Uhh, so the Washington Post revealed my city has been using dystopian nightmare AI facial recognition surveillance through a private company to track people on a watchlist.
Apparently they had a secret partnership with Palantir several years ago(news to me) and this is allegedly not directly related to that, but it seems like it definitely is.
Now Republicans are trying to pass a law to ban states from regulating AI for the next 10 years
Not only would it ban any new regulations, it would repeal all existing bans and regulations.
This may be confusing bc states rights, right? Well, since the federal government is currently being controlled by the people that also run these private AI companies, these companies would get to decide what a federal regulation would cover (if anything) and if it actually gets enforced (hard to do if you disband the entire federal government that handles oversight and protection of rights. That means even if you live in a deep blue state, you could end up in the same mass surveillance boat as me in bright red Louisiana, with no way to stop it no matter how much you beg your local leaders.
Not good, right? So please for the love of God, make sure you, and everyone you know make as much noise as possible so that doesn’t happen!
If this goes through the Senate, it will be shitty and so very Trump. However if that happens, it seems most likely judges will just begin setting a bond, which could be as low as $1.
It’s unprecedented but it doesn’t really mean that Trump has unlimited executive power, unless for some reason judges just refused to start setting the bond. There normally isn’t one bc judges normally don’t say if you want justice for a violation of your rights by the government you need to provide a security bond first.
On the one hand it will be a new low for America, but will probably be reversed as soon as Trump is out of office. It will almost certainly do him no favors in court going forward or the Republicans any favors during the midterms.
The shittiest part is that it would retroactively effect cases where he’s in contempt and also effect long standing injunctions like desegregation orders in schools. Funny thing about that specifically, red states are already seeing the DOJ dropping investigations and law suits into civil rights violations. Last week the DOJ said they’re no longer investigating civil rights accusations against Louisiana State Police, and last month the DOJ removed a consent decree that enforced segregation on a Louisiana school in the 60s, meanwhile the governor has been trying to remove a consent decree on the NOPD for years.
The argument of both red states and the federal government, is that these federal rules are no longer necessary bc states like Louisiana got their act together a long time ago. Definitely not true, but what can I do about that if my governor says it’s so and no other elected officials are willing to challenge him on it.
Yet Republicans are somehow arguing state regulations on AI are unnecessary because their “light touch” federal regulations will be all you need. That’s because they plan to provide no enforceable regulations that will actually serve anyone but corporations.
Literally, the only thing a federal government should be doing is protecting the rights of people. When a federal government becomes worthless and stops providing federal laws protecting your rights (because they argue they’re not necessary to protect you from people exactly like them), you hopefully have state leaders who are willing to step in and provide the insurance that the federal government is failing to provide you.
The bond is meant to pay for damages of the lawsuit if it goes forward
Can judges set it to $1? Maybe. Or maybe that’s grounds to have a mistrial, or lodge a complaint against the judge. Maybe it becomes another step in every lawsuit against the government - where both parties try to get the judge to nail down a cash value
Or maybe, they can’t. What is the process of doing this? When is appropriate to take a bond, and when is it not?
This administration will stretch the law as far as they can. Maybe the judiciary can win this fight, maybe the administration can use this as another shield.
This is entirely legal theory - it’s not even law yet. No one knows how it would shake out. We have to read laws with the worst possible interpretation, because that’s how the administration is going to play any card you give them
Clearly this is just a way to get all of the cases currently holding him in contempt dropped.
It seems it’s up to the judge’s discretion at what it’s set, at least according to the traitorous scumbags that wrote the bill.
Most likely, unless the judges want to allow the court system to completely crumble, like you’re worried they will, they will have to play ball by setting it to an affordable amount like $1.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us/politics/trump-policy-bill-judges-contempt.html
The point isn’t really that you have to pay a $1. The point is that the president is making it loud and clear that there is now a dollar amount on upholding the constitution. By making a citizen pay any amount of money anytime the government violates the rights it’s a show of lawlessness by the president and his loyalists.
These people are already being paid to uphold the rights they’re violating, with the tax dollars that they’re squandering on the AI data centers they’re rolling out across the country in different states, so that they can steal more data, invade more privacy, violate more rights, and have no consequences unless they are cut off at the state level by state government.
Why are you taking a Republican senator at his word?
They’re lying. They don’t know how this would actually play out, no one does
It doesn’t matter what they say today… They’re going to immediately push this as far as they can if it gets through. They operate in bad faith, every time
And maybe you’re right and that’s how it does play out… But this is a play that ends democracy if we lose.
And let me remind you, they literally just argued in the supreme Court to do basically what I’m describing