Opinion | We Were Top Homeland Security Lawyers. You Can’t Wish Away the Fourth Amendment.

Powerful statement from a bipartisan group of former DHS GCs:
We Were Top Homeland Security Lawyers. You Can’t Wish Away the Fourth Amendment. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/o...

"After all, I didn't run so I could have this job. I ran so I could do this job. " How many members of Congress could honestly say this? Or have they just forgotten why they ran in the first place?

Here's a good recent example of what I mean, where a Democrat pushes back instead of accepting a Trump-friendly distortion as the premise.

Thanks @hankhoffmanct.bsky.social for alerting me to it, @corybooker.com for sharing/praising it, and especially @neguse.house.gov for doing it.

More like this

"Civics education has moved out of our schools and into the mainstream. We can all help spread critical knowledge about the path our country is on, and we need to do it not just once, but over and over again until the people around us finally understand and become as alarmed as we are."

Land of the free and home of the brave? An Anthem for the Resistance. Across the country, as we celebrate Independence Day, Americans will hear their national anthem.

Read why I think the Star Spangled Banner could be an anthem for the resistance: open.substack.com/pub/suzannes...

#4thofJuly

On this Flag Day, I am thinking about that question/challenge at the end of our national anthem. We must be brave to be free. Part of our resistance playlist? If you don't think you can sing the entire song, at least join in loudly on this important last line!
#NoKings

Still waiting for the investigations and prosecutions of those who are threatening judges across the country...

Comey under investigation for ‘threat’ to Trump on social media, officials say

Opinion | How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

"When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy."

youtu.be/ut8oV3xdEoY?...

Check out how the anchors of CBS Evening News ended their broadcast tonight:

On the day the long-time producer of 60 Minutes resigned, I watched "Good Night and Good Luck" tonight on Broadway. George Clooney as CBS' Edward R Murrow taking on Sen Joe McCarthy:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. ...

5 takeaways about NPR's reporting on the whistleblower report about DOGE at the NLRB Here's a summary of NPR's findings about the report that a whistleblower filed to Congress about how DOGE violated security protocols and could have removed sensitive labor data.

🚨"In fact, in the minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB's systems, someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in..."🚨

www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...

A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data A whistleblower tells Congress and NPR that DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data and hid its tracks. "None of that ... information should ever leave the agency," said a former NLRB official.

www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...
A detailed and deeply troubling account of the many dangers DOGE is creating as they rummage around sensitive personal and business data, experiment with untested technologies, and remove security measures designed to keep out enemies and criminals.

Cory Booker making history with the longest floor speech in US Senate, a record previously held by Strong Thurmond speaking against 1957 Civil Rights Act. Thurmond spoke from fear and hate. Booker speaks from joy and love. He's counting on all of us to stand up and speak out in the same vein.

Hackers Exploit Signal's Linked Devices Feature to Hijack Accounts via Malicious QR Codes Russian threat actors exploit Signal’s linked devices feature using malicious QR codes to gain persistent access to victims' accounts, Google warns.

"The operational emphasis on Signal from multiple threat actors in recent months serves as an important warning for the growing threat to secure messaging applications..."
(Glad USG isn't sharing military ops plans on Signal. Oh, wait...)
thehackernews.com/2025/02/hack...

In light of CJ Roberts statement today reinforcing the role of the courts and the appeals process, I'm re-posting this plea for judges to remember that twisting themselves in knots to avoid confrontation is itself abandoning independence. That, too, is a constitutional crisis.

www.lawfaremedia.org/article/judi...

As I explain in the piece below,
"If the executive branch is determined to provoke a constitutional crisis, then confrontation is inevitable. It is better that the crisis arises from the Court doing its job than from the Court being cowed into submission."

The House Homeland Security Committee is meeting right now to, among other things, mark up a GOP bill to expand cyber scholarships. Democrats supported the bill last year, but ranking member Bennie Thompson just urged a "no" vote, citing layoffs at CISA that he says jeopardize the bill's success.

Opinion | Here Are the Digital Clues to What Musk Is Really Up To What will DOGE do with access to personal data on almost all Americans?

Excellent piece on risks from Musk minions taking over federal IT systems. As former head of what is now CISA at DHS, I worry about their having moved there, given its visibility into all .gov networks. Their goal seems to be data exploitation, not security.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/o...

In addition to the cruelty of these summary firings, it's maddening. It's so hard to recruit the talent we desperately need to keep Americans safe, and now to lose it.There will be a scrambled effort to bring in talent following the next big cyber incident, but it will take years. Not smart.

@jsaks.bsky.social is reporting that at least four CTMS hires in "highly technical national security posts" were among the CISA layoffs last week. politi.co/432RDuU

a close up of a man 's face with the words with their own on the bottom right ALT: a close up of a man 's face with the words with their own on the bottom right

Couldn't help thinking on Sunday of this greatest Superbowl ad ever, from 1984. Such a sharp contrast with today's tech oligarchs reinforcing "100% loyalty" to the leader.

Enemies like China, Russia, and Iran employ ever more sophisticated techniques in their ongoing info wars against Americans, and we are rapidly tearing down our defenses and unilaterally disarming. Our enemies seek to exacerbate divisions to weaken us. We must fight back, not open the doors.

As DOGE teams plug into federal networks, cybersecurity risks could be huge, experts say Little is known about how workers on Elon Musk's federal government technology team are accessing sensitive systems at the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department and elsewhere. Expert...

therecord.media/doge-opm-tre...

Stunning

Pentagon removes portrait of Mark Milley, former top US general The Pentagon on Monday removed the portrait of Mark Milley, the retired Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to two Reuters witnesses, in a move that happened within two hours of President Donald Trump's inauguration.

www.reuters.com/world/us/pen...

Do they think "1984" is a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale?

Mondale eulogy for Carter, read by his son, ends with this:

The Day After the Election: A Fireside Conversation with Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta | CSIS Events Please join CSIS virtually on Tuesday, December 17th, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. EDT for a conversation with Leon Panetta, the 23rd United States Secretary of Defense under the Obama Administration.

I hope you will join me and Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta tomorrow to discuss the Panetta Institute's latest Youth Civic Engagement survey --and what can be done to restore faith in democracy and its institutions.
Watch live to ask questions: www.csis.org/events/day-a...