SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
The Senate Intelligence Committee recently took an important step by passing an intelligence authorization which would require for the first time - if it became law - that the Admin
Sarah Knuckey, Director of the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at New York University School of Law and a Special Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, calls this provision "an important step toward improving transparency," and notes that "Various U.N. officials, foreign governments, a broad range of civil society, and many others, including former U.S. Department of State Legal Advisor Harold Koh ... have called for the publication of such basic information."
This provision could be offered as an amendment in the Senate to the National Defense Authorization Act. It could be offered in the House as an amendment on the intelligence authorization, or as a freestanding bill. But it's not likely to become law unless there's some public agitation for it (you can participate in the public agitation here.)
Forcing the Administration to publish information is crucial, because in the court of poorly informed public opinion, the Administration has gotten away with two key claims that the record of independent reporting strongly indicates are not true: 1) U.S. drone strikes are "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders," and 2) civilian casualties have been "extremely rare." Poll data shows that majority public support of the drone strike policy is significantly based on belief in these two false claims; if the public knew that either of these claims were not true, public support for the policy would fall below 50%. By keeping key information secret, the Administration has been able to avoid having its two key claims in defense of the policy refuted in media that reach the broad public.
You might think that if a key reason that it's been difficult to do anything politically in the U.S. about the drone strike policy has been the apparent public support for the policy among people who do not know that the strikes have not been "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders" and who do not know that civilian casualties have not been extremely rare, then if there were a proposed transparency reform that could force the Administration to disclose information that would likely contribute greatly to knowledge among the general public that these two key claims are not true, it should be a no-brainer that critics of the policy should vigorously support this reform.
Sadly, it is not, apparently, a no-brainer, because there are people who claim that transparency reforms are meaningless. And while it is tempting to try to ignore such people, they have a disproportionate impact to their numbers because most people don't have the life experience that would enable them to easily judge between the competing claims "transparency reforms are important" and "transparency reforms are meaningless." Our starting point is that many Americans, compared to Europeans, are politically disengaged, alienated from political engagement most of the time. So when you put out a call for people to engage Congress, you have a group of people who get it right away and take action, and a another group of people who think, "Engage Congress? Not that again," and treat it as a huge personal sacrifice to engage Congress, like you asked them to volunteer for a root canal. These people are looking for any excuse to not take action. So if someone pops up and says, "transparency reforms are meaningless," these people have an excuse not to take action. "Oh, this proposed reform is controversial, not everyone agrees, so I don't have to do anything."
To people who want to claim that transparency reforms are meaningless, I want to say this: tell it to WikiLeaks. What was the fundamental strategic idea of WikiLeaks? What was the fundamental insight that Julian Assange deeply grasped that caused him to initiate this project, at great personal risk to himself and his close collaborators? It was that governments are hiding key information that the public has the right to know, that allowing governments to continue to hide this information fundamentally undermines democratic accountability, and that forcing this information into public debate fundamentally enables democratic accountability.
Case in point: Just Foreign Policy issued a crowd-sourced reward for WikiLeaks to publish the secret negotiating text of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which, among many other concerns, critics like the AARP have charged threatens the ability of the U.S. government to make medicines safe and affordable under the Affordable Care Act. This week, WikiLeaks delivered, publishing the negotiating text of the "intellectual property" chapter of the TPP, the most controversial part of the agreement, including the negotiating positions of different countries. (If you made a pledge to the reward, you can fulfill your pledge here. )
Publishing this information generated a lot of press. (Google "WikiLeaks and TPP.") It also allowed critics of the agreement, like Public Citizen, Doctors Without Borders, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to respond directly to the TPP text in making their criticisms.
Predictably, some journalists wrote what they often write about such disclosures: that there was nothing really shocking for insiders who were closely following the issue. And, in a narrow sense, that's not untrue. But it missed the point. In general, disclosing "secret" government policies mostly isn't about educating journalists and other insiders who are closely following the issues. It's about educating the broad public, which never saw this information clearly presented in major media. In a democracy, it's hard to keep the basics of important public policies secret from well-informed people who are following closely. Official secrecy is mainly about keeping them from the broad public, because official secrecy allows the government to keep the broad public in a fog of competing claims that can't be directly verified and are therefore never resolved in major media. Critics charge that X, but the government denies it. Who knows for sure?
