Issues You May Know, 27 June 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Deregulation of AI is part of an overall ideological agenda to deregulate everything.
Boondoggle The Hot, New Plan to Bribe States Into Deregulating Artificial Intelligence AI infrastructure money in exchange for an AI Wild West. Pat Garofalo Jun 24, 2025 Wielding phony concerns about a “patchwork of state laws,” big tech interests and their allies in the federal government are attempting to eliminate in one swift stroke a host of state or local laws that, for example: require the disclosure of the use of AI in health care and financial decisions; prevent landlords from using algorithms to collude on rental prices; protect against AI discrimination in the job application process; restrict the tactics social media platforms use to addict users; or bar the use of digitally altered images and videos in elections. And with its broad brush, it’s easy to see proponents of this language wielding it to invalidate laws around gambling, financial services, and who knows what else. (emphasis added)
It's pretty obvious this is a scheme based on pseudoscience eugenics religious ideology, where they want to make AI the God that controls the "invisible hand of the market" for the techno-rapture. Our government system is being taken over by this bizarre political cult based in apocalyptic science fiction mixed with religion, and it will cost lives, and those people don't care, because they think people dying is the ideal.
My letter to reps:
The big bill's prohibition on AI regulation is unacceptable and so is any financial incentive to bribe or penalize states and citizens to put up with no protections against disastrous and shoddy tech being used against us. I want strong laws with extreme penalties for not disclosing the use of AI in any services or products on the market. If there's AI involved, companies and businesses should have to disclose that weakness to the people paying money for products and services. And companies that don't comply should have jail time involved for the people working at the company who failed to disclose and make this so transparent and apparent that there could be no mistake that people are informed.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
"Get over it" typically means "Shut up and go away because I don't care."
My letter to reps:
Mitch Mcconnell literally said people would “get over” losing Medicaid. I don’t think that’s true. I think once hospitals and nursing homes are closed at an accelerated pace, and elderly people with dementia are being unhoused, and sick people can’t get emergency care or necessary surgeries while elective surgeries persist… This is not going to lead to more social stability. We already see this because it's already happening and it's not going well. Accelerating this deterioration of healthcare will obviously make people more dissatisfied, at a minimum. Medicaid and Medicare cuts are unpopular because they will bring us all more frustrations and more hardships.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Supreme Court greenlights renditions.
SCOTUS allows Trump admin to deport people to random countries with no notice Justice Sotomayor called the order a "gross ... abuse" of the court's authority. Also: Law Dork in the media. Chris Geidner Jun 23, 2025 On Monday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees — with no reasoning — issued an order allowing the Trump administration to provide no notice to people it is deporting to a country with which the person has no connection and where the person could face great danger.
My letter to reps:
It's grossly inappropriate for a government with a monopoly on legal violence to send people with no notice to a country with which the person has no connection, and or could face danger; no matter what the person did, no matter who that person is. It's outrageously unfair and inhumane, and it's a gross abuse of power. It doesn't matter what court says it's ok, it's unethical and immoral, and people in positions of governance should not do this, and should take steps to stop it, or expect to be judged eventually.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Conservatives are being tricked.
If you were wondering why republican voters seem to persistently believe things are looking up. It’s because of the media they consume, and Trump administration officials mislead them, and many have no reference point to discern that they won’t be getting 8k covid checks, that hospitals aren’t doing terrible stuff, and that they’re not getting a concierge medical service like the wealthy use for $75 per month and no, that’s not in the big boondoggle bill.
SKEETER @abngrunt.bsky.social + Follow www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/hhs-… HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Says Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Includes $75/Month Healthcare Plan with 24/7 Concierge Doctor No Insurance Claims and Surprise Bills LIVE the story with Martha MacCallum X@MJTruthUltra NOW: RFK JR ON NEW MEMBERS OF VAX ADVISORY GROUP the story with Martha MacCallum NEWS channel HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Says Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Includes $75/Month Healthcare Plan with 24/7 Concierge Doctor – No Insurance Claims and Surprise Bills | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft HHS Secretary Robert F. www.thegatewaypundit.com June 13, 2025 at 11:52 AM
My letter to reps:
It’s shocking that people are being lied to and told that the big boondoggle bill actually includes government subsidized concierge healthcare that ordinary people will get for $75 a month. People also believe they’re getting $8,000 in more covid checks in 2025. This is the stuff that’s being repeated on social media, and it’s all lies, but I suspect some politicians are allowing these lies so as to trick constituents into going along with this big taxpayer swindle.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Australian writer deported for reporting on protests.
Another white guy was deported. This Australian was straight up told that he was being deported for exercising free speech and freedom of the press.
