September, 25 2020, 12:00am EDT
Reps. Davidson, Jayapal, and Three Dozen+ Allies Demand Critical Answers Regarding Unauthorized, Mass Domestic Surveillance
Is the administration conducting mass domestic surveillance without congress's authorization?
WASHINGTON
Yesterday, Representatives Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), joined by 37 of their colleagues, sent a bipartisan letter to Attorney General William Barr and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe demanding answers to critical questions about possible mass surveillance of people in the United States. A full list of signers, which includes five committee chairs and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is appended. The letter is available here .
The Members asked the government to explain whether it is conducting mass domestic surveillance without congressional authorization. Specifically, they ask whether the administration is asserting that it has inherent executive authority, and thus doesn't need Congress's approval, for mass domestic surveillance, as well as whether it is occurring without congressional or judicial oversight. The Members set an October 6 deadline to receive a response. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) concluded such lawless surveillance would be illegal in a related letter in July.
The following statement can be attributed to Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel at Demand Progress:
"Representatives Davidson, Jayapal, and their allies have fought the Patriot Act back to the core rot eroding the people's right to privacy. This is a long fight and it is not over, but the trail now appears to lead back to rogue legal theories founded upon horrifyingly broad claims of inherent executive authority to conduct mass surveillance domestically. This intelligence surveillance would happen in the absence of the law, the courts, and even the suspicion of wrongdoing. This is how the government secretly started Stellarwind, the most stunningly illegal surveillance program in recent history.
What is at stake today is akin to when William Barr, during his first tenure as Attorney General, subjected millions of people in the United States to 21 years of phone records surveillance under the Drug Enforcement Administration, none of which saw the light of day until 2015. As far as we know, the DEA managed to stop any defense attorneys from challenging the obvious unconstitutionality of such surveillance by misleading prosecutors and the courts about where the records came from, euphemistically termed 'parallel construction.' Today, the DEA is flying planes over protesters.
If the government is blanketing the United States in warrantless surveillance, this is how they would -- and have -- done it.
Yet despite of the serious oversight the public deserves -- and has been demanding loudly for years -- we've instead seen the House and Senate Intelligence Committees protecting their turf and working to ensure that the rest of Congress has no say about what the intelligence agencies are doing domestically. While Richard Burr tries to signal Congressional acquiescence, Adam Schiff has been ensuring Congress can't vote on it at all.
We look forward to candid answers about how the government has interpreted the law and how far secret claims of inherent executive authority have embedded foreign intelligence surveillance into our daily lives. In the absence of those answers, Burr and Schiff's unwavering obstruction of real surveillance reform will further isolate them."
Context:
- In March, then-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Richard Burr (R-NC) claimed on the Senate floor that President Trump "can do all of this, without Congress's permission, with no guardrails" pursuant to Executive Order 12333. This was during debate over whether any members of Congress would have any chance to amend a Patriot Act reauthorization that itself provided for some domestic records surveillance.
- In May, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff (D-CA) vitiated a broadly supported protection against this unacknowledged use to allow for, in Senator Wyden's (D-OR) words, "dragnet collection of online activity" of Americans. Schiff accomplished this by cutting Dreamers and other immigrants out of the protection, pointing toward the alarming possibility that the government is presuming data in the United States does not belong to United States persons.
- A number of other extraordinary actions by the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees stoke further concerns. Demand Progress led a letter dissecting these maneuvers in August, joined by Americans for Prosperity, Free Press Action, Fight for the Future, FreedomWorks, and others.
Demand Progress Education Fund and the FreedomWorks Foundation have released numerous materials regarding the expired authorities at www.section215.org, including the government's long history of abusing Section 215.
Signers of letter today's letter:
Warren Davidson
Andy Biggs
Earl Blumenauer
Mo Brooks
Ed Case
Ben Cline
Peter A. DeFazio
Suzan DelBene
Russ Fulcher
Matt Gaetz
Jesus G. "Chuy" Garcia
Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S.
H. Morgan Griffith
Raul M. Grijalva
Deb Haaland
Jared Huffman
Ted W. Lieu
Zoe Lofgren
Alan Lowenthal
James P. McGovern
Grace Meng
Alex X. Mooney
Ralph Norman
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Scott Perry
Michael F.Q. San Nicolas
Mary Gay Scanlon
Jan Schakowsky
Jason Smith
Nydia M. Velazquez
Bonnie Watson Coleman
Peter Welch
Demand Justice is a progressive movement fighting to restore the ideological balance and legitimacy of the federal courts by advocating for court reform and vigorously opposing extreme nominees.
LATEST NEWS
White House Claims Trump 'Has the Authority to Kill' Survivors of Boat Strikes
One legal expert called the press secretary's remarks "painful" to watch and warned of "how the reported patently illegal orders will affect US service members."