The New York Times recently had an editorial in favor of the TPP. Critics complained, saying: 1) either you're endorsing an agreement that you've never seen or 2) you have seen the agreement, and instead of doing journalism, you're collaborating in keeping the public in the dark. No, we haven't seen the agreement, the Times responded. We're just endorsing the idea of an agreement. Never mind what the actual agreement is. That's the kind of "public debate" you can have when the policy is secret - whether you like the official story about the policy, rather than the actual policy. (Now that part of the TPP text has been leaked, the Times is quiet.) This is the same problem we face with the drone strike policy: people like the official story about the drone strike policy, in which drones are a magic super-weapon that only kills terrorist leaders and not civilians, not the actual policy, about which they have no idea.
When Edward Snowden leaked information about the NSA's blanket surveillance on Americans, many insiders said, "Yeah, we thought the NSA was doing that, we couldn't prove it, but no-one who follows the NSA was surprised." But the broad public had no clue, because it had never been clearly reported where most people could see it, because critics' claims couldn't be directly verified. When Snowden blew the whistle, the broad public found out, and that's why it's plausible that Congress will now force a change in policy. And that shows that transparency matters.
Where we are now with the drone strike policy is where we were with the NSA before Snowden's revelations: insiders know what's going on, but the broad public doesn't.
An illustration: earlier this week, I and others engaged in some "street lobbying" of Jeh Johnson, President Obama's nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security. When he was previously in government, Johnson was the Pentagon's top lawyer, and thus participated in constructing the Administration's purported legal justifications for the drone strike policy (which still have not been fully disclosed to Congress and the public.) Now, as head of DHS, he's not going to play that role directly. But he's still going to have significant influence, because he'll be in the meeting of the national security department heads, because he's well-connected, and because, by his own account, he cares deeply about the rule of law and working to ensure that the drone strike policy transparently complies with the rule of law. I was lobbying Johnson to support the drone strike transparency bill, so that the Administration would have to disclose information about civilian casualties. He said he would look into the bill and consider it.
During the discussion, one of my colleagues challenged Johnson about a particular drone strike. Johnson gave the standard Administration defense, about people who are planning to attack the United States. I interrupted him: "That's a small percentage of the people being killed by drone strikes."
"That's true," Johnson said.
That's true. When I called him on it, Johnson immediately conceded that the story that the drone strike policy is all about narrowly targeting people who are trying to attack the United States is basically not true. It's true that the U.S. has tried to target some people who have attacked or tried to attack the United States. But that's a small percentage of the people who have been killed. And so, in the main, that's not what the drone strike policy is about; in particular, the claim that drone strikes have been "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders" is not true. ("I believe it very likely that one of my enemies is standing in that crowd of 50 people, therefore I am going to blow up the crowd" does not constitute "narrow targeting.")
Why would Johnson concede to me that a central Administration claim in defense of its drone strike policy is basically not true?
Because he wasn't giving an interview to a mainstream journalist. He was just talking to some guy on a street corner who wasn't recording what he was saying, a person who had little presumed ability to reach the broad American public, a person who could, at worst, tell some mainstream journalist what Johnson said, which Johnson could then promptly deny. He could say he was misquoted or misunderstood, and life would go on. And so we're left with the usual fog. Critics say X, U.S. officials deny it. Who really knows what the truth is?
Johnson was having an insider conversation, conceding that which all insiders know, but which the broad public does not know: the drone strike policy is not narrowly targeted on people who are trying to attack the United States.
That's why we need to force the Administration onto the public record to document its claims. If the Administration wants to claim that civilian casualties from drone strikes have been extremely rare, and that those killed were mainly people trying to attack the U.S., make them show us their numbers, and how they arrived at them. Pass the drone strike transparency bill.
Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, justice, and a free press are escalating — putting everything we stand for at risk. We believe a better world is possible, but we can’t get there without your support. Common Dreams stands apart. We answer only to you — our readers, activists, and changemakers — not to billionaires or corporations. Our independence allows us to cover the vital stories that others won’t, spotlighting movements for peace, equality, and human rights. Right now, our work faces unprecedented challenges. Misinformation is spreading, journalists are under attack, and financial pressures are mounting. As a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, your support is crucial to keep this journalism alive. Whatever you can give — $10, $25, or $100 — helps us stay strong and responsive when the world needs us most. Together, we’ll continue to build the independent, courageous journalism our movement relies on. Thank you for being part of this community. |
Sarah Knuckey, Director of the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at New York University School of Law and a Special Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, calls this provision "an important step toward improving transparency," and notes that "Various U.N. officials, foreign governments, a broad range of civil society, and many others, including former U.S. Department of State Legal Advisor Harold Koh ... have called for the publication of such basic information."
This provision could be offered as an amendment in the Senate to the National Defense Authorization Act. It could be offered in the House as an amendment on the intelligence authorization, or as a freestanding bill. But it's not likely to become law unless there's some public agitation for it (you can participate in the public agitation here.)
Forcing the Administration to publish information is crucial, because in the court of poorly informed public opinion, the Administration has gotten away with two key claims that the record of independent reporting strongly indicates are not true: 1) U.S. drone strikes are "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders," and 2) civilian casualties have been "extremely rare." Poll data shows that majority public support of the drone strike policy is significantly based on belief in these two false claims; if the public knew that either of these claims were not true, public support for the policy would fall below 50%. By keeping key information secret, the Administration has been able to avoid having its two key claims in defense of the policy refuted in media that reach the broad public.
You might think that if a key reason that it's been difficult to do anything politically in the U.S. about the drone strike policy has been the apparent public support for the policy among people who do not know that the strikes have not been "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders" and who do not know that civilian casualties have not been extremely rare, then if there were a proposed transparency reform that could force the Administration to disclose information that would likely contribute greatly to knowledge among the general public that these two key claims are not true, it should be a no-brainer that critics of the policy should vigorously support this reform.
Sadly, it is not, apparently, a no-brainer, because there are people who claim that transparency reforms are meaningless. And while it is tempting to try to ignore such people, they have a disproportionate impact to their numbers because most people don't have the life experience that would enable them to easily judge between the competing claims "transparency reforms are important" and "transparency reforms are meaningless." Our starting point is that many Americans, compared to Europeans, are politically disengaged, alienated from political engagement most of the time. So when you put out a call for people to engage Congress, you have a group of people who get it right away and take action, and a another group of people who think, "Engage Congress? Not that again," and treat it as a huge personal sacrifice to engage Congress, like you asked them to volunteer for a root canal. These people are looking for any excuse to not take action. So if someone pops up and says, "transparency reforms are meaningless," these people have an excuse not to take action. "Oh, this proposed reform is controversial, not everyone agrees, so I don't have to do anything."
To people who want to claim that transparency reforms are meaningless, I want to say this: tell it to WikiLeaks. What was the fundamental strategic idea of WikiLeaks? What was the fundamental insight that Julian Assange deeply grasped that caused him to initiate this project, at great personal risk to himself and his close collaborators? It was that governments are hiding key information that the public has the right to know, that allowing governments to continue to hide this information fundamentally undermines democratic accountability, and that forcing this information into public debate fundamentally enables democratic accountability.
Case in point: Just Foreign Policy issued a crowd-sourced reward for WikiLeaks to publish the secret negotiating text of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which, among many other concerns, critics like the AARP have charged threatens the ability of the U.S. government to make medicines safe and affordable under the Affordable Care Act. This week, WikiLeaks delivered, publishing the negotiating text of the "intellectual property" chapter of the TPP, the most controversial part of the agreement, including the negotiating positions of different countries. (If you made a pledge to the reward, you can fulfill your pledge here. )
Publishing this information generated a lot of press. (Google "WikiLeaks and TPP.") It also allowed critics of the agreement, like Public Citizen, Doctors Without Borders, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to respond directly to the TPP text in making their criticisms.