The New Republic - Edith Olmsted / June 16, 2025 Customs Officials Deport Man for Reporting on Pro-Palestine Protests Writer Alistair Kitchen says he was targeted for his coverage of the Columbia University protests. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials reportedly told an Australian writer who was detained and deported upon his arrival in Los Angeles that he was being removed for writing about pro-Palestinian protests on his personal blog, according to The Guardian. In a thread of posts on X Sunday, Alistair Kitchen said he had just landed back in Australia after 12 hours in detention and a 30-hour round trip. “They just came out and said it: ‘We both know why you’ve been detained … it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia,’” Kitchen recounted. Kitchen, who lived in New York for six years before moving back to Australia in 2024, had written about the campus protests at Columbia University opposing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza for his Substack blog Kitchen Counter. Kitchen was a master’s student in creative writing at Columbia at the time.
We can't let our politicians listen to tycoons, lobbyists, pollsters, and political consultants more than constituents.
These highly organized and well funded voices crowd out constituent voices, and that needs to stop because it's led to all sorts of nonsensical losing campaign ad strategies and irrational policy decisions that both insult and materially harm people.
Who are these dipshit wonks who fell for the polling that legal immigration is unpopular or that most people dislike immigrants, based basically on a lot of silly polling that asked right-wing framed questions? Some of this polling would just ask vague questions or straight up "Do you want foreigners taking your job & completely open borders or no?" They never asked "Do you want people who immigrated 'the right way' stripped of their legal status?" Politicians need to start hearing specifics from their constituents, and we need to crowd out these political consultants and lobbyists.
My letter to reps:
I don't think immigrants who did all the right paperwork the right way should be stripped of their legal status just to meet some arbitrary quota of deportations because someone over-promised the amount of migrant workers that could be found to have committed crimes. It's not even fair to the ICE workers. And it's really unfair to people following the rules like my ancestors.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
My grandfather was an immigrant from Poland.
The truth about MAHA from the Truth Brigade.
Truth Brigade: Medical Misinformation Madness 6.11.25 Indivisible Jun 13, 2025
screenshot of Truth Brigade: Medical Misinformation Madness 6.11.25 Indivisible Jun 13, 2025 showing how the wellness & supplement industry is 3 times bigger than so-called big pharma.
screenshot of Truth Brigade: Medical Misinformation Madness 6.11.25 Indivisible Jun 13, 2025 showing the danger of RFKJr's misinformation on banning schools from using seed oils, it's not healthier but it's a lot more expensive.
AI Toys. What circle of Hell is this?
Curmudgucation Mattel Promises AI Toys Peter Greene Jun 26, 2025 Today in our latest episode of Things Nobody Asked For, we've got the announcement that Mattel has teamed up with the folks at OpenAI to bring you toys that absolutely nobody has asked for.It's a "strategic collaboration," say the folks at Mattel corporate. The announcement comes with lots of corporate argle bargle bullshit
I'm sure the toys will come with their own cell data connections to upload the data directly without needing wifi or permission, sort of like the livongo blood pressure devices.
This is while there’s fresh stories about chatbots gone wrong with kids, and AI companies making bonkers arguments to defend it.
Note: Anyone who publishes online, with even a modest audience, is constantly hit with a barrage of "feedback".
Feedback could be good, but is often bad, and not just bad, but weird bad.
I'm again getting another round of people telling me they're hearing "behind the scenes" the perennial "Chloe is harming the community" claims. What community and what harms, nobody seems to be able to specify, perhaps out of politeness, or perhaps because he criticism is vague, I don't know.
This is a good time to mention that I'm actually working on a long piece about why people don't warn you about bogus stuff or potential pitfalls or harms. And why typically people are disincentivized to actually warn other people about actually harmful actors. And being attacked and smeared of course is one of those disincentivizing factors. It's interesting how there at least a few people who feel comfortable warning others about me. It's very important to point out this is never publicly publishing, nor a situation where I could respond. Often the people doing it are completely anonymous, even to the people they're privately warning. So it's a case where a person is hearing this from someone anonymous they met in some online group on social media.
My suggestion if you're somebody who's received these "warnings" (about anyone really) and don't know what to make of them; ask for specifics. Because it seems like nobody knows what anyone actually means anymore. That's something I keep complaining about. If it's just "Chloe was rude" then I don't know what to tell you because they may be right about that! I'm not an influencer, and unfortunately a very nice and attentive content creator probably isn't going to give you the blunt truth, which is rarely welcomed, and why I've spent time working on something to explain the dynamics at play. It's something I started to discuss in "Don't blame the messenger".
I still sometimes get people leaving weird pandemic denial comments on old substack posts that I haven't managed to close down comments on, and I got a real weird one this week. It was chock full of dan brown style monarchist bloodlines conspiracy fiction, horrendously blatant jack murphy style eugenics, and ridiculous science denial where they preposterously claim viruses don't exist. And then, bonus, they hit the like heart on their own comment! Who knows what compels people. But people also often reply my newsletters with bizarre PR talking points too. Most often it's pro-crypto talking points that are obviously trying some left-wing tactic to undermine my opposition to crypto. I'm working on something to address that too.
Disclosure: I actively work at trying to avoid audience capture.
Frog.
American Bullfrog at Lackawanna State Park in Pennsylvania USA. July 15, 2023. Photo by Chloe Kaczenski Humbert