Hill Heat

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. ET. The hearing, “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” will examine the Committee’s role in “uncovering the Biden-Harris Administration’s unconstitutional censorship campaign” and will examine upcoming threats to free speech including from AI and foreign governments.

This is a reprise of a similar 2023 hearing on the “Twitter Files”, an Elon Musk-directed attack on the Biden administration using archives from the Twitter databases he acquired with his purchase of the company.

Witness Michael Shellenberger is a notorious climate denier.

Witnesses:

• Matt Taibbi, Twitter Files journalist; author; Founder, Racket News
• Michael Shellenberger, Twitter Files journalist; CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech, University of Austin; Founder, Public News
• Rupa Subramanya, Canada-based journalist, The Free Press

02/12/2025 at 10:00AM

Today, fifteen Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, acting Administrator of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), demanding answers about efforts by President Trump and Elon Musk to unlawfully dismantle the crucial agency. In their letter, the representatives cite multiple reports of drastic planned cuts and the related invasion of the agency by Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) lieutenants, including 30-year-old Twitter engineer Nikhil Rajpal, now listed in the NOAA directory at [email protected].

In their letter, the members state:

“There have been credible reports of DOGE personnel disregarding security checkpoints, rifling through personal belongings, demanding access to computers, emails, and other sensitive information, and adding employees’ names to lists on their clipboards if they are perceived to have resisted. While this is happening at core NOAA facilities in the Washington, D.C. region, our constituents who work at NOAA labs and regional facilities across the nation fear for their jobs and their families’ futures.”

“Our constituents and the American people deserve answers from the Trump administration as to what their plan is and what authorities the administration is using to bully and intimidate NOAA employees with the ultimate goal of dismantling the agency.”

The letter was led by U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee Ranking Member Val Hoyle. The other signatories were Jimmy Panetta, Frank Pallone, Salud Carbahal, Seth Magaziner, Sarah Elfreth, Suzanne Bonamici, Raúl Grijalva, Mike Levin, Ed Case, Joe Neguse, William Keating, Kathy Castor, and Jamie Raskin.

House Science ranking member Zoe Lofgren has also sent a letter to acting administrator Hann.

There will be a rally in support of NOAA at the Department of Commerce on Tuesday afternoon.

Full text of the letter:

Save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!

Every day, the dedicated employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) work to protect American consumers from predatory financial practices and ensure a fair marketplace. Now, as Elon Musk and his allies gain unprecedented access to sensitive CFPB data and call for the agency’s elimination, we’re standing together to protect our vital mission. We have returned over $19 billion to consumers at a cost of $0 to taxpayers. We’re united in our mission to serve the public, and we won’t let wealthy special interests compromise the consumer protections Americans count on. Join us as we stand strong for the CFPB and its essential mission of consumer protection. Your voice matters in this fight.

Don’t let Musk and his DOGE lackeys shut us down.

11 am - 1 pm, outside CFPB headquarters

1700 G St NW
Washington, DC

Wired:

In an email early Friday morning, CFPB staff were told that several people from DOGE—including Nikhil Rajpal and Gavin Kliger (along with Chris Young, who has been described as a Republican political adviser connected with Elon Musk)—entered the agency building Thursday evening. The email stated that they would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment, following a message sent Thursday by CFPB chief operating officer Adam Martinez confirming that the DOGE employees were to receive “read-only” access.

NPR

Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was confirmed as CFPB’s acting director following the firing of former head Rohit Chopra. When Bessent took over earlier this week, staff members were told to stop all of the agency’s work “unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law,” according to an internal email shared with NPR.

Wall Street Journal:

Russell Vought took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Friday night, adding another twist at the banking watchdog that has landed in the crosshairs of Republicans and Elon Musk. Vought, who Thursday was confirmed by the Senate as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, is now the acting director of the CFPB, he emailed to top staff at the agency. The new leader comes days after Trump fired the Biden-era leader and put in place Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who immediately froze the agency’s work. Musk earlier Friday had posted “CFPB RIP” on his X social-media platform with an emoji of a tombstone. The Friday evening email from Vought ordered the DOGE officials to be granted access to all “non-classified” CFPB systems.

CFPB union NTEU 355 issued an initial, fiery statement that was replaced by a more sobering one:

CFPB Union NTEU 335 Members are alarmed about the implications of these reports for the CFPB’s sensitive, nonpublic data. For example, the CFPB has gathered a wealth of proprietary information from big tech payment platforms that could be exploited by someone with a conflict of interest to corner the payments industry. A potential breach could also have serious ramifications for banks and other CFPB-supervised institutions that incur significant costs to both safeguard their customer’s personally identifiable information (PII) and meet their obligations under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and other consumer financial laws.

02/08/2025 at 11:00AM