mr. heinrich: i think we all recognize that our democracy fundamentally hinges on protecting americans' ability to fairly and accurately choose their own leaders. and until we set up stronger protections of our own election system and take the necessary steps to prevent future foreign intervention, our nation's democratic institutions will remain vulnerable to attack. i'd like to echo what senator collins just said about the importance of ensuring our state election offices, that they are equipped to respond to these threats and keep our voting systems secure. i think all of us are in agreement in the importance of the leadership at the state level with regard to these elections. as we've been working to address election security, one of the things that i found particularly helpful is the consultation that i've had with new mexico's secretary of state, maggie. she runs our state elections but she's also been a national leader in securing local voting systems against cyberthreats. state election officials like her should have the security clearances and the support from federal agencies that the

with that, i now recognize senator heinrich for a period of five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to the jump off of the question there, because i am curious if the president is interested in reciprocity and proportionasrtionalit proportionality, if much of the problem is with canada and why not make a move to tackling that instead of the problems that exist in the trade relationship with china? >> you know, i'm not the person who sets the schedule for which moves we make when i can assure you that as you can see in the economic report that the kocounl of economic advisers have taken responsibility for the look at the theft of the chinese and quantity and numbers in the 100 billions, and as you know actioning -- >> i would like the to prioritize where we have seen the worst abuse, and going on the wages, the counsel of economic advisers have estimated that the corporate tax cuts just passed be i many republican colleagues would lead to a $4,000 increase in average household income. we have seen the companies that have announced one-time $1,000 bonuses, but we have

mr. chairman. secretary manfra, senator heinrich and i wrote a letter to the department asking specifically whether or not you needed new statutory authority or funding in order to help state election agencies and ensure the integrity of our election systems and the voting process. i personally am surprised that the department has not been more proactive in that area in submitting requests to the congress. what is your answer to that question? does dhs need additional authorities or additional funding in order to assist states and ensure the integrity of our voting systems? >> yells, ma'am. thank you for the question. on the authorities piece, i would -- we have the authorities we need right now to do our job, thanks to the work of this committee and the homeland committees, frankly, over the last few years. we have very broad authorities that we can apply. we're continuing to build the capacity and the capability to fully execute those authorities. we have -- we have reprogrammed money. we have reprioritized money. that does mean that we have had to lower the prioritization of other entities recei

wrap up this point by saying i hope members will support what senator heinrich and i are calling for with respect to declassification. mr. nakasone, an historic day, because as i understand it, you are the first nominee from the nsa to be considered at this committee, and we welcome you. let me begin with some questions. in 2001, then president bush directed the nsa to conduct an illegal warrantless wiretapping program. neither the public nor the full intelligence committee learned about this program until it was revealed in the press. speaking personally, i learned about it from the newspapers. so, there is a lot riding on how you might address a similar situation. we've already noted the history of your being here. if there was a form of surveillance that currently requires approval by the fisa court and you were asked to avoid the court based on some kind of secret legal analysis, what would you do? >> senator, thank you for that question. first, i would offer with regards to the situation that you describe, i would obviously have a tremendous amount of legal advice that would be provided to me, if confirmed. by thos

heinrich. >> thank you, mr. chair. i want to follow up a little bit on the good questions from my colleague from texas. for those of you in industry, and we'll start with you, mr. phillips, how often have you seen a tssci interim clearance? is that a common thing? >> for our industry, it is not uncommon, but it's an example out of our, let's say 150 people doing an interim status, a vast majority of them are secret. for the type of work we perform. so i can't compare it to any other application or requirement. >> got you. >> those who are in an interim secret status have already received a secret clearance. >> sure, right. >> so it's fairly narrow. >> ms. chappell. >> from my personal knowledge, i don't know of interim clearances on a tssci kind of clearance. those are usually finalized from an interim clearance, they're more on the secret side, and quite frankly, with the backlog of clearances that we have right now, i think the risk of not doing that and, you know, not being able to perform the mission is very high.

mr. chairman. secretary manfra, senator heinrich and i wrote a letter to the department asking specifically whether or not you needed new statutory authority or funding in order to help state election agencies and ensure the integrity of our election systems and the voting process. i personally am surprised that the department has not been more proactive in that area in submitting requests to the congress. what is your answer to that question? does dhs need additional authorities or additional funding in order to assist states and ensure the integrity of our voting systems? >> yells, ma'am. thank you for the question. on the authorities piece, i would -- we have the authorities we need right now to do our job, thanks to the work of this committee and the homeland committees, frankly, over the last few years. we have very broad authorities that we can apply. we're continuing to build the capacity and the capability to fully execute those authorities. we have -- we have reprogrammed money. we have reprioritized money. that does mean that we have had to lower the prioritization of other entities recei

among our guests this hour, rebecca heinrichs of the hudson institute, "town hall" guy benson and forbes media chairman, mr. steve forbes. melissa: it is getting worse for facebook. a memo from facebook executive shows the company's eagerness doing what it takes to continue to grow even if doing harm. deirdre bolton has been digging into this alarming memo, and, what can tell us about this? >> melissa, this is unbelievable. in 2016, this vice president, a very senior at facebook wrote that damning memo. no other way to say it. his argument is essentially that they are in the business of connecting people. so he is saying even if people end up being connected end up being targeted by bullies, end up losing their lives for that very reason or end up being targeted and even killed in a terrorist attack, actually going through these very specific, quite frankly, morbid examples. one thing i do want to highlight, we have part of this ugly truth facebook memo. we're calling it that because he used the term, ugly truth in the memo. we connect more people, that could be bad if they make it negative. maybe it costs

mr. phelan, stabilizing at 700,000 is not acceptable. i want to know when we will start to see those numbers driven down. and also, senator heinrich: issues on the earlier hearing about new techniques at some of the government labs we are using in terms of upcoming interviews. why is it taking so long for whatseems to make what is can you say specifically about .sing these tools kind of >> start with how we are going to drive that backlog down. once that even further behind, when i first joined this organization, the capacity to conduct the work we are required to do was insufficient to conduct that were. work.t that inventory continued to rise instead of stabilizing. when we reach the point where we had the same capacity in 2014 when this all fell apart, that is a way station along the way. that is not the end game. in one sense, i am proud we hit that stabilization point, i'm not proud we brought that inventory down. last week, i noted to a committee that we are looking at potentially reduction of this time. but by itself, we will continue to drive that number down. we'll probably take us a couple of years that will get us down