Tired of trite “human-in-the-loop references?” We at @techtonicjustice.bsky.social, @upturn.org, and @nhelp.bsky.social partnered with CDT to blow up the concept + discuss what meaningful human oversight of AI use would really look like. Check it out!

Specialize in comms with a focus on digital organizing? Come work with me and our growing team at TechTonic Justice. You’ll be our sixth team member.

On this week's @onthemedia.bsky.social: @micahloewinger.bsky.social asking @beccalew.bsky.social about some of silicon valley's technocratic right-wing roots; Buckley and George Gilder to Marc Andreesen, Futurism to Fascism. You might already know it, but i guarantee you know somebody who doesn't.

We just dropped a new guide to help slow down thoughtless AI adoption in nonprofit and government services. Read, share, and tell us how it might be better.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), without it, people with disabilities would not have equal access in all areas of public life. In 2025, the fight for accessibility is disrupted by the invisible hand of AI decisions. This is why TechTonic Justice was born.

Read this interview with a personal hero, Professor @daniellecitron.bsky.social: "we have essentially presumed that data collection is a good...We have long ignored this important inclination that collection itself is endangering our privacy and civil liberties" www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Sun rising over hour 57 of our SIXTY hour Protect Medicaid Vigil. It’s been an honor & privilege to pull this event together with our incredible team & partners. I am exhausted, emboldened and so damn proud of the power we are showing as we hold those who cut Medicaid accountable.

What Arkansas teaches us about Medicaid cuts coming to the rest of the nation. @kevindeliban.bsky.social of @techtonicjustice.bsky.social explains youtu.be/isSvH6oX8TM?... Bureaucratic hurdles are by design (& likely won’t pay for the infrastructure needed to build them).

I’m busy enough without needing the new “hobby” of compulsively reloading my timeline to see the latest word from 8 different reporters about whether Medicaid might survive because some arcane Senate procedure keeps Republican leadership from buying off the vote of one Alaskan senator.

Unlike Rep senators + reps lying on national media outlets, I actually dealt with Medicaid work requirements as a legal aid attorney when they caused mass chaos in 2018 in Arkansas. I wrote about it in this recent NYT OpEd. Any chance a major network would have me on to shed light + tell truth?

I am so damn excited to share my new book, Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach. Full of stories and priced at $40, this book explains why law finds technology so difficult to regulate, and what to do about it. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Highly recommend this piece by @kevindeliban.bsky.social and Trevor Hawkins.

Urgent! The Senate is voting now (Sat. afternoon) on a huge bill to cut Medicaid + SNAP + to stop states from protecting their residents against the harms that AI inflicts. Call your Republican senators—tell them to vote against the reconciliation bill. Contact info: www.senate.gov/senators/sen...

The right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court just ruled to kill women today. That's what's going to happen. Elections matter.

CDT’s Elizabeth Laird in @npr.org on the Trump administration’s attempts to amass individuals’ sensitive information from databases at the State levels. www.npr.org/2025/06/...

If you want to fund work defending Medicaid, donating to @littlelobbyists.com's (c)4 is the highest ROI I know of We're flying more families in this week. If (and only if) you can afford to help pay to get more disabled kids into the offices of Senators: secure.actblue.com/donate/littl...

Come work with me at TechTonic Justice!

This past Sunday, my colleague Trevor + I published this OpEd in the NYTimes about imminent cuts to Medicaid. Up to 14 million people will lose insurance bc of penalties that punish working ppl, parents, + disabled ppl for not jumping through more hoops made of red tape. AI will make the cuts worse.

Padilla: If this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

I spent some time at the site where protestors incinerated five Waymos—all lined up neatly in a row in downtown LA—and spoke to journalists, eyewitnesses and activists who were there. This is how protestors weaponized Waymos and Lime scooters, and turned them into icons of the anti-ICE uprising

Hear me talk about AI, its impact on low-income people, and how it’s fueling the authoritarian moment. Today (Tuesday) at 12:30 pacific!

This should be an urgent warning to the federal government. Work requirements kicks Americans off their insurance. It makes it harder, not easier to have healthcare coverage. Don't take it from me. Take it from Arkansas. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

When Arkansas implemented work reporting requirements for just 5 months in 2018, over 18,000 people lost health care coverage and it cost the state over $24M. Work reporting requirements don't work. Read from @kevindeliban.bsky.social & Trevor Hawkins in @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

Read this OpEd from two of the finest people I know, @kevindeliban.bsky.social and Trevor Hawkins, who remind us that Arkansas was living today's national politics ten years ago, with deadly impacts. Also that the people of Arkansas fought back, and won.

Check out our OpEd in the NY Times about the disastrous cuts to Medicaid Republicans are costuming as red-tape Medicaid work requirement penalties. Up to 14 million people will lose insurance. Hospitals + clinics end up with uncompensated care. State caseworkers will be overwhelmed. Chaos everywhere

“The game is rigged.” One of the powerful sentences in today’s @nytimes.com opinion essays co-authored by my spouse @kevindeliban.bsky.social about the work requirements requirement currently proposed by Congress. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o.... He knows this because he has seen this before.

