Chop Wood, Carry Water 3/19
Close the "data broker loophole" in FISA / No 200B for war! / Support the Jeffries discharge petition / Enforce the Pam Bondi subpoena / Spread the word about No Kings! / And more!
Hi, all, and happy Thursday.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to open this newsletter with any semblance of a news roundup. There is simply too much going on. I made a video this morning about the “firehose syndrome” from which I’m suffering—I literally don’t know which crisis to talk about from moment to moment. There are simply so many of them. We’re learning of new coverups around Epstein, the war in the Middle East has escalated significantly, the SAVE America Act push continues, our economy is hanging by a thread, Cesar Chavez was a rapist (ugh), crude oil is currently 108 a gallon, the Iran war has cost 25B so far and that number is set to explode upwards…it just goes on and on.
One other issue has been flying a bit more under the radar, and that’s FISA reauthorization. Since this fight has enormous consequences for all of us, this newsletter will focus on it a good deal today. The TLDR is that Stephen Miller and Mike Johnson are sprinting to pass a bill that will let the government spy on every American with ChatGPT—and we have just a few days to stop them. Good times! Actions below.
Finally, because everything feels a bit…extra today, I will leave you with my favorite Vaclav Havel quote on hope. He wrote it at a time when his situation felt about as bleak as ours does right now.
The kind of hope I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
Beautiful, right?
There’s another line of his I love. He wrote it years later, after his movement had succeeded:
History is not something that takes place “elsewhere”; it takes place here; we all contribute to making it.
Absolutely correct. Let’s get to work.
Call Your Senators (find yours here) 📲
Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______.
I’m calling to urge the Senator to vote NO on FISA until Congress CLOSES the data broker loophole for no-warrant surveillance. If Congress extends FISA without changes, the government will be able ignore the Fourth Amendment and seize our data without a warrant. I don’t want the FBI using AI to spy on me and my community. I am asking the Senator to stand with the bipartisan coalition that believes the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale. Please make sure this bill doesn’t pass until the data broker loophole is closed. How you vote will determine how I vote this year.
Also, I adamantly oppose giving Trump an additional 200B for more war. This war is a catastrophe—Trump’s own people have made very clear it was unwarranted. There is no universe in which we should throw good money after bad—especially when Americans are suffering desperately here at home. No more money for war.
Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲
Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______.
I’m calling to urge the Representative to vote NO on FISA until Congress CLOSES the data broker loophole for no-warrant surveillance. If Congress extends FISA without changes, the government will be able ignore the Fourth Amendment and seize our data without a warrant. I don’t want the FBI using AI to spy on me and my community. I am asking the Congressmember to stand with the bipartisan coalition that believes the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale. Please make sure this bill doesn’t pass until the data broker loophole is closed. How you vote will determine how I vote this year.
Also, please ask the Congressmember to sign on to Hakeem Jeffries’ discharge petition funding all of the agencies under DHS except for ICE and CBP. This is what we want. No more funding for ICE or CBP until they’re reined in. Thanks.
Extra Credit ✅
FISA—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—is up for reauthorization, and Mike Johnson is rushing the vote to early next week. Here’s why you should care: FISA has a loophole that lets the government buy your personal data from tech companies without a warrant. No judge, no probable cause. That’s how the Trump Administration surveilled Muslim Americans through a prayer app.
Now the Pentagon has cut a deal with OpenAI (owner of Chat GPT) for AI tools that can analyze all that data in real time. Experts warn this could let the government generate a list of everyone who disagrees with them.
The good news? A bipartisan coalition from Lauren Boebert to Elizabeth Warren is demanding FISA be amended to close the loophole. The bad news? Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut is lobbying other Democrats to let it pass unchanged.
We have less than a week to pressure him to stop, and to pressure EVERYONE in Congress to close that loophole. We’ve already got scripts to our MOCs above. But let’s also focus on Himes.
Even if you don’t live in Connecticut, please tell him how you feel in public, on social media. Visit his Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages and comment something like:
Rep. Himes, please don’t give AI surveilance powers to Trump! Push your colleagues to vote NO—not yes!—on FISA until you fix the warrantless surveillance loophole!
If you’re his constituent please call him and tell him to stop selling out our privacy rights.
Also please consider reposting my thread about this if you’re on Threads.
