Last week it emerged that the Department of Justice had adopted the unprecedented tactic of employing a subpoena in order to recover copies of a classified document that had been provided without authorization to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Yesterday, in a swift and somewhat farcical conclusion to the controversy, the government withdrew the subpoena and announced that the document had been declassified (pdf).
The use of a subpoena was not intended as a threat, a government attorney wrote (pdf) to the court, but was issued in response to a “request” from the ACLU, so that the organization would not have to voluntarily surrender the document without “due process”:
“The Government issued the subpoena based on […] what it believed to be the ACLU’s request for a subpoena in lieu of voluntarily returning the then-classified document.”
Further background is available in “Government Backs Down in its Attempt to Seize ‘Secret’ Document,” ACLU, December 18, and “Prosecutors Drop A.C.L.U. Subpoena in Document Fight” by Adam Liptak, New York Times, December 19.
Confronting this crisis requires decision-makers to understand the lived realities of wildfire risk and resilience, and to work together across party lines. Safewoods helps make both possible.
Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed revoking its 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases pose a substantial threat to the public. The Federation of American Scientists stands in strong opposition.
Modernizing ClinicalTrials.gov will empower patients, oncologists, and others to better understand what trials are available, where they are available, and their up-to-date eligibility criteria, using standardized search categories to make them more easily discoverable.
The Federation of American Scientists supports H.R. 4420, the Cool Corridors Act of 2025, which would reauthorize the Healthy Streets program through 2030 and seeks to increase green and other shade infrastructure in high-heat areas.