Our beloved city is under siege. We love you, our immigrant community. #LAStrong

In this NYT OpEd, we recount first-hand the devastation that Medicaid work requirements—cuts by another name—caused when Arkansas tried them. We were legal aid attorneys helping as many people as possible keep insurance. Nobody serious about governing should invite these problems to their states /1

Republicans want to cut Medicaid without saying it. So they’re using red tape—work requirement penalties—to kick people off coverage. In this NYT OpEd, we explain from our on-the-ground fight in Arkansas just how disastrous this’ll be for poor people, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, + state workers.

AI poses many threats to democracy—mis + disinformation, voter roll purges, etc—but one angle is less discussed. People need time/money/energy to learn about issues, organize, push for change,+ vote. AI is stripping those. How does d’cracy survive when life is too precarious to participate in it?

Two new entries in the series org'zed by @techpolicypress.bsky.social + @datasociety.bsky.social on tech power + democratic crisis. Tamara Kneese (@tamigraph.bsky.social) on energy demands: www.techpolicy.press/why-are-tech... Reem Suleiman on data misuse: www.techpolicy.press/public-secto...

4/ AI is reshaping power and democracy in harmful ways, writes Kevin De Liban (@kevindeliban.bsky.social). “It is clearing Trump’s path to authoritarian rule” through decisions “that deprive the public of the resources needed to participate meaningfully in democracy.”

How does democracy exist when AI makes life too unstable + too poor to participate in it? TTJ prez @kevindeliban.bsky.social lays out the case + the answers in this essay, one entry in a series coordinated by @techpolicypress.bsky.social + @datasociety.bsky.social on tech’s threats to democracy.

In @techpolicypress.bsky.social, I explain why using AI to reform government is much harder than policymakers and technologists assume. It's most directly about DOGE, but also raises warnings about the bipartisan push to adopt AI at all levels of government. www.techpolicy.press/using-ai-to-...

The article is part of "Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis" - an amazing new essay collection from @techpolicypress.bsky.social and @datasociety.bsky.social. Read the series overview here, and stay tuned for many more articles over the next two weeks!

🚨NEW SERIES ALERT🚨 My incredible @datasociety.bsky.social team with @techpolicypress.bsky.social just launched a series on "Tech Power and Democratic Crisis" (aka technofascism). The 1st piece by Jake Metcalf & Meg Young is out now: www.techpolicy.press/tech-power-a...

Today, as part of the @techpolicypress.bsky.social and @datasociety.bsky.social "Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis" series, @emilymbender.bsky.social and I write about the myth of AGI. www.techpolicy.press/the-myth-of-...

A must-read from Ben in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today!

As part of the series, @benzevgreen.bsky.social looks at AI and government reform: www.techpolicy.press/using-ai-to-... @alexhanna.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social unpack the myth of AGI: www.techpolicy.press/the-myth-of-...

Opening a new series on Tech Policy Press in collaboration with Data & Society called “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis,” Jacob Metcalf and Meg Young examine how a small group of tech billionaires is pushing an anti-democratic agenda. buff.ly/hdJS6M9

My contribution for the @techpolicypress.bsky.social and @datasociety.bsky.social series “Ideologies of Control” where we explore the relationship between power and democracy

"While nobody will escape AI, only a few will prosper under it, as its track record so far is decidedly one-sided. There are no examples of AI being used to meaningfully improve access to jobs, housing, health care, education, or public benefits at a scale that matches the scope of its harms."

“Shut up and code” is the new management mantra for many in Silicon Valley as they embrace AI, writes Luca Belli. Their “(un)spoken goal is to have as few workers as possible who are as obedient as possible.”

New piece from me about the ways the unfettered use of AI to make decisions about the core parts of our lives--our health care, our work, our housing, our kids' education, our public benefits--exacerbates the threats against an already-weakened democracy. Plus, some big-picture ideas to fight back!

The Trump administration wants to eliminate federal funding for legal aid to low-income people who otherwise have no chance at affording representation for all the problems they face. Congress will be taking up the budget soon, so be on the lookout for calls to action in the coming months.

Everything suffers and everyone dies, so why not strive to make our time here, together, as warm, as compassionate, as caring, as kind, as good as it possibly can be?

What I hope people understand is that Musk was just a figurehead for both the extensive network of DOGE operatives installed in agencies and more importantly the companies with contracts to combine data across agencies (see Palantir reporting today and Scale AI’s Congressional testimony)

In this article on the pending budget bill, TTJ prez @kevindeliban.bsky.social: "The House Republican proposal is stealing from poor people to give huge handouts to Big Tech to build technology that is going to perpetuate the president’s authoritarian plans + crackdowns against vulnerable people.”

The CXOTalk podcast's usual guests are tech executives, so I'll be an odd duck for the audience. Please come out + support with your comments, questions, etc.