Predictably, some journalists wrote what they often write about such disclosures: that there was nothing really shocking for insiders who were closely following the issue. And, in a narrow sense, that's not untrue. But it missed the point. In general, disclosing "secret" government policies mostly isn't about educating journalists and other insiders who are closely following the issues. It's about educating the broad public, which never saw this information clearly presented in major media. In a democracy, it's hard to keep the basics of important public policies secret from well-informed people who are following closely. Official secrecy is mainly about keeping them from the broad public, because official secrecy allows the government to keep the broad public in a fog of competing claims that can't be directly verified and are therefore never resolved in major media. Critics charge that X, but the government denies it. Who knows for sure?
The New York Times recently had an editorial in favor of the TPP. Critics complained, saying: 1) either you're endorsing an agreement that you've never seen or 2) you have seen the agreement, and instead of doing journalism, you're collaborating in keeping the public in the dark. No, we haven't seen the agreement, the Times responded. We're just endorsing the idea of an agreement. Never mind what the actual agreement is. That's the kind of "public debate" you can have when the policy is secret - whether you like the official story about the policy, rather than the actual policy. (Now that part of the TPP text has been leaked, the Times is quiet.) This is the same problem we face with the drone strike policy: people like the official story about the drone strike policy, in which drones are a magic super-weapon that only kills terrorist leaders and not civilians, not the actual policy, about which they have no idea.
When Edward Snowden leaked information about the NSA's blanket surveillance on Americans, many insiders said, "Yeah, we thought the NSA was doing that, we couldn't prove it, but no-one who follows the NSA was surprised." But the broad public had no clue, because it had never been clearly reported where most people could see it, because critics' claims couldn't be directly verified. When Snowden blew the whistle, the broad public found out, and that's why it's plausible that Congress will now force a change in policy. And that shows that transparency matters.
Where we are now with the drone strike policy is where we were with the NSA before Snowden's revelations: insiders know what's going on, but the broad public doesn't.
An illustration: earlier this week, I and others engaged in some "street lobbying" of Jeh Johnson, President Obama's nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security. When he was previously in government, Johnson was the Pentagon's top lawyer, and thus participated in constructing the Administration's purported legal justifications for the drone strike policy (which still have not been fully disclosed to Congress and the public.) Now, as head of DHS, he's not going to play that role directly. But he's still going to have significant influence, because he'll be in the meeting of the national security department heads, because he's well-connected, and because, by his own account, he cares deeply about the rule of law and working to ensure that the drone strike policy transparently complies with the rule of law. I was lobbying Johnson to support the drone strike transparency bill, so that the Administration would have to disclose information about civilian casualties. He said he would look into the bill and consider it.
During the discussion, one of my colleagues challenged Johnson about a particular drone strike. Johnson gave the standard Administration defense, about people who are planning to attack the United States. I interrupted him: "That's a small percentage of the people being killed by drone strikes."
"That's true," Johnson said.
That's true. When I called him on it, Johnson immediately conceded that the story that the drone strike policy is all about narrowly targeting people who are trying to attack the United States is basically not true. It's true that the U.S. has tried to target some people who have attacked or tried to attack the United States. But that's a small percentage of the people who have been killed. And so, in the main, that's not what the drone strike policy is about; in particular, the claim that drone strikes have been "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders" is not true. ("I believe it very likely that one of my enemies is standing in that crowd of 50 people, therefore I am going to blow up the crowd" does not constitute "narrow targeting.")
Why would Johnson concede to me that a central Administration claim in defense of its drone strike policy is basically not true?
Because he wasn't giving an interview to a mainstream journalist. He was just talking to some guy on a street corner who wasn't recording what he was saying, a person who had little presumed ability to reach the broad American public, a person who could, at worst, tell some mainstream journalist what Johnson said, which Johnson could then promptly deny. He could say he was misquoted or misunderstood, and life would go on. And so we're left with the usual fog. Critics say X, U.S. officials deny it. Who really knows what the truth is?
Johnson was having an insider conversation, conceding that which all insiders know, but which the broad public does not know: the drone strike policy is not narrowly targeted on people who are trying to attack the United States.
That's why we need to force the Administration onto the public record to document its claims. If the Administration wants to claim that civilian casualties from drone strikes have been extremely rare, and that those killed were mainly people trying to attack the U.S., make them show us their numbers, and how they arrived at them. Pass the drone strike transparency bill.
