August, 05 2020, 12:00am EDT

Adam Schiff Sought to Allow for Domestic Surveillance by Selling Out Dreamers During PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
Congressional Intelligence Committees' Actions Suggest Dragnet Domestic Surveillance without Congressional Authorization
WASHINGTON
Today, a coalition of groups led by Demand Progress Education Fund sent a letter to House and Senate leadership detailing several extraordinary efforts by House intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and former Senate intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) to potentially allow for dragnet internet surveillance under the PATRIOT Act.
As detailed in the letter, during the ongoing debate over whether to reauthorize three expired Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorities, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Schiff altered a privacy measure related to government surveillance of internet activity to ensure it did not protect certain immigrants, such as recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Activists fear that this was part of an effort to create a loophole to bless dragnet surveillance of internet activity, potentially affecting everyone in the United States. In sum, the efforts helped the FBI and NSA avoid disclosing to Congress whether the government is conducting such dragnet surveillance, and to evade a Congressional decision on whether such dragnet internet surveillance is lawful.
The FISA authorities in question, including Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, sunsetted on March 15, 2020, but, as detailed in the letter, this surveillance may be continuing.
The letter, signed by Americans for Prosperity, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press Action, FreedomWorks, the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability, and others, is available here (pdf).
The following statement can be attributed to Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel for Demand Progress:
Throughout the 2020 PATRIOT Act reauthorization fight, Schiff has run point for Bill Barr to make sure Congress doesn't know what the law it is considering means, including whether it allows the FBI and NSA to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' internet activity.Schiff most recently provided for dragnet internet surveillance by cutting Dreamers and many other immigrants out of a proposed protection, which, in context, appears to have served as a loophole to protect something else: potential undisclosed surveillance of Americans' internet browsing and search histories.
The consequences of Schiff's actions are inescapable: In trying to hand the Trump administration Section 215, he repeatedly sabotaged efforts to protect privacy. This is dangerously bad law and dangerously bad oversight.
Ironically, if Schiff has been trying to sneak ratification of such surveillance through Congress, he has unwittingly demonstrated that he knows Congress wouldn't support it.
Demand Progress Education Fund and several other organizations called for transparency on May 7, but have not received an answer. Several members of Congress have pressed the issue further:
- May 20, Senator Wyden -- who famously prompted then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper to deny that the government was collecting records on "hundreds of millions of Americans" just months before the Snowden revelations began -- questioned whether dragnet surveillance of internet activity would be captured in public transparency reporting. He has not received an answer.
- July 21, Senators Leahy and Lee asked critically important, related questions in a letter to Attorney General Barr and Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe. They have requested an answer by August 7.
- July 22, the Senate intelligence committee released questions from Senator Wyden to the nominee for general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including whether Section 215 can be used for the collection of internet activity. Senator Wyden was once again refused an answer.
- July 28, Representative Lofgren challenged Attorney General Barr to disclose the legal authority upon which the government is basing domestic deployment of advanced surveillance techniques against protesters. Barr refused to provide a substantive answer.
Although Congress has not endorsed the use of Section 215 for warrantless internet dragnets, several pieces of information detailed in the organizations' new letter suggest it may have occurred or be occurring nonetheless.
Claims of surveillance authority under Executive Order 12333 also of concern
Moreover, although Congress has not endorsed distinct executive branch claims of authority that would effectively permit domestic mass surveillance under claimed inherent executive power, Chairman Schiff recently included the following rhetorical nod to such claims in the House's still-pending Intelligence Authorization Act:
although all elements of the intelligence community are authorized under Executive Order 12333 to provide assistance to law enforcement that is "not precluded by applicable law," activities that may be appropriate in the context of routine criminal investigations may nevertheless be inappropriate in the context of law enforcement response to protest or civil disturbances.
According to Congress.gov, this is the only time the phrase "not precluded by applicable law" has been included in legislation. The phrase comes directly from EO 12333 (Section 2.6, "Assistance to Law Enforcement Authorities"), which enshrines the executive branch's own interpretation of its authority to conduct surveillance -- an interpretation that sees virtually no limit to what records the Trump administration can collect about people in the United States.
A longstanding pattern of surveillance overreach
Government surveillance practices that are based on legal interpretations that stretch -- or break -- the bounds of the law are not unusual. Over recent decades, the government has repeatedly relied on such flawed, secret legal interpretations to start illegal, domestic mass surveillance programs of unknowable impact. In 1992, during Bill Barr's first tenure as Attorney General, he personally authorized a DEA surveillance program, the "first known effort to gather records on Americans in bulk" -- and did so without legal review. That program operated for over 20 years before the public learned of its existence.
Stellarwind, a notorious program for which the DEA's bulk collection was a "precursor," was initiated in 2001 and operated for most of a decade in direct contradiction to FISA and the Constitution. After the public learned about Stellarwind, it too was shuttered -- while the government secretly shifted bulk collection of Americans' phone records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, creating a program that would also be shuttered once exposed by Edward Snowden.