Dec 01, 2025
While continuing to deny that the Pentagon chief ordered those carrying out the first known US military strike on an alleged drug-running boat to "kill everybody" on board, the top White House spokesperson on Monday reiterated the administration's position that President Donald Trump has the authority to take out anyone he deems a "narco-terrorist."
Rights advocates, legal scholars, American lawmakers, and leaders from other countries have condemned the boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, which began on September 2, as murders, and rejected the Trump administration's argument to Congress that the strikes are justified because the United States is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels.
A week after the first bombing, the Intercept reported that people on board survived but were killed in a follow-up attack. The Washington Post provided more details on Friday, including that Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley ordered a second strike on two survivors to fulfill US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's alleged directive to kill everyone.
CNN also spoke with an unnamed source who confirmed Hegseth's supposed edict—which the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, denied on Monday.
During Monday's press briefing, NBC News White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez noted Trump's "confidence" in Hegseth's claim that he did not give an explicit order to kill everyone on the first vessel, and asked Leavitt, "Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?"
"The latter is true," Leavitt said. She then read a statement that she often referred back to throughout the briefing:
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war. With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.
"And I would just add one more point," Leavitt continued, "to remind the American public why these lethal strikes are taking place: Because this administration has designated these narco-terrorists as a foreign terrorist organizations, the president has a right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, and if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate—which is what they are doing."
Asked by Gutierrez to confirm Bradley ordered the second strike, Leavitt did so, saying that "he was well within his right to do so."
Multiple other reporters also inquired about the recent reporting, including Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who said: "You said that the follow-up strike was lawful. What law is it that allows no survivors?"
Leavitt responded: "The strike conducted on September 2 was conducted in self-defense to protect Americans and vital United States interests. The strike was conducted in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict."
Noting that exchange on social media, former Congressman Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, said: "This is not how self-defense works. Everyone understands that self-defense requires an immediate physical threat and proportionality. Repelling a missile attack with a missile is self-defense. Blowing up boats hundreds of miles from US shores is not. This isn't complicated."
"This is not how self-defense works... Repelling a missile attack with a missile is self-defense. Blowing up boats hundreds of miles from US shores is not.
Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon special counsel who's now a New York University law professor and Just Security coeditor-in-chief, also weighed in. "This has got to be one of [the] most painful responses to watch," he said, also pointing out that "the 'law' Leavitt cites is utterly irrelevant (self-defense is non sequitur, it's not armed conflict, and 'no survivors' is a crime)."
"Part of the pain in watching that response is knowing how the reported patently illegal orders will affect US service members," Goodman added, referring to a new Just Security essay by Mark P. Nevitt, a retired judge advocate general who is now an associate law professor at Emory University.
Notably, Trump suggested last month that Democratic members of Congress who previously served in the US military and intelligence service and recently warned service members of their duty not to comply with illegal orders should be hanged. The Pentagon has since threatened to court-martial one of them: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy captain.
c by CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang about Hegseth's reported spoken directive to kill everybody on the boat. Using Trump's preferred term for the Defense Department's leader, she said: "I saw that quoted in a Washington Post story. I would reject that the secretary of war ever said that. However, the president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists... are trafficking illegal drugs toward the United States, he has the authority to kill them, and that's what this administration is doing."
According to a CNN timeline, from September 2 to November 15, at least 22 US boat strikes killed 83 people and left two survivors who were initially taken onto a warship but ultimately returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador.
So far, Congress has failed to advance war powers resolutions intended to stop Trump's boat-bombing spree. However, since the Post reporting, top Democrats on both the US House and Senate Armed Services Committees have promised vigorous oversight.
Following Leavitt's remarks on Monday, the New Republic's Greg Sargent said that "it's doubly relevant that Adm. Bradley is in talks about briefing the House Armed Services Committee," and pointed to his new interview with Congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the panel's ranking member.
The congressman told Sargent he will pressure GOP members of the committee, including Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), to "use whatever leverage is available to us to try to get answers," including subpoenaing top civilian and military officials.
Smith also discussed the reporting during a weekend appearance on MS NOW. Posting a clip of it on social media Monday, he declared that "Americans want to live in a constitutional republic, not an authoritarian dictatorship."
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the chamber's floor Monday that "I don’t think we have ever seen someone so unserious, so childish, so obviously insecure serving as secretary of defense as Pete Hegseth—and that should alarm every single one of us."
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Over 150 Religious Orgs Endorse Salvadoran Mining Ban Reversed by Bukele
A joint letter expresses "steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining... so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water."
Dec 01, 2025
More than 150 faith-based organizations from 25 countries launched an open letter on Monday supporting an El Salvadoran ban on metals mining that was overturned by right-wing President Nayib Bukele in 2024.
