Senators’ half-a-million-dollar surveillance payday exposes flawed privacy laws

When senators discovered they had been subjected to unconstitutional surveillance, they voted themselves half a million dollars each. The rest of us got nothing. Last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed that President Joe Biden’s FBI had spied on eight Republican senators’ phones. Former Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, secretly monitored who contacted the senators, […]

FBI document reveals spying on US Senate Republicans

WASHINGTON, D.C.—On October 6, 2025, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released a declassified FBI document dated September 27, 2023, showing that FBI agents conducted a preliminary “analysis” of cellphone toll records for a total of nine Republican lawmakers, including himself, in connection with an inquiry into potential efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. “I […]

DelBene and other Democratic lawmakers call firing of inspectors general by Trump ‘illegal’

WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Donald J Trump fired at least 15 inspectors general at multiple government agencies late on Friday, January 24, 2025, effective immediately. The late-night purge has drawn heavy criticism from Democrat lawmakers: Rep. Suzan DelBene (WA-01): “Trump illegally purged the independent watchdogs at a swath of federal agencies last night who root out taxpayer […]