Sarah Knuckey, Director of the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at New York University School of Law and a Special Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, calls this provision "an important step toward improving transparency," and notes that "Various U.N. officials, foreign governments, a broad range of civil society, and many others, including former U.S. Department of State Legal Advisor Harold Koh ... have called for the publication of such basic information."
This provision could be offered as an amendment in the Senate to the National Defense Authorization Act. It could be offered in the House as an amendment on the intelligence authorization, or as a freestanding bill. But it's not likely to become law unless there's some public agitation for it (you can participate in the public agitation here.)
Forcing the Administration to publish information is crucial, because in the court of poorly informed public opinion, the Administration has gotten away with two key claims that the record of independent reporting strongly indicates are not true: 1) U.S. drone strikes are "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders," and 2) civilian casualties have been "extremely rare." Poll data shows that majority public support of the drone strike policy is significantly based on belief in these two false claims; if the public knew that either of these claims were not true, public support for the policy would fall below 50%. By keeping key information secret, the Administration has been able to avoid having its two key claims in defense of the policy refuted in media that reach the broad public.
You might think that if a key reason that it's been difficult to do anything politically in the U.S. about the drone strike policy has been the apparent public support for the policy among people who do not know that the strikes have not been "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders" and who do not know that civilian casualties have not been extremely rare, then if there were a proposed transparency reform that could force the Administration to disclose information that would likely contribute greatly to knowledge among the general public that these two key claims are not true, it should be a no-brainer that critics of the policy should vigorously support this reform.
Sadly, it is not, apparently, a no-brainer, because there are people who claim that transparency reforms are meaningless. And while it is tempting to try to ignore such people, they have a disproportionate impact to their numbers because most people don't have the life experience that would enable them to easily judge between the competing claims "transparency reforms are important" and "transparency reforms are meaningless." Our starting point is that many Americans, compared to Europeans, are politically disengaged, alienated from political engagement most of the time. So when you put out a call for people to engage Congress, you have a group of people who get it right away and take action, and a another group of people who think, "Engage Congress? Not that again," and treat it as a huge personal sacrifice to engage Congress, like you asked them to volunteer for a root canal. These people are looking for any excuse to not take action. So if someone pops up and says, "transparency reforms are meaningless," these people have an excuse not to take action. "Oh, this proposed reform is controversial, not everyone agrees, so I don't have to do anything."
To people who want to claim that transparency reforms are meaningless, I want to say this: tell it to WikiLeaks. What was the fundamental strategic idea of WikiLeaks? What was the fundamental insight that Julian Assange deeply grasped that caused him to initiate this project, at great personal risk to himself and his close collaborators? It was that governments are hiding key information that the public has the right to know, that allowing governments to continue to hide this information fundamentally undermines democratic accountability, and that forcing this information into public debate fundamentally enables democratic accountability.
Case in point: Just Foreign Policy issued a crowd-sourced reward for WikiLeaks to publish the secret negotiating text of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which, among many other concerns, critics like the AARP have charged threatens the ability of the U.S. government to make medicines safe and affordable under the Affordable Care Act. This week, WikiLeaks delivered, publishing the negotiating text of the "intellectual property" chapter of the TPP, the most controversial part of the agreement, including the negotiating positions of different countries. (If you made a pledge to the reward, you can fulfill your pledge here. )
Publishing this information generated a lot of press. (Google "WikiLeaks and TPP.") It also allowed critics of the agreement, like Public Citizen, Doctors Without Borders, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to respond directly to the TPP text in making their criticisms.
Predictably, some journalists wrote what they often write about such disclosures: that there was nothing really shocking for insiders who were closely following the issue. And, in a narrow sense, that's not untrue. But it missed the point. In general, disclosing "secret" government policies mostly isn't about educating journalists and other insiders who are closely following the issues. It's about educating the broad public, which never saw this information clearly presented in major media. In a democracy, it's hard to keep the basics of important public policies secret from well-informed people who are following closely. Official secrecy is mainly about keeping them from the broad public, because official secrecy allows the government to keep the broad public in a fog of competing claims that can't be directly verified and are therefore never resolved in major media. Critics charge that X, but the government denies it. Who knows for sure?
