Despite a bunch of Republican lawmakers being extremely (and mostly performatively) upset that their communications were accessed during investigations of the January 2021 insurrection attempt, the current version of the Trump administration seems to prefer a clean re-authorization of the surveillance powers it so recently deemed a dangerous part of the “deep state.”
The FISA court recently blessed an extension of this NSA collection, provided the government fixed the most problematic parts of it — that being other IC agencies’ warrantless access to US persons’ communications via “backdoor” searches of the foreign-facing surveillance dragnet.
Trump was having none of this, pressing the GOP to simply give the administration an un-reformed, un-repaired Section 702 that would presumably allow it to engage in the same abuses it was crying about less than a half-decade ago.
Fortunately for every American only allowed to vote by proxy every two-to-four years for surveillance reform, there is still no clean re-authorization on the books. The senator whose name is synonymous with surveillance reform — Ron Wyden — recently had this to say in his Bluesky post:
Update on where things stand on FISA: this deal is a win. We got the House to back down from an 18 month extension, buying us time to negotiate on real reforms. I'll be fighting like hell for reforms that put your privacy first, and will have more to share soon.
Update on where things stand on FISA: this deal is a win. We got the House to back down from an 18 month extension, buying us time to negotiate on real reforms. I’ll be fighting like hell for reforms that put your privacy first, and will have more to share soon.
Not that congressional majority leader Mike Johnson wasn’t trying his damnedest to round up GOP support for a clean renewal that would give Trump what he wanted, and very little of what the GOP actually wanted, given its years of complaining about the FBI’s warrantless access to their communications.
Johnson’s dazzling play to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by five years ended in an excruciating defeat, as the bill failed after 20 Republicans joined Democrats in striking it down. One major reason it lost was that the warrant language baked into that measure not only would have codified existing law, but also would have made it easier for Section 702–acquired data to be used against Americans in criminal proceedings.
The 200-220 vote was called at 1:22 early Friday morning.
Baratta’s report refers to this as an “eleventh hour” burst of activity, but it’s actually well past that hour. We’re looking at 13th to 14th hour desperation here, especially since Johnson went back to the well again shortly after this first defeat.
The other shoe dropped during the vote on a rule to consider a clean 18-month extension of Section 702. That rule also failed at 2:07 a.m. in a 197-228 vote.
Given that the average congressional rep is pushing 58, both votes occurred well after bedtime. It’s a testimony to the resistance to clean re-authorization of Section 702 powers that these many reps were still on the floor to shut down Mike Johnson twice.
It also shows that Mike Johnson isn’t actually leading the Republican party. He’s restricted to doing whatever Trump wants, even if that clashes with what many party members want. To get skunked twice in two hours is embarrassing, which means Johnson may not remain majority leader for long, even if Democrats can’t flip the House following the mid-terms.
The good news is this: Congress only has until the end of this month to get a re-authorization passed. If it hopes to prevent this surveillance power from lapsing, Johnson and his fellow surveillance hawks are going to have to make some concessions, which may (finally!) include warrant requirements for searches of US persons’ communications by IC agencies with access to NSA collections.
On the other hand, when push comes to shove, far too many Republicans are willing to be Trump’s doormat and argue against their own interests, along with the interests of the constituents. But this is the most concerted challenge to Section 702 mounted yet. Even the Snowden leaks didn’t manage to get this done. But even if reforms are finally put in place, the public should remember GOP lawmakers did this because they want to shield themselves from domestic surveillance. That it might better protect their constituents is just an unavoidable side effect of their self-interest.
The “Party of Free Speech” is at it again. House Speaker Mike Johnson just bragged about using legal threats to remove his opponents’ political advertising — perhaps the most constitutionally protected form of speech that exists. And he did it while lying about them lying.
Johnson: "Do not believe the lies the Democrat Party has said. We had their ads taken down. They were running ads around the country in swing districts trying to convince people Republicans are going to 'gut Medicaid.' It's just simply not true & that's why their ads & billboards had to come down"
Do not believe the hype. Do not believe the lies the Democrat Party has said. We had their ads taken down. They were running ads around the country in swing districts trying to convince people Republicans are going to ‘gut Medicaid.’ It’s just simply not true & that’s why their ads & billboards had to come down. We sent them a cease-and-desist letter because they were lying.
