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Over the last seven months, we have learned an incredible amount about the government's post-9/11 surveillance efforts. But there is a crucial gap in our basic understanding. We now know, for example, a good deal about how the government conducts surveillance that targets Americans, and about surveillance of foreigners that sweeps up Americans' international communications when the actual surveillance takes place on U.S. soil (for example, from a Google facility in the United States). But we still know very little about Executive Order 12,333, which governs the NSA's surveillance abroad — even when that surveillance sweeps up Americans' communications. To fill that gap, the ACLU, along with the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, today filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding that the government release basic information about its use of Executive Order 12,333 to conduct surveillance of Americans' international communications. Why is Executive Order 12,333 so important? Here is how we explained it in our complaint (filed today in federal court in New York):

Although EO 12,333 permits the government to target foreigners abroad for surveillance, recent revelations have confirmed that the government interprets that authority to permit sweeping monitoring of Americans' international communications. How the government conducts this surveillance, and whether it appropriately accommodates the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents whose communications are intercepted in the course of that surveillance, are matters of great public significance and concern. While the government has released several documents describing the rules that govern its collection and use of Americans' international communications under statutory authorities regulating surveillance on U.S. soil, little information is publicly available regarding the rules that apply to surveillance of Americans' international calls and emails under EO 12,333. That gap in public knowledge is particularly troubling in light of recent revelations, which make clear that the NSA is collecting vast quantities of data worldwide pursuant to EO 12,333. For instance, recent news reports indicate that, relying on the executive order, the NSA is collecting: nearly 5 billion records per day on the location of cell phones, including Americans' cell phones; hundreds of millions of contact lists or address books from personal email and instant messaging accounts; and information from Google and Yahoo user accounts as that information travels between those companies' data centers located abroad.

The core of the problem is that the NSA has, for years, relied upon its authority to gather foreign intelligence as permission to conduct sweeping surveillance of Americans' international communications. We know that this happens under the laws that govern surveillance on U.S. soil, and recent revelations confirm that it happens — perhaps to an even greater extent — in the surveillance that takes place abroad under Executive Order 12,333. Moreover, the rules that govern surveillance under the executive order are of particular concern because that surveillance is not meaningfully overseen by Congress, and it is not overseen at all by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In other words, the executive is conducting surveillance under its own executive order without any real oversight. We now know too well that unchecked surveillance authority can lead to dangerous overreach. That's why we are fighting for the release of documents that would shed light on the internal rules that the executive has set for itself when it monitors international communications abroad — including Americans' international communications.

Regional leaders flocked to Panama City this past weekend for the VII Summit of the Americas, which has been widely hailed as a victory for left-leaning and progressive forces in the region, particularly Venezuela and Cuba.  The summit was marked by the historic presence of Cuba whose president Raul Castro addressed his counterparts and held face to face talks with Barack Obama, the first Cuban leader to do so since the socialist nation's US-imposed expulsion from the Organization of American States in 1962.

However, the much anticipated rapprochement between the two nations was largely upstaged by regional leaders' near uniform rejection of President Obama's March 9 Executive Order labeling Venezuela a "national security threat", which has been condemned by all 33 nations of the CELAC  (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and other regional bodies.  While positively noting the steps taken by Obama to reestablish bilateral ties with Cuba, Castro nonetheless criticized the US president for his aggressive measures against Venezuela. 

During his speech before the summit, Bolivian president Evo Morales slammed US imperial intervention in the region. "We don't want more Monroes in our continent, nor more Truman doctrine, nor more Reagan doctrine, nor more Bush doctrine. We don't want any more presidential decrees nor more executive orders declaring us threats to their country." 

