Weekly Spotlight: Violence is Never the Answer

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Editor’s Note: Political violence is never the answer. The ability to speak and disagree without fear of violence is a core principle in this country. Political violence is a destructive cycle, and it will only serve to hurt us and any progress we want to make towards a democracy that protects the rights and freedoms of every person.

CHECKS AND (IM)BALANCES

Is Congress (finally) going to put its foot down?

Late last month, the Trump administration declared it would refuse to spend $4.9 billion in congressionally allocated foreign aid funding, employing a tactic they’ve coined “pocket rescissions” (requesting to cancel funds so close to the end of the fiscal year that Congress does not have the time to react before the funds expire; essentially, pulling a fast one). We believe this is an outright illegal tactic — and while a federal judge agreed with us, the Supreme Court sided with the administration (for now). With a government shutdown looming, lawmakers in the House have reintroduced the Congressional Power of the Purse Act, a bill that would reassert Congress’s spending authority. Your representatives should pass this bill to preserve and reaffirm their power to steward your tax dollars.

• “Overzealous presidents have undermined this power and it’s essential that Congress reassert its prerogative. We urge swift bipartisan passage of this important bill.” — POGO’s Faith Williams quoted in the House Budget Committee’s press release.
• In defending the use of illegal rescission tactics, the Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought said the administration is “not big fans of GAO” and that the office “shouldn’t exist.” The Government Accountability Office is a critical legislative agency serving as a watchdog for Congress. Oversight is an essential congressional duty, and GAO has every right and reason to exist.
• ANALYSIS Congress Must Protect the GAO from Executive Overreach: Congress must uphold the separation of powers to prevent further politicization amid growing interbranch tensions, writes POGO’s Janice Luong.
• ANALYSIS Executive Overreach Could Shut Down the Government: So-called “pocket rescissions” could be the final blow to an already dysfunctional appropriations process.

ABUSING POWER AND RIGHTS

Why ICE’s FRT contract should worry us all

The Department of Homeland Security just signed a massive, $9.2 million contract with Clearview AI, a facial recognition technology (FRT) company, for use by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in part, to identify people “assaulting” ICE agents. This is a huge increase from Clearview AI’s $2.3 million contract with ICE from back in 2021, and it goes to show how much, and how extremely, surveillance is being supercharged under the administration’s immigration agenda. Clearview works by creating a huge database of reference images scraped from social media sites without consent, enabling its userbase — including hundreds of federal and state law enforcement agencies across the country — to identify a person and personal details about them just from a picture of their face, without a warrant. The problem is that facial recognition technology has a proven track record of inaccuracy and misidentification: algorithms in particular have a high potential of misidentifying people of color. The dangers are obvious.

• Case and point: A recent example of how the New York Police Department landed the wrong man in jail.
• POGO has extensively sounded the alarm about Clearview AI and facial recognition at large. Read our analyses on the exaggerated effectiveness of the technology and the potential for its abuse not only by law enforcement agencies but vigilantes, stalkers, and harassers.
• Clearview AI was quite literally built for this abuse. A bombshell investigation from Mother Jones found that Clearview AI was pitched by its developers from the start as a tool to target immigrants.
• Clearview AI has even attempted to buy SSNs and mugshots for its expansive database.

SCOTUS greenlights civil rights abuses

Racial profiling is incompatible with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Someone’s race or ethnicity cannot be treated as a reason to search or arrest them. And yet, the Supreme Court has "blessed” the administration's racist tactics and allowed the egregious civil rights violations in LA, and potentially across the country, to continue — at least while the full court case plays out. Our federal government is searching and violently arresting people based on skin color, accents, languages spoken, and types of jobs and claiming it is justified in doing so. Congress must intervene and correct the course we are heading down.

• Justice Brett Kavanaugh is receiving much-warranted flack for suggesting that people who are abused by ICE or other federal agents can sue for remedy in court. The Justice should know that there are few, and shrinking, avenues for recourse for holding federal law enforcement accountable for excessive force — thanks to a series of SCOTUS decisions he joined that have placed federal agents beyond the reach of the law.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

NDAA approaches its final form. What must be cut out at the next stage

The House voted to pass their version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the bill that sets defense policy each year. The bill includes amendments — namely, Sec. 1031 and Sec. 1043 — that would rubber stamp the administration’s plans to use the military for domestic policing. At this pivotal moment your representatives should be doing everything they can to rein in the administration’s abuse of executive power and military force over the people — not enabling it. It is critical that these amendments are cut cleanly out of the final bill.

• STATEMENT Annual Defense Policy Bill Includes Dangerous Provisions and Reckless Spending: “It’s shameful for lawmakers to enable policies that threaten public safety and the crucial separation of the military from domestic policing. Senate negotiators must firmly reject these harmful amendments that will do nothing but sow fear in communities across the country,” says POGO’s Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette.
• Though we oppose the legislation on the whole, we do want to acknowledge some glimmers of success. The House NDAA includes language that would give service members the right to repair their own equipment and landmark Nunn-McCurdy Act reforms that would allow for better oversight of the weapons acquisitions process. These are two significant wins and were the result of a huge, coordinated effort by POGO and supporters like you.