This isn’t just hypocritical coming from the party that claims to have “brought free speech back” — it’s potentially a serious First Amendment violation. And Johnson seems almost proud of it.
The fact that Johnson is so cavalier about admitting that he helped remove ads from an opposing political party shows the new norm for the GOP: that it does not care about free speech at all, and is willing to censor at will.
The hypocrisy is particularly striking given how Republicans react when their own ads face scrutiny. Just last year, the MAGA world erupted in outrage over “cEnSOrSh!p!” when Google briefly restricted a Trump campaign ad:
That was a private company enforcing its own rules. Here we have government officials, who control all three branches of government, using legal threats to remove constitutionally protected political speech from their opponents.
It turns out that the media did report on this (though not very widely) back in March when it happened. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent a threatening cease-and-desist not to the Democrats, but rather to the billboard advertising company they used, Lamar Advertising.
Before we get to the legal threats themselves, let’s be clear: the Democrats’ ads were accurate and not even remotely defamatory. The GOP’s attempt to claim otherwise relies on a semantic dodge that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
It has come to our attention that your company may imminently be planning to display billboards containing patently false claims in the respective home districts of six Members of Congress: Representatives Gabe Evans (CO-08), Don Bacon (NE-02), Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07), Monica De La Cruz (TX-15), Jen Kiggans (VA-02), and Rob Wittman (VA-01).1 The message House Majority Forward has evidently paid you to display is that each Representative “VOTED TO CUT MEDICAID TO GIVE BILLIONAIRES…TAX CUTS.” To avoid defaming a half-dozen sitting Members of Congress, your company must cease any and all plans to display these billboards to the public.
House Majority Forward’s claims are demonstrably false. A simple review of the concurrent resolution passed by the House of Representatives shows that Medicaid was not mentioned once in the document’s sixty pages.3 Instead, the resolution delegated broad authority to the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit at their own discretion. House Majority Forward’s billboards target Representatives who cast their votes for a topline budget number voted to put money back into taxpayers’ pockets – not to cut funding to Medicaid. Even legacy media outlets confirm:
The NRCC’s evidence that these ads are “demonstrably false”? Two carefully cherry-picked media quotes that actually prove the opposite when put back in context:
FACT:Medicaid “isn’t specifically mentioned in the budget resolution” and the “vote is simply one to begin the reconciliation process.” CBS News.
FACT:Medicaid is “not specified in the budget” and the resolution “calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify more than $800 billion in reductions.” Politico.
Those two claims are the sole basis for the NRCC asserting that the ads are “lies.” But, that’s bullshit. Even their links disprove it. The CBS link for that first line also includes this “fact”:
Johnson wouldn’t commit to preserving Medicaid in its entirety as the reconciliation process continues, and the budget resolution instructs the committee overseeing Medicaid to find $800 billion in cuts.
So, uh, yeah, the bill does, in fact, cut Medicaid.
The Politico story is even worse. Note how it’s framed in the quote above with strategic use of quote marks to suggest that the $800 billion reduction is not about Medicaid. But in context in the Politico article, it’s literally noting that President Trump himself expressed concerns that Johnson’s budget would cut Medicaid!
This week, POTUS expressed reservations to some lawmakers about potential cuts to Medicaid, which while not specified in the budget, are expected given that the document calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify more than $800 billion in reductions.
The level of sheer chutzpah to claim that that sentence proves that Medicaid won’t be cut, when it very clearly says that even Trump is worried that Johnson’s proposal will cut Medicaid is insane.
Indeed, basically every actual fact check notes that Medicaid is clearly on the chopping block because of the requirement for the $800 billion in cuts, even if it’s not specifically named:
Aguilar has a point that the $880 billion would have to touch Medicaid, unless lawmakers wanted to find the reductions in Medicare — which may be even more politically challenging. Plus, House Republicans already have talked about some options for Medicaid cuts, such as adding work requirements and finding efficiencies in the program.
Scalise is correct in saying the legislation doesn’t include the word “Medicaid.” But, again, there’s little doubt that the program would face spending reductions — and they could be substantial, as we’ll explain.
