Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

In 2010, Thomas Drake, a former senior employee at the National Security Agency, was charged with espionage for speaking to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun about a bloated, dysfunctional intelligence program he believed would violate Americans’ privacy. The case against him eventually fell apart, and he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, but his career in the NSA was over.

Something unexpected happened in the Oklahoma Legislature onFebruary 8 that had Karo Chowning feeling pretty optimistic. That morning lawmakers in the House Public Health Committee blocked one anti-abortion bill and a second was tabled without discussion.

LET’S SAY YOU ARE a top official on the National Security Council and Donald Trump requests a memo explaining the purpose of his chaotic presidency.

Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst celebrated the annual March for Life in Washington the way many do: by decrying Planned Parenthood and declaring that the nearly 101-year-old provider of women’s reproductive health care should be stripped of any federal funding. Along with Tennessee Republican Rep. Diane Black, Ernst has become the new face of the defunding movement — a mantle typically held by those among Congress’s white male contingent, including Vice President Mike Pence.

Late last month, Connie, a flight attendant for a major airline, was preparing to board a planeleaving New York when she beganhearing rumors about peopleheld at airports following Donald Trump’s executive order barring refugees and Muslim travelers from entering the United States. The president claimed the ban was about terrorism, yet even legal permanent residents were reportedly being detained. It sounded far-fetched to Connie and her co-workers.

Donald Trump’s first executive order as president,signed on January 25, called for a series of dramatic new measures aimed at hardening the country’s domestic immigration enforcement apparatus. Despite theirgrave implications for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., themeasures were largely overshadowed by a particularly high-profile component of the directive — the construction of a border wall between the U.S.

The more concerned one is about the Trump administration, the more one should focus on how to fix the systemic, fundamental sickness of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton won the meaningless popular vote on her way to losing to Donald Trump, and that the singular charisma of Barack Obama kept him popular, haveenabled many to ignorejust how broken and failedthe Democrats are as a national political force.

During his inaugural address, Donald Trump deployed rhetoric that was familiar to anyone who spent time in the Balkans in the 1990s. “You will never be ignored again,” Trump thundered, with Congress as his backdrop. He expanded on the idea a few days later, during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security, where he said, “To all of those hurting out there, I repeat to you these words, we hear you, we see you, and you will never, ever be ignored again.

Much of the country has been watching in horror as Donald Trump has made good on his promises to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency — delaying30 regulations, severely limiting the information staffers can release, and installing Scott Pruitt as the agency’s administrator to destroy the agency from within. But even those keeping their eyes on the EPAmay have missed aquieter attack on environmental protections now being launched in Congress.

Several fans of the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos were injured on Wednesday night in Berkeley, in scuffles with dozens of black-clad anti-fascist activists who managed to shut down a talk by Brietbart’s star writer on the University of California campus.

At its lowestlevel of investigative activity, on the basis of vague tips or broad intelligence interests, the FBI can follow people with airplanes, examine travel records, and analyze links between email, phone, and other records collected by intelligence agencies.

In naming Colorado-based appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch as his candidate to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Donald Trump said Tuesday night that he’d promised to nominate “the very best judge in the country,” someone who “respects laws” and “loves our Constitution.

When Alexandre Louzada and Francisco David decided that they wanted to adopt a child, they had only a small number of specific preferences. The couple wanted a child no older than 6years of age. They were willing to adopta child with chronic, treatable diseases such as diabetes or fetal alcohol syndrome, but not one with untreatable conditions — such as blindness or paralysis — which they believed themselves financially and emotionally incapable of supporting.

The FBI operateson the internet with unprecedented vigor and under loose rules, according to secret internal guidelines obtained by The Intercept, withundercover agents freely chattingonline with unsuspecting people who are not even underinvestigation.

The FBI routinelyuses secret orders known as national security letters to demand information that recipients might not actually have to give up, internal documents indicate. The letters are among the FBI’s most potent instruments, because they function like subpoenas without requiring the approval of a judge.