Over the objections of government attorneys, a federal judge said yesterday that he would require in camera review of documents that the government says are protected by the state secrets privilege. The issue arose in the case of Gulet Mohamed v. Eric Holder, challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list. The government had argued that it is “inappropriate” for a court to review such records to verify that they are validly privileged, and that instead the court should grant dismissal of case on the basis of official declarations. (Gov’t Resists Court Review of State Secrets, Secrecy News, August 27). The government moved for reconsideration of an August 6 order to produce the records for in camera review. Yesterday, Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia granted the government’s motion for reconsideration, but he said that having reconsidered the matter, he determined that he had been right the first time around. “Upon reconsideration of its Order, however, the Court finds that none of [the] objections justifies vacating the Order, as the defendants request. The Court therefore affirms its Order.” “This case involves complex and unsettled issues pertaining to the respective roles of the legislative, executive and judicial branches,” Judge Trenga wrote. “One central issue is the extent to which the War on Terrorism may expand the ability of the executive branch to act in ways that cannot otherwise be justified.”

Over the objections of government attorneys, a federal judge said yesterday that he would require in camera review of documents that the government says are protected by the state secrets privilege. The issue arose in the case of Gulet Mohamed v. Eric Holder, challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list. The government had argued that it is “inappropriate” for a court to review such records to verify that they are validly privileged, and that instead the court should grant dismissal of case on the basis of official declarations. (Gov’t Resists Court Review of State Secrets, Secrecy News, August 27). The government moved for reconsideration of an August 6 order to produce the records for in camera review. Yesterday, Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia granted the government’s motion for reconsideration, but he said that having reconsidered the matter, he determined that he had been right the first time around. “Upon reconsideration of its Order, however, the Court finds that none of [the] objections justifies vacating the Order, as the defendants request. The Court therefore affirms its Order.”

“This case involves complex and unsettled issues pertaining to the respective roles of the legislative, executive and judicial branches,” Judge Trenga wrote. “One central issue is the extent to which the War on Terrorism may expand the ability of the executive branch to act in ways that cannot otherwise be justified.” The Court “understands its limited institutional competence to assess claims of national security and its obligation not to extend its review of claims of state secrets beyond what is necessary for the Court to perform its institutional role,” Judge Trenga wrote. Nevertheless, under current circumstances “the Court concludes that it is necessary for the Court to review at this stage certain of the underlying documents as to which the state secrets privilege is asserted.” “This case involves the extraordinary exercise of executive branch authority to operate a program [the "no fly" procedure] that results in the deprivation of basic liberties according to secret executive branch decision making, without pre-deprivation judicial review…. [Therefore,] the Court has a particularly strong and heightened institutional responsibility in these circumstances to review and assess the propriety of such executive branch activity since to dismiss this case as the defendants request would, in essence, judicially sanction conduct that has far-reaching implications.”

As reported by the Washington Post, yesterday President Trump signed an Executive Order ( full text) suspending for 90 days immigrant and non-immigrant entry into the U.S. of aliens from seven Muslim-majority countries-- Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. (It should be noted that the countries to which the Executive Order is applicable is discoverable only by elaborate cross references in Sec. 3(c) of the Order that ultimately lead to this list developed last year by the Department of Homeland Security under the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of travelers not eligible to participate in the visa waiver program). The Executive Order does not apply to those entering under various diplomatic visas. The Executive Order also suspends admission of all refugees for 120 days, and of Syrian refugees for an indefinite period. It provides that when refugee admissions are resumed: the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality. Following up on this provision, Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network that priority will be given to persecuted Christians in the Middle East, particularly Syria. The Legal Director of the ACLU in a post earlier today argued that the Executive Order's targeting of Muslims and favoring of Christians violates the Establishment Clause. Meanwhile CAIR announced that it will be holding a news conference Monday on a lawsuit that it will file in federal district court in Virginia to "challenge the constitutionality of the order because its apparent purpose and underlying motive is to ban people of the Islamic faith from Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States."

