House Judiciary Committee Republicans are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms to the government’s FISA surveillance powers that among other things would would prohibit the FBI from searching through Americans’ phone records without a court-approved warrant.
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On September 14, 2001, George W. Bush, exercising “the power vested in [him] as President of the Untied States,” issued Proclamation 7463, a “Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks.” That got the ball rolling on the construction of the surveillance state.
At the time, the extreme measure seemed justified. Three days earlier, the United States had suffered its most devastating terrorist attack in history.
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“Not to my knowledge.”
That was FBI Director Christopher Wray’s response to questioning from U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) at the House Judiciary Committee on July 13 about whether the Justice Department and FBI utilize parallel construction — where law enforcement agencies are handed information obtained from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants or via warrantless surveillance by intelligence agencies, not unlike the FISA surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016 that became the Russiagate counterintelligence and eventually criminal investigation — and then act on it.
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Republicans in the United States Senate appear united in opposition to a recently-passed bill that allegedly aims to combat “domestic terrorism” in the United States, which was passed in the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre.
According to The Hill, Republicans have called out the bill’s blatant partisanship, with Democrats immediately blaming Republicans for the shooting before introducing the bill as a mostly symbolic gesture.
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More than 40 House Republicans are calling for the ouster of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona after a report of his apparent role in a national schools group’s calling some concerned parents “domestic terrorists,” while 24 GOP senators are asking the nation’s top education official for answers.
The push comes after Fox News reported earlier this week on emails indicating that Cardona solicited a highly publicized letter to President Joe Biden from the National School Boards Association asking that officials apply the Patriot Act and other counterterror tools to dissenting parents.
An NSBA email said the letter to Biden was a “request from the secretary.” Cardona denied having anything to do with the group’s letter.
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