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Good evening. It's Friday, April 12. That was a very elegant beginning to the show tonight. The House of Representatives today renewed the FISA law, which empowers the NSA and the FBI, in specific situations, to spy on American citizens without any warrants. The vote was 212 to 212, a tie. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, who spent years claiming that he opposes warrantless eavesdropping – he was on our show to talk about it two months before he became speaker – did something that House speakers infrequently do today: he cast his own vote, a NO vote on the amendment that would have imposed a warrant requirement. That is what ensured the tie and, under House rules, a tie is deemed a defeat.
The word eavesdropping power is one that the U.S. Security State uses often against American citizens. Despite how permissive these spying laws are, they have been caught, by their own admission, abusing these powers many times, meaning spying on Americans in the very limited ways that the law permits. For that reason, there was bipartisan insistence in the months leading up to today's vote that the spying law could be renewed only if a requirement to first obtain warrants was included in the bill. Yet, as always happens in Washington, always, the U.S. Security State got what it wanted, it united with the Biden White House to do everything possible to ensure that no such warrant requirement was included. They successfully enlisted the Democrats, who normally serve the U.S. Security State, people like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Dan Goldman to oppose any reforms but this would never have succeeded if not for Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. He was the key figure in defeating this warrant requirement. He's someone who, in just a few months before becoming a speaker, has completely transformed into a radically different person than he was before becoming a speaker. We'll examine the votes today in the House and the important history leading up to it, as well as its implications.
Then: last month, Israel undertook a very rare and extraordinary action, something that nations virtually never do. They bombed a foreign embassy. Specifically, they destroyed the Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria, which is considered under international law to be Iranian soil. So they basically bombed Iran and basically forced Iran to retaliate in serious ways. There's no country on Earth that wouldn't retaliate if a foreign country bombed its embassy. Imagine what Israel would do if Iran had bombed an Israeli embassy. Earlier today, both Joe Biden and the White House itself stated clearly that they would involve themselves in any conflict that might arise involving Israel and Iran. In other words, a new major war in the Middle East seems very possibly to be emerging and because of the U.S.'s intense loyalty to Israel, it very well may be a new Middle East war for the U.S. as well.
Finally: the investigative journalist, Lee Fang, has uncovered numerous documents showing how the Ukrainians and various U.S-funded NGOs based in Kiev have been secretly working to smear the reputations of any American citizens who speak out against the U.S. financing of and support for their war. The people they have smeared using U.S. money include people like Professor John Mearsheimer, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Tucker Carlson, Senator Rand Paul and myself. Lee will be here just a little bit to talk about his reporting and what he found.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