The New York Times recently had an editorial in favor of the TPP. Critics complained, saying: 1) either you're endorsing an agreement that you've never seen or 2) you have seen the agreement, and instead of doing journalism, you're collaborating in keeping the public in the dark. No, we haven't seen the agreement, the Times responded. We're just endorsing the idea of an agreement. Never mind what the actual agreement is. That's the kind of "public debate" you can have when the policy is secret - whether you like the official story about the policy, rather than the actual policy. (Now that part of the TPP text has been leaked, the Times is quiet.) This is the same problem we face with the drone strike policy: people like the official story about the drone strike policy, in which drones are a magic super-weapon that only kills terrorist leaders and not civilians, not the actual policy, about which they have no idea.
When Edward Snowden leaked information about the NSA's blanket surveillance on Americans, many insiders said, "Yeah, we thought the NSA was doing that, we couldn't prove it, but no-one who follows the NSA was surprised." But the broad public had no clue, because it had never been clearly reported where most people could see it, because critics' claims couldn't be directly verified. When Snowden blew the whistle, the broad public found out, and that's why it's plausible that Congress will now force a change in policy. And that shows that transparency matters.
Where we are now with the drone strike policy is where we were with the NSA before Snowden's revelations: insiders know what's going on, but the broad public doesn't.
An illustration: earlier this week, I and others engaged in some "street lobbying" of Jeh Johnson, President Obama's nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security. When he was previously in government, Johnson was the Pentagon's top lawyer, and thus participated in constructing the Administration's purported legal justifications for the drone strike policy (which still have not been fully disclosed to Congress and the public.) Now, as head of DHS, he's not going to play that role directly. But he's still going to have significant influence, because he'll be in the meeting of the national security department heads, because he's well-connected, and because, by his own account, he cares deeply about the rule of law and working to ensure that the drone strike policy transparently complies with the rule of law. I was lobbying Johnson to support the drone strike transparency bill, so that the Administration would have to disclose information about civilian casualties. He said he would look into the bill and consider it.
During the discussion, one of my colleagues challenged Johnson about a particular drone strike. Johnson gave the standard Administration defense, about people who are planning to attack the United States. I interrupted him: "That's a small percentage of the people being killed by drone strikes."
"That's true," Johnson said.
That's true. When I called him on it, Johnson immediately conceded that the story that the drone strike policy is all about narrowly targeting people who are trying to attack the United States is basically not true. It's true that the U.S. has tried to target some people who have attacked or tried to attack the United States. But that's a small percentage of the people who have been killed. And so, in the main, that's not what the drone strike policy is about; in particular, the claim that drone strikes have been "narrowly targeted" on "top level terrorist leaders" is not true. ("I believe it very likely that one of my enemies is standing in that crowd of 50 people, therefore I am going to blow up the crowd" does not constitute "narrow targeting.")
Why would Johnson concede to me that a central Administration claim in defense of its drone strike policy is basically not true?
Because he wasn't giving an interview to a mainstream journalist. He was just talking to some guy on a street corner who wasn't recording what he was saying, a person who had little presumed ability to reach the broad American public, a person who could, at worst, tell some mainstream journalist what Johnson said, which Johnson could then promptly deny. He could say he was misquoted or misunderstood, and life would go on. And so we're left with the usual fog. Critics say X, U.S. officials deny it. Who really knows what the truth is?
Johnson was having an insider conversation, conceding that which all insiders know, but which the broad public does not know: the drone strike policy is not narrowly targeted on people who are trying to attack the United States.
That's why we need to force the Administration onto the public record to document its claims. If the Administration wants to claim that civilian casualties from drone strikes have been extremely rare, and that those killed were mainly people trying to attack the U.S., make them show us their numbers, and how they arrived at them. Pass the drone strike transparency bill.
"President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice," said the head of one watchdog group.
With preparations to refit a Qatari jet to be used as Air Force One "underway," a press freedom group sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court on Monday for failing to release the DOJ memorandum about the legality of President Donald Trump accepting the $400 million "flying palace."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed the lawsuit seeking the memo, which was reportedly approved by the Office of Legal Counsel and signed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.