Demand Progress Education Fund and the FreedomWorks Foundation have released numerous materials about Section 215 at www.Section215.org, including a graphic depiction of the government's unlawful collection of records since 2001.
Demand Progress amplifies the voice of the people -- and wields it to make government accountable and contest concentrated corporate power. Our mission is to protect the democratic character of the internet -- and wield it to contest concentrated corporate power and hold government accountable.
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Americans Take to the Streets for 1,000+ 'Workers Over Billionaires' Labor Day Rallies
"Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness," said May Day Strong.
Sep 01, 2025
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates.
Americans turned out across the United States on Monday for more than 1,000 demonstrations against President Donald Trump and other oligarchs "to reclaim worker power against billionaires who hoard unprecedented wealth and power."
The "Workers Over Billionaires" protests are being led by the May Day Strong Coalition, which is made up of dozens of organizations including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, National Union of Healthcare Workers, and advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.
Demonstrations took place or are set to happen in big cities, small towns, and communities in between all across the nation. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) spoke at a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where Sanders—whose "Fight Oligarchy Tour" has been drawing huge crowds across the country—vowed that "together, we will create an economy and government that work for all, not just the 1%."
Khanna said that "today on Labor Day, we must recognize the workers across the country who build our economy and strengthen our nation. We need to fight for a living wage and stronger unions as we work to reindustrialize America."
Sanders took his Fighting Oligarchy Tour to Portland, Maine on Monday, where he was joined by guests including Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who is running to unseat five-term Republican US Sen. Susan Collins.
In a video posted on the social media site Bluesky before the rally, Platner said he "could not think of a better day to be a pro-labor candidate."
"Organized labor is the basis of the movement that we are going to have to build to retake this country for working people," Platner added.
May Day Strong said Monday's mobilizations aim "to build collective action against billionaires taking over the US government."
"Building upon momentum from May Day, Good Trouble Lives On, No Kings, and key impromptu actions in the streets and the workplace, Workers Over Billionaires will reach communities nationwide, tapping rural and city workers to stop the billionaire agenda that continues to burden everyone," the coalition said. "As the federal government continues to enable the ultrarich, working people are stepping onto pavement to stop their greed and protect their families."
"Working families want to live in a country that puts workers over billionaires," the coalition added. "Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness."
In New York, actions included a rally outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, where demonstrators demanded a $30 an hour minimum wage. Members of groups including One Fair Wage (OFW) staged a "Restaurant in the Street" demonstration "designed to highlight the struggle of working people and launch the New York Living Wage for All campaign."
"The action coincides with the release of a new OFW report, Making America Affordable Now: The Case for a Living Wage for All, which finds that nearly half of US workers—67 million people—earn less than $25 an hour," One Fair Wage said. "In New York, 41% of workers fall below that threshold."
OFW said that the demand for a living wage is the "next generation of the Fight for $15," warning that "past wage gains have been erased by historic inflation, skyrocketing rents, and cuts to Medicaid and SNAP," the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
"It also highlights how gimmicks like Trump's 'No Tax on Tips' proposal do little to address workers' needs, since two-thirds of tipped workers earn too little to benefit," OFW added.
In Chicago, at least hundreds of people from dozens of groups including the Chicago Teachers Union, Teamsters, and healthcare and hospitality workers rallied against Trump's Project 2025-inspired evisceration of federal agencies and the social safety net.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson denounced Trump's threat to send federal forces into the Windy City in a similar occupation to the one underway in Washington, DC, leading chants of "No troops in Chicago! No troops in Chicago! Invest in Chicago!"
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten told Chicago protesters that "what has happened in this country is that the billionaires don't understand this country was created in protest and resistance to fight off a king, not to recreate a king."
Chicago protester Mark Petersen told NBC Chicago: "I think solidarity among workers is probably the most important thing we can do right now. We're looking at our country get disassembled from the top down, and the best thing we can do is unite from the bottom up."
Hotel workers at the Hilton Americas-Houston downtown went on strike before dawn Monday, demanding a $23 hourly minimum wage. They kicked off their planned nine-day strike with a protest at 6:00 am, during which workers chanted, "Aquí estamos, y no nos vamos"—"We are here, and we won't leave."
"The workers are feeling this need urgently," Franchesca Caraballo, president of Unite Here Local 23's Texas chapter. "We have to take it up several notches here to turn up the pressure on this company."
In Indianapolis, marchers chanted, "No fascists, support unions, support workers."
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said ahead of the protests: "Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country's history—it's not because we asked those in power. It's not because they were handed to us. It's because we fought for them relentlessly."
Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), told USA Today that "it's important to show that there is opposition to the Trump-billionaire agenda in every community, big and small; it's not just cities that are united against what's happening... it's all towns, it's small towns that voted overwhelmingly for Trump."