America is in the choosing sides phase of the coming civil war. To use a college recruiting phrase, it is accurate to state that the letters of intent to join one side or another have mostly been signed and the commitments offered. However, there is one big uncommitted piece, but very soon the sides will be drawn.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the U.S. government to allow people holding immigrant visas from seven majority-Muslim nations into the United States despite President Trump's executive order banning them.In a temporary restraining order issued late Tuesday, Judge Andre Birotte Jr. ordered the government not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S.But it was unclear whether the order will have any effect. The State Department ordered all visas from the seven countries revoked on Friday, and the government has maintained that orders similar to Birotte's do not apply because the visas are no longer valid.The State Department declined comment Wednesday on Birotte's order, saying it does not comment on pending litigation.

Gartland said two major airlines have turned them down but they are trying to work with smaller airlines that will follow Birotte's order."These are all children, parents and the spouses of U.S. citizens," Goldberg told The Associated Press from the Horn of Africa nation, emphasizing that those stranded are not refugees, though Yemen is engulfed in civil war. They received visas last week, she said.

DC District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle yesterday ordered the Obama Administration to release a copy of an unclassified presidential directive, and she said the attempt to withhold it represented an improper exercise of “secret law.” The Obama White House has a “limitless” view of its authority to withhold presidential communications from the public, she wrote, but that view is wrong. “The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight– to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law’,” Judge Huvelle wrote in her December 17 opinion. “The Court finds equally troubling the government’s complementary suggestion that ‘effective’ governance requires that a President’s substantive and non-classified directives to Executive Branch agencies remain concealed from public scrutiny,” she wrote.

The directive in question, Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 6, “is a widely-publicized, non-classified Presidential Policy Directive on issues of foreign aid and development that has been distributed broadly within the Executive Branch and used by recipient agencies to guide decision-making,” the Judge noted. “Even though issued as a directive, the PPD-6 carries the force of law as policy guidance to be implemented by recipient agencies, and it is the functional equivalent of an Executive Order.” “Never before has a court had to consider whether the [presidential communications] privilege protects from disclosure under FOIA a final, non-classified, presidential directive.”

Several significant points emerge from this episode. First, President Obama’s declared commitment to “creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government” has not been internalized even by the President’s own staff. This latest case of “unbounded” secrecy cannot be blamed on the CIA or an overzealous Justice Department attorney. It is entirely an Obama White House production, based on a White House policy choice. Second, and relatedly, it has proved to be an error to expect the executive branch to unilaterally impose transparency on itself. To do so is to ignore, or to wish away, the Administration’s own conflicting interests in secrecy and disclosure.  Instead, it is the role of the other branches of government to check the executive and to compel appropriate disclosure.

On Wednesday a federal judge indefinitely extended a previously temporary restraining order against U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim Ban executive order. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson turned his earlier temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Trump’s executive order banning immigration from six majority-Muslim countries. The state of Hawaii launched the lawsuit claiming Trump’s revised executive order, issued March 6, perpetuates the same unconstitutional religious discrimination as the original executive order, which was overturned by a federal judge in January.

“The court will not crawl into a corner, pull the shutters closed, and pretend it has not seen what it has,” Watson wrote on Wednesday. While Trump’s lawyers claim the executive order does not discriminate based on religion, previous courts ruled against the order noting the president and his surrogates’ repeated public promises to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Watson noted that his initial decision to grant the preliminary injunction was based on the likelihood that Hawaii would succeed in proving the revised executive order violated the U.S. Constitution’s provisions protecting religious freedom.

With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.

America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.

In his March 6 Executive Order, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine,” Obama declares that support for Crimean self-determination constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/06/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-contributing-situation Obama and the lawyers who drafted his executive order did not notice that the way the order is drafted it applies to Obama, to the unelected coup government in Kiev, and to the Washington and EU regimes. The order says that any person “responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly . . . actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine” is subject to having his assets frozen.

As U.S. President Donald Trump ramps up his attack on immigration, his executive order to cut federal funding to so-called “sanctuary cities” protecting immigrants could face a number of legal and logistical loopholes.

