Policy Reporter
Gaby Del Valle is a policy reporter at The Verge. Her past work has focused on immigration politics, border surveillance technologies, and the rise of the New Right.
In a WhatsApp groupchat, prominent businessmen discussed how to use their “leverage” to persuade Columbia’s president to call in the NYPD.
Some members, including hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, attended a Zoom meeting with NYC mayor Eric Adams on April 26th. Some participants offered to pay for private investigators to help crack down on protesters, while others promised to donate to Adams’s campaign.
Deputy director Paul Abbate emailed agents on April 20th — a day after the Senate voted to reauthorize 702.
“I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission, with the added confidence that this new pre-approval requirement will help ensure that those queries are fully compliant with the law.”
The effort may be an attempt to force a vote on KOSA, which has stalled in both chambers despite having broad support in the Senate. The FAA law expires May 10th.
A bipartisan group of legislators introduced a companion to the Senate’s KOSA bill in April, but the House has yet to vote on it.