Government Reform

For more than a decade, the giants of Silicon Valley have been pumping out products and services that millions of people and companies now use every day: social networks, search engines, two-day shipping on toilet paper. Only recently, however, have Americans become aware of just how much of their privacy they surrendered—sometimes knowingly, sometimes not—by joining this ecosystem of app-centric convenience.

Stephon Clark lived and died in Sacramento. When the 22-year-old father of two was shot and killed by local cops after a foot chase in the spring of 2018, it provoked the largest national uproar over a police killing of an unarmed black man since the groundswell of protests that began with the death of Michael Brown and the Ferguson uprising five years ago this week. The Sacramento officers who took Clark's life were not charged with any crime.

A migrant died earlier the same day Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) arrived at the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center, a migrant detention facility at the Southern border. The Silicon Valley congressman says he found out about the fatality through a supervising border agent who confided the tragic detail last week to Khanna and other members of a congressional delegation to the U.S.-Mexico divide.

The migrant's cause of death was unknown, but Khanna says it was most likely due to the strain of the treacherous journey that brought him there.

House Democrats are eyeing a move to censure President Trump as a possible alternative to impeaching a president they have accused of gross wrongdoing while in office.

A censure resolution — essentially a public reprimand — lacks the teeth of impeachment's intrinsic threat to remove a sitting president. But supporters say it would send a clear and immediate message to voters that Democrats are taking seriously their constitutional responsibility to be a check on executive misconduct.

Attorney General William Barr made "a huge strategic mistake" summarizing the Mueller report, House Oversight Committee member Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Thursday, adding, "the country wants to hear from Bob Mueller."

He urged the special counsel to testify.

"I really think that's what going to help bring closure to this," Khanna said on "America's Newsroom." "The Justice Department has said he can testify, we want him to testify. I think, frankly, he has more credibility than any of us in Congress, anyone in the media."

Since the dawn of the Drug War, federal legislators have stood by, or even applauded, as millions of Americans have racked up convictions for marijuana offenses — with arrests increasing in the latest FBI crime statistics, despite nearly a dozen states having already legalized cannabis. But over the past two years, and now accelerating with Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives, federal marijuana reform has become a hot topic on the Hill.

Attorney General William Barr is facing calls to resign from Democratic lawmakers who take issue with the way he publicly presented the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 election.

The most dramatic call came Wednesday during Barr's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) characterized the attorney general as a liar who served to protect President Donald Trump rather than to impartially analyze the Mueller report.