Even the Congressional Budget Office made it clear that there’s basically no way to cut $880 billion without cutting Medicaid.
So with the facts established — that the ads were accurate and the GOP is lying about lying — let’s look at the actual legal threat. The letter itself has all the hallmarks of a bullshit SLAPP demand, designed to silence and suppress protected speech.
Indeed, the First Amendment would clearly allow political speech suggesting that these Republicans “voted to cut Medicaid.” Not only is that a fair assessment of reality, in the political speech context, it is expected that certain rhetorical claims can be simplified.
And, really, Republicans like Mike Johnson should be the last ones to try to argue that political puffery may be defamatory. Hell, his claim that the Democrats “lied” would be even more defamatory than the claims that the Dems’ billboards were “false.”
Second, though, Johnson is trying to make it out like the Democrats pulled the billboards because they knew they were false, when that’s not the case at all. The ad firm pulled them because it feared the threats from the NRCC… and appeared to be courting the NRCC’s business itself:
“Lamar’s National Sales Campaign Specialist has confirmed that the copy is no longer running,” the vendor letter reads. “While your letter came to Mario Martinez’s attention, Mr. Martinez was not involved in the Advertiser’s campaign. Notwithstanding,Mr. Martinez…is available to assist the NRCC with counter messages or future campaigns.”
Indeed, the organization that put up the billboards separately noted that the billboards still ran… just from a different vendor:
a House Majority Forward spokesperson said the billboards criticizing Bacon and Rep. Gabe Evans, R-CO, are still up, because they are under a different vendor.
So, to summarize, Johnson is lying about the Democrats lying. Their ads are accurate. The ads are certainly not defamatory. On top of that, one single vendor pulled the ads, not the Democrats themselves. And the billboards still ran via a different vendor.
Oh, and this just shows how the hypocritical Republicans are continuing their censorial anti-free speech campaign against anyone who calls them out. Here they’re issuing a blatant SLAPP threat, falsely claiming defamation in a scenario that is clearly not defamatory.
This incident fits a clear pattern: Republicans wielding government power to silence critics while crying “censorship” when faced with private moderation. The legal implications are particularly troubling given last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Vullo, where a unanimous Court made it clear that government officials cannot target intermediaries to punish speech they dislike. Republicans celebrated that ruling when it stopped a Democratic official from pressuring companies working with the NRA.
Now those same Republicans are trying to dodge Vullo by laundering their threats through the NRCC rather than coming directly from elected officials. It’s a transparently weak argument — especially given Johnson’s proud admission of involvement — but it reveals their playbook: use whatever tools available, legal or otherwise, to silence opposition speech while maintaining the fiction of being “free speech warriors.”
The GOP’s eagerness to suppress accurate criticism of their Medicaid cuts shows just how far they’ll go to hide their actual agenda — and just how much they know their actual agenda would be faced with massive criticism. When they say they’re the “party of free speech,” what they really mean is they want consequence-free speech for themselves while retaining the power to silence anyone who calls them out.
Of course, the end result here is a bit of a Streisand Effect. I had missed the GOP’s attempt to censor these ads, and now because Johnson is advertising it, I went back and found the details, including a better understanding of just how accurate those ads are, and how the GOP’s own threat letter points me to news articles noting that Medicaid cuts are absolutely a part of the plan.
I guess it’s good to know there are still surprises left for me in this universe. We have talked about the common absurdity in which video games are blamed for all manner of things. It’s the moral panic of our time. Video games are blamed for violence, for supposed addictions, for violence, for the eventual end to the human race due to men not dating enough, and also for violence. That list isn’t exhaustive, by the way. Plenty of other things are blamed on video games beyond those, but you get the idea.
Rarely, if ever, have I heard that video games are the reason there is so much waste in Medicaid, however. And, yet, that appears to be, at least in part, the exact theory House Speaker Mike Johnson is engaging in to justify the GOP cutting into the Medicaid program despite Dear Leader claiming his adoration for the program.
“No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who’s duly owed—what we’ve talked about is returning work requirements, so, for example, you don’t have able-bodied young men on a program that’s designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled. They’re draining resources from people,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson last week.
“So if you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money, and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing videogames all day.”
Ah, the old “nerd in Mom’s basement” routine. How droll.
