocations that it has promised to release as part of a transfer of contracts from Radio Free Asia, where the fund began as a pilot project in 2012, its leaders said.

In response, the fund on Friday halted 49 of its 60 Internet freedom projects, affecting about 80 percent of the its services for human rights and pro-democracy advocates, journalists and others in 200 countries.

On Friday, the agency in a statement called OTF’s accusations meritless and not based on fact. It said the fund is “very focused on being handed millions of taxpayer dollars without any oversight, whatsoever. USAGM is committed to protecting U.S. national security, sharing America’s story with the world, and supporting legitimate Internet freedom projects.”

However, in her comments, Blackburn cited the Open Technology Fund’s work in Hong Kong in particular as part of its existing, “critical” efforts to provide access to firewall circumvention tools, secure hosting and censorship and cyberattack detection and response technologies.

“OTF has been working with local partners to respond to Beijing’s so-called National Security Law in Hong Kong . . . and preparing for China’s Great Firewall to descend onto the territory,” Blackburn said, noting that 85 percent of the USAGM’s audience in Iran and 40 percent of its audience in China rely on OTF-supported tools to access U.S.-sponsored free and fair reporting.

Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the funding hold “a gift to repressive governments in China, Iran and elsewhere” and surveillance state tactics. He added, “Cutting off this funding directly contradicts the USAGM’s mission to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”