The executive order signed on Wednesday orders federal agencies to withhold grant money from around 300 cities and counties that block local law enforcement from targeting undocumented immigrants, or as White House Press Secretary Sean Spice put it, “harbor illegal immigrants.” Spicer said that Trump will look at means to strip funding to cities and counties that “willfully refuse to comply” with his new plan to crack down on immigration, which also included ordering the construction of the infamous border wall between Mexico and the U.S. and increasing immigration authorities' power to deport people from the U.S., often without due process. These measures have sparked outrage among many immigrant rights organizations and caused city mayors to speak out against them. Opponents likely have the law on their side. Politico reported that the White House failed to consult the proper federal agencies and lawmakers before signing the executive orders. This means the orders are likely fraught with contradictions to current laws that can be easily exploited by opponents to dismantle them. The legal fight has already begun. Mayors of targeted cities are teaming up with immigration advocacy groups and attorneys to gear up for a legal battle against the presidential orders. Opponents of Trump’s order say that federal money allocated to cities can only be cut if the funding is directly linked to behavior that opposes the federal government’s plan for immigration.

Trump's plan to make police and other key services exempt from any funding cuts has also sparked legal debate. Trump had previously stated that even if a city was stripped of funding for non-compliance, police departments' funding would not be cut. Opponents also say that making police exempt would make it possible for a judge to deem parts of the order unconstitutional. Richard Doyle, city attorney in San Jose, California, argues that Trump cannot cut a city's funding for healthcare and education while protecting the police force from cuts because its function relates more closely to immigration enforcement, adding that it was uncertain whether only future or existing federal funding would be targeted under the order. Others have argued that there would be significant barriers and a long process for the federal government to cut off funding to sanctuary cities that would first have to go through states and local government where targeted jurisdictions have rights to appeal. Edward Waters from Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell in Washington told Reuters that for the Trump administration, “It’s fair to say that they don't understand the scope and reach of federal grants law.”

The Trump administration is threatening to remove safeguards that protect the drinking water of more than one-third of Americans. Some 117 million people get at least some of their drinking water from small streams.[1] For 72 million people in 1,033 counties, more than half of their drinking water comes from small streams. Ensuring that their water is safe means keeping the water in these streams clean. (See map below. Click here for a more detailed interactive map.)

Right now, the Clean Water Act protects these streams from pollution. But this week President Trump issued an executive order directing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to rescind or revise the Clean Water Rule, or replace it with a new rule. This critically important rule determines which streams, rivers and lakes are protected from pollution by the Clean Water Act. The rule also extends protection for millions of acres of wetlands that filter drinking water. Industry and agribusiness have been pushing for years to roll back the Clean Water Rule and protect only the biggest streams and rivers. Now they’ve found a friend in the Trump administration. Small streams are where big rivers start, and the best science confirms that dirty streams means even dirtier rivers. Millions of Americans drink water directly connected to 234,000 miles of small, potentially unprotected streams. In 21 different states, small streams provide drinking water for 1 million or more people. (See chart below.) More than 5 million people in each New York, Texas and Pennsylvania get drinking water from small streams, as do more than 3 million in each California, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina and Arizona.

President Trump’s executive order immediately threatens drinking water for millions of Americans, but it’s not the only threat. Dozens of lawsuits seeking to gut the Clean Water Rule have been filed by industry and agribusiness, and states catering to those interests. Congress could meddle with the Clean Water Act itself to deny protection to small streams and wetlands. The Clean Water Rule is a common-sense safeguard supported by a majority of Americans. It is supported by many cities and towns that depend on unpolluted drinking water sources and natural infrastructure like wetlands to filter pollutants and absorb floodwaters. Small businesses that rely on clean water and healthy wildlife habitats, such as craft breweries and outdoor recreation companies, also strongly support the Clean Water Rule. Undermining, weakening or rescinding this vital rule is a gift to corporate polluters and Big Ag, and a threat to public health and the environment.