“In my professional opinion, the NSA domestic surveillance program is as blatantly illegal a program as I’ve seen,” said Prof. Harold Hongju Koh, dean of the Yale Law School, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on February 28.
Others disagreed. “I believe that the inherent authority of the president under Article II, under these circumstances, permits the types of intercepts that are being undertaken,” said former DCI R. James Woolsey.
The opening statements from the February 28 hearing on “Wartime Executive Power and the NSA’s Surveillance Authority” may be found here.
The view that the NSA surveillance activity is illegal was elaborated in a legal memorandum that was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last week by the Center for National Security Studies and the Constitution Project.
Also last week, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) introduced legislation to establish “to investigate the instances of warrantless wiretapping and spying on U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency and other departments of Government.”
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.