FPF had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the memo on May 15, and the DOJ told the group that fulfilling it would take over 600 days.
"How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
"It shouldn't take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document," said Lauren Harper, FPF's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, in a Monday statement. "How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
The complaint—filed in the District of Columbia—notes that the airplane is set to be donated to Trump's private presidential library foundation after his second term. Harper said that "the government's inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption."
It's not just FPF sounding the alarm about the aircraft. The complaint points out that "a number of stakeholders, including ethics experts and several GOP lawmakers, have questioned the propriety and legality of the move, including whether acceptance of the plane would violate the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause... which prohibits a president from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress."
Some opponents of the "comically corrupt" so-called gift stressed that it came after the Trump Organization, the Saudi partner DarGlobal, and a company owned by the Qatari government reached a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar.
Despite some initial GOP criticism of the president taking the aircraft, just hours after the Trump administration formally accepted the jet in May, U.S. Senate Republicans thwarted an attempt by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass by unanimous consent legislation intended to prevent a foreign plane from serving as Air Force One.
"Although President Trump characterized the deal as a smart business decision, remarking that it would be 'stupid' not to accept 'a free, very expensive airplane,' experts have noted that it will be costly to retrofit the jet for use as Air Force One, with estimatesranging from less than $400 million to more than $1 billion," the complaint states.
As The New York Times reported Sunday:
Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where "black budgets" are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects—the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles...
Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel.
Preparations to refit the plane "are underway, and floor plans or schematics have been seen by senior U.S. officials," according to Monday reporting by CBS News. One unnamed budget official who spoke to the outlet also "believes the money to pay for upgrades will come from the Sentinel program."
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said Monday that "President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice."
"This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose," Chukwu added. "The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered."
The complaint highlights that "Bondi's decision not to recuse herself from this matter, despite her links to the Qatari government, adds to a growing body of questionable ethical practices that have arisen during her short tenure as attorney general."
It also emphasizes that "the Qatari jet is just one in a list of current and prospective extravagant donations to President Trump's presidential library foundation that has raised significant questions about the use of private foundation donations to improperly influence government policy."
"Notably, ABC News and Paramount each agreed to resolve cases President Trump filed against the media entities by paying multimillion-dollar settlements to the Trump presidential library foundation, with Paramount's $16 million agreed payout coming at the same time it sought government approval for a planned merger with Skydance," the filing details. "On July 24, the Federal Communications Commission announced its approval of the $8 billion merger."
"The Trump regime just handed Christian nationalists a loaded weapon: your federal workplace," said one critic.
The Trump administration issued a memo Monday allowing federal employees to proselytize in the workplace, a move welcomed by many conservatives but denounced by proponents of the separation of church and state.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo "provides clear guidance to ensure federal employees may express their religious beliefs through prayer, personal items, group gatherings, and conversations without fear of discrimination or retaliation."
"Employees must be allowed to engage in private religious expression in work areas to the same extent that they may engage in nonreligious private expression," the memo states.
Federal workers "should be permitted to display and use items used for religious purposes or icons of a religiously significant nature, including but not limited to bibles, artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages, and other indicia of religion (such as crosses, crucifixes, and mezuzahs) on their desks, on their person, and in their assigned workspaces," the document continues.
"Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature," OPM said—without elaborating on what constitutes harassment.
"These shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing."
"Employees may also encourage their coworkers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage coworkers participate in other personal activities," the memo adds.
OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that "federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career."
"This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths," Kupor added. "Under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined."
The OPM memo was widely applauded by conservative social media users—although some were dismayed that the new rules also apply to Muslims.
Critics, however, blasted what the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) called "a gift to evangelicals and the myth of 'anti-Christian bias.'"
FFRF co-president Laurie Gaylor said that "these shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing, but worse still, allow supervisors to evangelize underlings and federal workers to proselytize the public they serve."
"This is the implementation of Christian nationalism in our federal government," Gaylor added.
The Secular Coalition for America denounced the memo as "another effort to grant privileges to certain religions while ignoring nonreligious people's rights."