Meanwhile, here are some inconvenient facts. Medicaid is a program to essentially supplement health coverage for those that can’t otherwise afford it. Recent studies indicate that something like two-thirds of the folks on Medicaid are, in fact, already employed. The majority of those that are not are folks who are typically elderly, disabled, or have life circumstances precluding them from fulltime work, such as taking care of unwell family members that have nobody else to rely on.
Are there some in the program that are taking advantage of the system? Undoubtedly. That is surely the case in every sizable system everywhere, government or otherwise. But Johnson’s work requirement will do very little other than to put the sick and elderly in the crosshairs of a government that seems to believe cruelty is the chief mechanism for governance.
But these are, again, inconvenient facts that serve only to stand in the way of Johnson’s desire to hand-wave concerns about cutting this program by invoking the demon that is video games. It’s lazy. It’s cynical.
And it’s another proof that this current government thinks we’re too stupid to know when we’re being lied to.
The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, provided 23+ million low-income households a $30 broadband discount every month. But the roughly 60 million Americans benefiting from the program are now facing much higher broadband bills because key Republicans — who routinely dole out billions of dollars on far dumber fare — refused to fund a $4-$7 billion extension.
There were several last ditch efforts to fund the program but none were successful, thanks largely to Trump loyalist and current House Speaker Mike Johnson, who refused to let any of those funding efforts get close to a vote.
It takes until the eighth paragraph in this CNN report on the death of the program before the author even acknowledges that Johnson and MAGA obstructionists killed the effort, and even then it’s framed in typical “he said, she said” fashion that frames Johnson’s obstructionism as possibly an opinion:
“Some US lawmakers proposed bipartisan legislation to extend the ACP in the months leading up to the deadline. But the bills languished in the face of inaction by Republican leaders who showed little interest in engaging with the issue. President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers have publicly blamed GOP leadership for allowing the ACP to end.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.”
The program did see bipartisan support, and was popular among Americans struggling to make ends meet (something Ohio’s JD Vance was quick to realize). Even legislation averse telecom giants liked the program, given it basically gave them money to temporarily lower high broadband prices that wouldn’t be high in the first place if they hadn’t worked tirelessly to crush all competition and regulatory oversight.
The ACP wasn’t a permanent fix to the problem that is expensive broadband, but it was the closest we were going to get in a regulatory and policy environment where Democrats and Republicans alike utterly refuse to even acknowledge that regionally concentrated monopoly power is the reason U.S. broadband sucks (much less actually propose any solutions that challenge companies like AT&T and Comcast).
Key Trumplicans like Johnson claim they opposed the program because they were simply looking out for taxpayers. In reality they routinely dole out billions for far dumber fare (including billions in regulatory favors, subsidies and tax breaks to telecom giants like AT&T in exchange for absolutely nothing), and didn’t want Democrats getting credit for a popular program during an election season.
The fourth time (yes, the fourth) was the charm for House Republicans when the lower chamber of Congress on a bipartisan basis voted to renew a controversial spying law, not without plenty of hiccups along the way.
And there you have it. A clean reauthorization is now headed to the Senate. All the House Republicans who converted their Deep State conspiracy theories into a demand for a warrant requirement found themselves matched evenly with Democrats who refused to give the Republicans what they wanted, even if it would have resulted in better protections for all Americans, not just the Americans House Speaker Mike Johnson thought were worth protecting (i.e., just congressional reps).
A measure requiring federal agents to get a warrant before searching American communications collected as part of foreign intelligence failed to pass the House of Representatives today. The measure received 212 votes for and 212 votes against.
“This is a sad day for America,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). “The Speaker doesn’t always vote in the House, but he was the tie breaker today. He voted against warrants.”
But it was largely Democrats who sank the warrant requirement. House Democrats voted against the measure 84–126, while Republicans voted for the measure 128–86.
So, there will be no warrant requirement contained in the House reauthorization. Instead, we’re stuck with what will likely be a clean re-up of Section 702 surveillance — something that includes FBI access to US persons’ communications that it has never not abused since it was granted access to this collection.
