Miguel Afonso Caetano on Nostr: "The result of these historically unprecedented firings at our agency is that a board ...

"The result of these historically unprecedented firings at our agency is that a board intentionally designed by Congress to be staffed on a bipartisan basis across administrations is now exclusively staffed by a single Republican. That Republican has previously aligned herself with Merrick Garland and the Biden administration in defending warrantless surveillance by the FBI on average Americans – a practice that a federal court in New York ruled unconstitutional last week. And worse, the board (which requires a quorum of three members to do anything) will no longer engage in any oversight of presidential surveillance of American citizens. In other words, by firing us, the president has extinguished independent oversight of surveillance activities of the exact kind that plagued Trump and Carter Page in past years.

The same story is being repeated throughout the executive branch. Trump has fired many of the inspectors general whose job is to prevent government waste, fraud and abuse. He’s fired the heads of other independent agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the National Labor Relations Board, with many others likely to follow. And he’s undertaking a swift purge of the civil service to get rid of anyone not perceived as sufficiently loyal.

These partisan witch-hunts and firings need to stop. Congress creates independent agencies and insulates civil servants from partisan firings for a reason."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/06/trump-oversight-board-firing-security

#USA #Surveillance #Privacy #CivilLiberties #PoliceState #FBI #NSA