Monday also saw the launch of the Department of Class Solidarity (DOCS), "a permanent national war room tracking nearly 1,000 US billionaires, their wealth, corporate holdings, and political contributions."
"This Labor Day weekend, we are not resting," DOCS said on social media. "The oligarchs are snatching away our healthcare, our livelihoods, and our rights. Now is the time to act."
DOCS and allied groups rallied for a "Hamptons Billionaire Shutdown" on Long Island.
🔥 March on Billionaires Lane in the Hamptons — one of the densest concentrations of billionaires in the world.Oligarchs are hiding in their mansions as they bankroll attacks on us with fortunes they plundered from us.The working class is rising. ✊ #PeopleOverBillionaires #FightOligarchy
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— Our Revolution (@our-revolution.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 1:33 PM
"The Hamptons is where right-wing billionaires like Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb plot and plan in their hundred-million-dollar mansions, ensconced from the workers they exploit," DOCS said. "Time to give them a taste of their own medicine."
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Trump Admin Circulating Plan to Transform Depopulated Gaza Into High-Tech Cash Cow
Under the proposal, the US would take control after "voluntary" relocation of Palestinians from the strip, where proposed projects include an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone and Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands.
Sep 01, 2025
The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."
That's according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.
"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.
However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."
Here comes the Gaza Network State.A plan to turn Gaza into a privately-developed “gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” with “AI-powered smart cities” and “Trump Riviera” resortgift link:wapo.st/4g2eATo
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— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) August 31, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal "was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group"—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.
The GREAT Trust envisions "a US-led multirlateral custodianship" lasting a decade or longer and leading to "a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is "demilitarized and de-radicalized."
Josh Paul—a former US State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration's decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal—told Democracy Now! last week that Trump's plan for Gaza is "essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism.
The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75% of Gaza's population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75% of them permanently.
The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.
The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.
The proposal projects huge profits for investors—nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.
In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.
"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.
According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries. However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now," one Gazan man told the Post. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president's son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza's future.
While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.
"We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. "On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called "The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality" where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.
The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel's 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.
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'Endangering Every American's Health': 9 Former CDC Chiefs Sound Alarm on RFK Jr.
Their "astonishing, powerful op-ed," said one professor, "drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost."
Sep 01, 2025
Nearly every living former director or acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the past half-century took to the pages of The New York Times on Monday to jointly argue that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "is endangering every American's health."
"Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the CDC, the world's preeminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations," Drs. William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle Walensky, and Mandy Cohen highlighted.
What RFK Jr. "has done to the CDC and to our nation's public health system over the past several months—culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago—is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced," the nine former agency leaders wrote.
Known for spreading misinformation about vaccines and a series of scandals, Kennedy was a controversial figure long before President Donald Trump chose him to lead HHS—a decision that Senate Republicans affirmed in February. However, in the wake of Monarez's ouster, fresh calls for him to resign or be fired have mounted.
This is powerful. Nine former CDC leaders just came together to defend SCIENCE.Maybe it’s time we LISTEN TO THEM—not the loud voices spreading MISINFORMATION.Science saves lives. Lies cost themwww.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
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— Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@krutikakuppalli.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM
As the ex-directors detailed:
Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence, and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he's focused on unproven "treatments" while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of US support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez—which led to the resignations of top CDC officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
Monarez was nominated by Trump, and was confirmed by Senate Republicans in late July. As the op-ed authors noted, she was forced out by RFK Jr. just weeks later, after she reportedly refused "to rubber-stamp his dangerous and unfounded vaccine recommendations or heed his demand to fire senior CDC staff members."
"These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a CDC director," they wrote. "Not even close. None of us would have agreed to the secretary's demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities."
After Monarez's exit, Trump tapped Jim O'Neill, an RFK Jr. aide and biotech investor, as the CDC's interim director. Critics including Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, warn that "unlike Susan Monarez, O'Neill is likely to rubber-stamp dangerous vaccine recommendations from HHS Secretary Kennedy's handpicked appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and obey orders to fire CDC public health experts with scientific integrity."
The agency's former directors didn't address O'Neill, but they wrote: "To those on the CDC staff who continue to perform their jobs heroically in the face of the excruciating circumstances, we offer our sincere thanks and appreciation. Their ongoing dedication is a model for all of us. But it's clear that the agency is hurting badly."
"We have a message for the rest of the nation as well: This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American," they continued. The experts called on Congress to "exercise its oversight authority over HHS," and state and local governments to "fill funding gaps where they can." They also urged philanthropy, the private sector, medical groups, and physicians to boost investments, "continue to stand up for science and truth," and support patients "with sound guidance and empathy."
Doctors, researchers, journalists, and others called their "must-read" piece "extraordinary" and "important."
"Just an astonishing, powerful op-ed that drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost," said University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman. "We are so incredibly fortunate to live with the advances [of] modern medicine and health science. Destroying and stymying it is just unforgivable."
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