The original ban was passed by the country’s legislature in 2017 following years of study and the advocacy of El Salvador’s religious communities. The letter signatories, which include 153 global and regional groups from a wide range of traditions, stood with faith groups in El Salvador in calling both for no new mining and for an end to the political persecution of land and water defenders.
"We, the undersigned, from a diversity of church structures (representing local, regional, and national expressions of churches and related agencies), express our steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining—in place from 2017 to 2024—so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water," the letter begins. "We stand in solidarity with civic and religious leaders who are being persecuted and imprisoned for working against injustices, including the devastation that metals mining would cause their communities."
The faith leaders also released a video reading sections of the letter aloud.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism."
“Through this declaration, faith communities from around the world have affirmed their solidarity with faith leaders in El Salvador as they carry out their duty to protect water as a sacred inherited trust, a human right meant to be shared by all,” Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu, executive minister for the Church in the Mission Unit of The United Church of Canada, said in a statement.
El Salvadorans already struggle to gain access to clean and plentiful water. The water of 90% of Salvadorans is contaminated, half of all Salvadorans have "intermittent access to water,” and one-half of those with water access report it is poor quality, said Gordon Whitman, managing director for international organizing at letter-signatory Faith in Action, at a Monday press briefing anouncing the letter.
"Restarting mining would be catastrophic," Whitman said.
The mining ban was already hard won.
A 2012 study commissioned by the government affirmed that mining would endanger the nation’s rivers and watersheds with cyanide, arsenic, and other toxins and found widespread public opposition to mining. Before the ban was passed in March of 2017, the archbishop of San Salvador mobilized support for it by leading a march to deliver a draft of the ban to the National Assembly. After it passed unanimously, he called it a "miracle," according to John Cavanagh, a senior adviser at the Institute for Policy Studies.
The law made El Salvador "the first nation on Earth to ban mining to save its rivers," Cavanagh said at the press briefing.
“The Salvadoran precautionary approach banning metal mining is essential to protect drinking water and aquatic ecosystems, given the irreparable damage that has been done by irresponsible mining around the world,” Willamette University professor emeritus Susan Lea Smith of the Ecumenical Water Network of the World Council of Churches said in a statement. “El Salvador had made a difficult but wise choice in banning metal mining. Clean water is a gift from God, and so, for the sake of clean water and the rest of Creation, we work together for the common good."
"It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
However, in December 2024, Bukele's government passed a new law that allows mining once again without environmental oversight or community consultation.
“It’s a law that has become one of the main threats for the Salvadorans' right to clean water," Pedro Cabezas of International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador said in the press conference.
Cabezas also said the new law was a "symptom of what El Salvador has been going through over the last five years” as Bukele concentrates all power within the executive and his own party.
While the Salvadoran public and civil society groups remain opposed to mining—a December 2024 poll found that 3 in 5 are against the practice in the country—the Bukele government has ramped up its criminalization of dissent.
In this context, the Catholic, protestant, and evangelical churches in El Salvador are among the remaining institutions "with space to speak out" against mining, Christie Neufeldt of the United Church of Canada explained at the briefing.
For example, in March, Mons. José Luis Escobar Alas, the archbishop of San Salvador, presented an anti-mining petition signed by 150,000 people.
International faith groups wanted to stand in solidarity with their Salvadoran counterparts.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism in the face of forces that would degrade” the Earth, human rights, and democracy, Neufeldt said.
Salvadoran faith groups "remind us that access to water is a fundamental human right and that clean water is not a commodity, but a shared inheritance entrusted to all people by God. And they remind us that ending the mining ban is fueling egregious rights violations against those organizing to protect their water and land from destruction," the letter says.
Whitman spoke about the importance of water to several religious traditions.
“All of our faith traditions teach that water is a sacred gift of God,” Whitman said, adding, "It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
In the press briefing, speakers acknowledged the link between rising authoritarianism and environmental deregulation, in El Salvador and beyond.
Cavanagh noted that, as the energy transition increases demand for rare earth minerals and global instability makes gold more attractive, "oligarchs linked to extractivism" have begun "pumping money into elections” to boost candidates who will allow them to exploit resources.
“It’s not at all surprising that the opposition to mining comes from the people, and so it’s absolutely natural that the oligarchs, that the transnational corporations are going to want to crack down on public dissent," Smith said, adding there was an "intimate connection between authoritarianism and any extractive industry, including mining."
In the end, however, the letter signatories expressed faith for a greener, freer future.
"We pray for the Salvadoran people and their government, that they protect the sacred gift of creation, uphold human rights, and ensure every family clean water—now and for generations to come," they concluded.
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Democratic State Sen. Fady Qaddoura, who immediately filed legislation to ban mid-decade redistricting, called the new map an illegal "racial gerrymander."
Dec 01, 2025
After months of escalating attacks against Indiana's Republican lawmakers by President Donald Trump, the state House GOP has revealed a new map for the 2026 midterms designed to hand every US House seat in the state to Republicans.