Members of the Senate have their own warrant requirement amendment to pitch, but it was thought the House — where Trump acolytes are suddenly enamored with the possibility of punishing the FBI for its excesses — might be the first place for a Section 702 warrant requirement to be voted into existence. Sadly, it was the other side of the aisle that ruined this, apparently unwilling to give House Republicans a win that would have resulted in better protections for their constituents.
The clock continues to tick down to the April 19 postponement. But, given what’s been seen here, a majority of representatives seem to feel maintaining the status quo is preferable to demanding the FBI respect the Constitution when accessing NSA collections. There’s a small chance the Senate (led by Ron Wyden’s endless pursuit of surveillance reform) can institute a warrant requirement. But, for the most part, the partisan infighting has led to nothing more than a blanket extension of the same stuff that has been problematic for years. And every year this issue goes ignored solidifies the FBI’s casual abuse of constitutional rights.
Shortly after it was becoming clear Israeli malware manufacturer NSO Group was a troubling company selling to troubling governments (but before its odiousness hit critical mass last summer), the FBI took a meeting with NSO and test drove a bespoke exploit. It was a variant of NSO’s uber-powerful Pegasus malware — one that bypassed NSO’s internal restrictions on targeting US-based phone numbers.
The product pitched to the FBI by NSO was called “Phantom.” It could target US phone numbers — something the FBI tested by buying a bunch of burner phones and deploying the provided malware to them. It all seemed to work just fine (and has now become a very interesting part of Facebook’s current lawsuit against NSO Group), but the FBI’s legal counsel seemed concerned turning phones into fully compromised listening devices might be more than courts would be willing to bless under existing wiretap laws that were written long before anyone foresaw the widespread use of powerful computers capable of being carried around in a person’s pocket.
Two Republican lawmakers are pressing Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide information about spyware made by the Israeli company NSO Group, according to letters obtained by CNBC.
Two Republican lawmakers are pressing Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide information about spyware made by the Israeli company NSO Group, according to letters obtained by CNBC.
The letters, dated Thursday and signed by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and subcommittee on civil rights Ranking Member Mike Johnson, R-La., come after The New York Times reported earlier this year that the FBI had acquired surveillance technology from the NSO Group.
The letter [PDF] wants to know why the FBI retained the malware for nearly two years if it never intended to use it. Going beyond that, the Congressional reps want all information related to the FBI/NSO partnership that may never have been fully consummated, despite spending $5 million on licenses.
Whether or not we, the people, will ever be made privy to these answers remains to be seen. But they are the sort of questions Congressional oversight should be asking and will possibly force the release of some information the FBI would rather not share with anyone — even the people it’s supposed to be answering to.
Here’s the information Reps Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson want the FBI to hand over:
All documents and communications between or among the FBI and the NSO Group, Westbridge Technologies, or any other NSO Group affiliate or subsidiary referring or relating to the FBI’s acquisition, testing, or use of NSO Group spyware;
All documents and communications referring or relating to the FBI’s decision to acquire NSO Group spyware; and
All documents and communications referring or relating to the FBI’s or Justice Department’s assessment of the legality of using Phantom against domestic targets.
The same reps also have some questions for Apple, which has begun notifying iPhone users it believes have been targeted by NSO exploits. But what they’re asking for here might be a bit more problematic, considering Apple’s main obligations are to its customers (rather than taxpayers and/or Congressional oversight.) On top of that, its efforts to detect NSO malware are ongoing and may be compromised by making some of this information public. From the letter [PDF] to Apple:
[P]lease provide the following information:
Apple’s ability to detect when a user of an Apple device has been targeted by Pegasus or Phantom;
The number of attacks using Pegasus or Phantom that Apple has detected, the dates of those attacks, the geographical regions in which Apple detected those attacks, and any other relevant information about those attacks; and
A staff level briefing about Apple’s communications, if any, with representatives of the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any other U.S. Government entity about Pegasus or Phantom.
There’s a lot in this request that’s of public interest, especially where attacks have been detected and any information Apple might have on where these attacks originated. But it seems Apple would not be particularly willing to explain, publicly and in detail, how it detects these malware attacks.
We’ll see what these letters actually produce. They both carry the same deadline: St. Patricks Day, 2022. Whatever information does end up in the hands of the Judiciary Committee is unlikely to end the long run of bad news for NSO Group.