To learn more about this fight, visit quitgpt.org/fisa.
Get Smart! 📚
Join the No Kings 3 Kickoff Call on Thursday, March 19 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET and hear from organizers and leaders about the vision and strategy behind No Kings 3.
Whether you’re brand new or a seasoned organizer, the time to act is now! You’ll hear from movement leaders about the strategic and moral imperative behind the next No Kings mobilization.
Messaging! Messaging! Messaging! 📣
DemCast has created a social media toolkit to help spread the word about how bad the SAVE America Act is. There is a LOT of misinformation out there about this bill; this is literally how we counteract it.
Please share at least one post from this toolkit on your preferred platform. It can really make a diffference!
Get in the Streets! 🪧
I think this idea is brilliant and bold, and hope you will too.
The person quoted below sent out an invitation to everyone in her address book, inviting them to attend the NO KINGS 3.0 protests, rallies, and marches on March 28.
They said:
Dear family, friends, and anyone who is in my email address book, I am doing something audacious. I am writing to everyone in my address book. I know some of you well - you are in my heart. Some of you are people I have met and may have lost contact with. Some of you are names that got into my address book by chance email, and we may not know each other at all. I am writing to all of you anyway.
That’s not my audacity. My audacity is that I am, as a political activist, writing to ask you to take action:
On March 28th, there is a nationwide No Kings rally. I am asking each of you to attend the rally in your area.
Clear your calendar. Make a plan. Attend your rally with a commitment to be peaceful. Bring folks with you.
Together we will build our community of resisters and persisters! “
NO Kings 3.0
March 28 Everywhere!
Find an EVENT near you
What if we did the same? We can personalize the language, of course. But I think it’s time to go wide. If you do, too, please take this action!
[H/T Robert B. Hubbell and reader Janie S.]
Win Races! 🗳
Join BigTentUSA on Thursday, March 19, at 12pm ET | 11am CT |10am MT for a timely virtual conversation with Dan Osborn, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, about what’s shaping the 2026 midterm elections in the Cornhusker State. The discussion will be moderated by independent journalist Aaron Parnas, who will guide the conversation and audience Q&A.
For many Americans, Nebraska’s political landscape is often overlooked—but the dynamics playing out there offer a revealing snapshot of the forces shaping national politics. In this discussion, we’ll break down the key issues, political realities, and voter dynamics driving the race, and what they could signal for the broader midterm environment.
Chop Wood, Save the Planet 🔥
Big tech companies are trying to push through data centers with little to no oversight. And legislators and regulators are quietly stacking the deck in favor of them.
The good news is there are many important steps we can take to ensure our elected officials are putting our communities ahead of big tech, and Green America has created a short guide of 10 steps to take before AI data centers are proposed. Because it’s much easier to stop a bad data center before it starts.
Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻
[To: all 3 reps] [H/T Coleman Rogers ] [Text SIGN PEGRBG to 50409, or to @Resistbot on Apple Messages, Messenger, Instagram, or Telegram]
(Note that for the most effective RESISTBOT it’s best to personalize this text. More about how to do this here. But if you’re short on time just send it as is using the above code.)
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent appearance before the House Oversight Committee was not testimony—it was an attempt to evade it.
After being subpoenaed to testify under oath regarding the Department of Justice’s handling of the Epstein files, Attorney General Bondi instead staged a last-minute “briefing” and refused to commit to appearing under oath. Members of Congress walked out rather than legitimize what multiple members have described as a “fake hearing.”
This is not a procedural disagreement. It is a direct challenge to Congress’s constitutional authority. A lawful subpoena cannot be replaced with an unsworn public relations appearance. If that precedent is allowed to stand, oversight itself becomes meaningless.
OK, you did it again! You’re helping to save democracy! You’re amazing.
Talk soon.
Jess
Yes! Hope is a practice. We can learn and develop hope. I have, and I reinforce that daily in a morning meditation. You can look at hope as an acknowledgement that our knowledge and experience are limited, each of us, they just are, and hope allows for what seems impossible to our own limitations.
I hate to say it, but that is exactly Trump's plan- to discombobulate us, such that great activists like you have to express the feeling of being beyond overwhelmed. The image that comes to mind is that we are holding on by our fingernails. Thanks for your honesty and for being in the fight with all of us.