Republicans won 58% of the vote across Indiana's US House elections in 2024, granting them an already overrepresentative seven of the state's nine congressional seats. The new map, published Monday, would eliminate the remaining two seats in the state held by Democrats.
As Bolts magazine editor and founder Daniel Nichanian explained on social media, under the new map, "Indianapolis would be cracked into GOP seats, and Gary would be drowned in red." In other words, the new map would transparently dilute the power of Indiana's two largest concentrations of nonwhite voters.
The redrawing of Indiana's map comes amid a wider push spearheaded by Trump for Republican states to pursue unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering in hopes of clinging to a governing trifecta against what is expected to be a wave year for Democrats in 2026.
A similar effort has been undertaken in Texas to potentially add five more seats to the GOP ranks, which is currently under appeal at the US Supreme Court. Trump has likewise pressured Republican lawmakers in Missouri, Utah, and North Carolina to draw maps that would net the GOP even more seats. This power grab has been met with redistricting efforts by some blue states, most notably California, which passed a new map last month, likely adding five more seats to the Democratic column.
Indiana's new map could be put to a vote in the state House as soon as December 8, where it would then be kicked up to the Senate. That is where Trump has run into some resistance, and he hasn't taken it well.
In mid-November, a group of 19 Republican state senators joined a united Democratic caucus to vote down the new map—one of the no votes, state Sen. Kyle Walker (R-33), said he'd "spent the past several months listening closely to [his] constituents on mid-decade redistricting" and found "93% opposed."
After the map was voted down, Trump lit into some of the holdouts in a rant on Truth Social. He said he was "disappointed" in the senators who voted against the map, adding that "any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED," before calling to "get them out of office ASAP" if they failed.
Trump identified two specific lawmakers—Senate Pro Tem Rod Bray (R-37) and Sen. Greg Goode (R-38)—as the "RINO Senators" most responsible for the vote failing.
Within hours of the post, Goode was targeted by a "swatting" attack, in which an anonymous person placed a fraudulent emergency report in hopes of provoking a SWAT team or other large law enforcement response at the target's residence.
Four other Republicans, all of whom had voiced opposition to the map, were also swatted. Another received a bomb threat at his business. And on Monday, another opponent of the map, Sen. Jean Leising (R-42), said she'd received a pipe bomb threat over the weekend, which she blamed on "DC political pundits” in favor of redistricting.
As NBC News reported Monday, at least 10 Indiana Republican lawmakers have received violent threats since Trump's rant—most of whom have been opponents of redistricting.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) also received threats after catching heat in Trump's rant. But he joined Trump's attacks on the Republican caucus, specifically Bray, who he said "was forced to partner with DEMOCRATS to block an effort by the growing number of America First Senators who wanted to have a vote on passing fair maps.”
Fearful of the wrath of Trump and Braun, Indiana's House reconvened last week. And after saying that the Senate would not reconvene in December, Bray said it would do so on December 8 to "make a final decision… on any redistricting proposal sent from the House.”
Within an hour of Monday's announcement of the GOP map, Democrats, led by state Sen. Fady Qaddoura (D-30), said they planned to introduce legislation to ban mid-decade gerrymandering.
"Voters should choose their leaders, not the other way around," said Qaddoura, who added that the map was "racially gerrymandered."
If the map does pass the Senate, this may present an obstacle. Texas' map is under review by the US Supreme Court after a GOP-majority lower court ruled that the legislature had redrawn districts "based on their racial makeup,” which is illegal under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
But its passage in the state Senate is far from certain. Despite continued pressure from the White House, Politico reports that Bray remains opposed. Meanwhile, Walker has accused the White House of violating the Hatch Act when it invited him to meet with Trump to discuss redistricting.
Trump also lost another ally this weekend in Sen. Mike Bohacek (R-8), who announced that he'd be voting no on redistricting after Trump referred to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as "retarded" in an unhinged Thanksgiving Day social media rant.
"I have been an unapologetic advocate for people with intellectual disabilities since the birth of my second daughter," Bohacek said, noting that his daughter has Down syndrome. "This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references, and his choices of words have consequences. I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority."
The GOP map remains largely unpopular among Hoosiers. The most recent survey, conducted by the Virginia-based firm Bellwether Research, found that among its sample of 800 voters, "51% didn’t want redistricting now—with 45% 'strongly' opposed. About 39% supported the prospect, but just 23% 'strongly' backed it," as Indiana Public Media reported.
As the map was introduced on Monday, hundreds of Hoosiers gathered inside the State Capitol to voice their disapproval.
"At a time when Hoosiers are facing high costs for childcare, groceries, utilities, housing, and health care, the last thing needed is politicians manipulating maps instead of solving real issues," Qaddoura said. "Hoosiers deserve fair elections, stable districts, and a government that reflects them."
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