Monday's memo follows another issued by Kupor on July 16 that encouraged federal agencies to take a "generous approach" to evaluating government employees who request telework and other flexibilities due to their religious beliefs.
The OPM directives follow the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 Groff v. DeJoy ruling, in which the court's right-wing majority declared that Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "requires an employer that denies a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The new memo also comes on the heels of three religion-based executive orders issued by Trump during his second term. One order established a White House Faith Office tasked with ensuring religious organizations have a voice in the federal government. Another seeks to "eradicate" what Trump claims is the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." Yet another created a Religious Liberty Commission meant to promote and protect religious freedom.
Awda Hathaleen was described as "a teacher and an activist who struggled courageously for his people."
A Palestinian peace activist has been fatally shot by a notorious Israeli settler who was once the subject of sanctions that were lifted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In June, Awda Hathaleen—an English teacher, activist, and former soccer player from the occupied West Bank—was detained alongside his cousin Eid at the airport in San Francisco, where they were about to embark on an interfaith speaking tour organized by the California-based Kehilla Community Synagogue.
Ben Linder, co-chair of the Silicon Valley chapter of J Street and the organizer of Eid and Awda's first scheduled speaking engagement told Middle East Eye that he'd known the two cousins for 10 years, describing them as "true nonviolent peace activists" who "came here on an interfaith peace-promoting mission."
Without explanation from U.S. authorities, they were deported and returned to their village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills.
On Monday afternoon, the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) reported on social media that Awda Hathaleen had been killed after Israeli settlers attacked his village and that a relative of his was also severely injured:
Activists working with Awda report that Israeli settlers invaded Umm al-Kheir with a bulldozer to destroy what little remains of the Palestinian village. As Awda and his family tried to defend their homes and land, a settler opened fire—both aiming directly and shooting indiscriminately. Awda was shot in the chest and later died from his injuries after being taken by an Israeli ambulance. His death was the result of brutal settler violence.
Later, when Awda's relative Ahmad al-Hathaleen tried to block the bulldozer, the settler driving it ran him over. Ahmad is now being treated in a nearby hospital.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz later confirmed these events, adding:
An eyewitness reported that the entry of Israeli settlers into Palestinian private lands, riding an excavator, caused a commotion, and the vehicle subsequently struck a resident named Ahmad Hathaleen. "People lost their minds, and the children threw stones," he said.
A friend and fellow activist, Mohammad Hureini, posted the video of the attack online. The settler who fired the gun has been identified by Haaretz as Yinon Levi, who has previously been hit—along with other settlers—with sanctions by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration and other governments over his past harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
As the Biden State Department wrote at the time:
Levi consistently leads a group of settlers who attack Palestinians, set fire to their fields, destroy their property, and threaten them with further harm if they do not leave their homes.
The sanctions were later lifted by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, they'd already been rendered virtually ineffective after the intervention of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements.
Brooklyn-based journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who has covered other cases of settler violence for Zeteo described Levi as "a known terrorist who's been protected by the Israeli government for years," adding that, "One of the only good things Biden did for Palestine was sanction him."
Violence by Israeli settlers in the illegally-occupied West Bank has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the subsequent 21-month military campaign by Israel in Gaza.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers during that time. More than 6,400 have been forcibly displaced following the demolition of their homes by Israel, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The killing of Awda Hathaleen—who had a wife and three young children—has been met with outpourings of grief and anger from his fellow peace activists in the United States, Israel, and Palestine.
Issa Amro, the Hebron-based co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements, described Awda as a "beloved hero."
"Awda stood with dignity and courage against oppression," Amro said. "His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice."
Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who last year directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, described Awda Hathaleen as "a remarkable activist," and thanked him for helping his team shoot the film in Masafer Yatta.
"To know Awda Hathaleen is to love him," said the post from JVP announcing his death. "Awda has always been a pillar amongst his family, his village and the wider international community of activists who had the pleasure to meet Awda."
Israeli-American peace activist Mattan Berner-Kadish wrote: "May his memory be a revolution. I will remember him smiling, laughing, dreaming of a better future for his children. We must make it so."