Following a BuzzFeed News report revealing that the Justice Department authorized the spying, two members of Congress called the program “antithetical to the American people’s right to peacefully assemble.”.

The Justice Department temporarily expanded the DEA’s power to collect information on protesters — and to share that intelligence with other law enforcement agencies and make arrests for non-drug related crimes — last weekend.

The measure, first reported by BuzzFeed News, followed remarks by Attorney General William Barr that blamed, without evidence, “anarchistic and far left extremist groups” for the unrest.

Jerry Nadler and Karen Bass on Friday called the expansion of the drug agency’s powers “antithetical to the American people’s right to peacefully assemble and to exercise their Constitutional rights without undue intrusion.”.

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, sent officers to multiple cities and launched a Predator drone to circle above protesters in Minneapolis, where a police officer killed Floyd after kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes on May 25.

Nadler and Bass called that track record “out of touch” with contemporary models of enforcing drug laws, and raised concerns that “wider deployment of the DEA may only continue the disproportionate arrest trends that, in part, motivate the expressions of outrage that we are witnessing,”?

Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles

Anthony Cormier is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York