If you’d like to read this newsletter via RSS, the link can be found here.

More sharing links and whatnot coming soon. We’re just getting started!

While state lawmakers have spent years crafting “protections” for workers, consumers, and communities, the Trump administration has launched an aggressive campaign to tear them down. Last week, the Department of Justice officially created an AI Litigation Task Force with one mission: sue states that dare to regulate artificial intelligence.

This isn't a just fight over bureaucratic turf, it's a fight over whether the tech community can be held accountable.

Let's get into it.

What happened: On January 10, Attorney General Pam Bondi formally established the DOJ's AI Litigation Task Force, following Trump's December executive order targeting "onerous" state AI laws. The task force will challenge state regulations on grounds they burden interstate commerce or conflict with federal priorities.

What it means: The administration's legal theory is remarkable in its audacity—it claims that laws requiring companies to test for algorithmic discrimination are themselves "deceptive" because they force AI systems to produce results that don't reflect biased historical data. In other words: if past hiring patterns discriminated against women and people of color, AI should be free to replicate those patterns. Correcting for bias, they argue, is the real deception.

The executive order also threatens to withhold $42 billion in federal broadband funding from states that don't roll back their AI laws. That's messed up, since that broadband funding mostly impacts low-income households the most.

The good news: Senate Democrats, led by Ed Markey, have introduced legislation to block the executive order. And legal experts are skeptical the administration's preemption arguments will hold up in court—executive orders can't override state law without congressional action. But the bill won’t go anywhere unless Dems take the chamber in the midterms, or GOP senators can be convinced that they’re bad for business.

Why it matters for organizers: State-level regulation has been the most promising avenue for AI accountability. California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York have all passed meaningful protections. If the federal government succeeds in blocking state action without providing federal alternatives, we'll be left with an accountability vacuum that corporations will happily fill with self-regulation (read: no regulation).

What happened: Across the country, residents are successfully blocking data center proposals worth $98 billion. From April through June alone, two-thirds of tracked projects were blocked or delayed due to local opposition—and the momentum is building.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, more than 50 residents showed up to a December commission meeting to oppose a 202-acre data center, citing water consumption, noise pollution, and environmental impacts. They won—at least for now.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, a project that would have funded half the city's budget was pulled after residents flooded town meetings. The mayor said opposition was "999 to one against" and any council member who approved it "would no longer be in office."

More than 230 environmental groups sent a letter to Congress in December demanding a national moratorium on new data center construction. Senator Bernie Sanders has called for the same.

Why it matters: This is real community organizing producing real results. Microsoft now lists "community opposition, local moratoriums, and hyper-local dissent" as a material risk in its SEC filings. When a trillion-dollar company has to warn shareholders that neighbors showing up to town meetings might threaten profits, that's power.

But something to consider: Although local organizers are right about some of their pushback on data centers, the environmental concerns have been blown way out of proportion. For example, golf courses use something like 30x the amount that data centers do currently¹, while raising grain for animals is even worse. Moreover, things are moving fast in the tech space, and data center technology is getting better year-by-year, with water usage plummeting (as tech companies build them to recycle water instead of consuming it) and energy usage getting cleaner and cleaner. We can, and should, push big tech to make their data centers as low impact as possible (as a result of the protest, some companies have started responding by promising to cover energy costs and make their data centers water neutral!), but we shouldn’t get caught up in anti-tech hype.

What happened: A federal judge has allowed a nationwide collective action lawsuit against Workday to proceed, potentially encompassing millions of job applicants over 40 who may have been discriminated against by the company's AI screening tools.

The plaintiffs allege that Workday's algorithmic system disproportionately rejected older applicants—sometimes within minutes of applying, often at times like 1:50 AM when no human could possibly be reviewing applications. The judge noted that whether the AI system has a "disparate impact on applicants over forty" is the central question, and the plaintiffs' claims "rise and fall together."

Meanwhile, a separate lawsuit filed this month against Eightfold AI argues that AI hiring tools should be subject to the same disclosure requirements as credit reporting agencies—giving job seekers the right to see and dispute the algorithmic assessments that may have cost them opportunities.

The context: Research published last year found that leading AI models systematically favor female candidates while disadvantaging Black male applicants, even when qualifications are identical. A University of Melbourne study found AI hiring tools struggled to accurately evaluate candidates with speech disabilities or non-native accents.

The irony: Just as these lawsuits gain traction, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to "eliminate enforcement based on disparate impact theory," the legal doctrine that allows discrimination claims even when there's no proof of intent. This won't stop private lawsuits like the Workday case, but it signals the EEOC won't be pursuing similar claims.

Bottom line: The courts remain one of the few arenas where algorithmic accountability is being tested. These cases matter.

Despite the administration's attacks, significant state protections went into force January 1:

Colorado's AI Act, which requires developers and deployers to use "reasonable care" to prevent algorithmic discrimination, is scheduled for June 30—and is explicitly targeted by the administration's executive order.

Governors in California, Colorado, and New York have issued statements indicating they won't back down.

AI tools can genuinely help organizers work more efficiently. If you’re concerned about privacy, among other things, here's how to use them thoughtfully.

ChangeAgent, Claude, ChatGPT, Google, and similar chatbots can summarize dense policy documents, draft initial outreach messages, and help you understand technical concepts. They're useful for getting up to speed quickly on unfamiliar topics.

Perplexity provides sourced research results, which can save time fact-checking. Useful for rapid-response research when news breaks.

Cautions:

Auto-captioning tools like those built into Zoom, Descript, and CapCut can make video content accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing community members.

Text-to-speech can help make written materials accessible to people with visual impairments or reading difficulties.

Caution: Review privacy policies before uploading content. Some free tools monetize your data.

The same AI systems we might use for organizing are being deployed against workers—monitoring their productivity, evaluating their speech patterns, predicting who might unionize. Keep that tension in mind and find ways to use AI that can expand progressive power.

The tech industry has spent decades telling us that innovation requires freedom from regulation. But we regulate airplanes and drugs and financial markets—not because we oppose flight or medicine or investment, but because the stakes are too high to leave safety to chance!

AI is making consequential decisions about who gets hired, who gets housing, who gets healthcare, who gets arrested. The question isn't whether to regulate these systems. The question is whether we do it now, while there's still time to shape how this technology develops, or whether we wait until the harms are so entrenched that changing course becomes nearly impossible.

The Trump administration has chosen a side in that fight. The question for us is whether we'll match their urgency.