In the last two years, the use of ‘buy now, pay later’ services has increased ten fold. That’s a huge problem. A new report from the Consumers Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) shows that many of these services — including industry leaders Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, and Zip — commit serious digital surveillance. And, they prey on consumers who may not realize they’re taking on debt without the usual protections afforded to other lines of credit. ‘Buy now, pay later’ is the Wild West of e-commerce. Congress needs to step in and pass laws to protect us from these predatory lenders! Sign the petition: Congress must pass legislation protecting consumers from privacy violations and predatory lending committed by ‘buy now, pay later’ services! CFPB Director Rohit Chopra is already investigating layaway services and calling out their violations. When the agency revealed the new report, Chopra explained how layaway services are “harvesting and leveraging” consumer data in novel and dangerous ways. The consumer data gathered and sold by ‘buy now, pay later’ firms opens the door to scary new frontiers of surveillance, including digital dark patterns and individualized pricing. These are unprecedented methods of financial surveillance which are likely to harm low-income and other vulnerable populations the most. Layaway is back in a big way. We need strong legislation to protect consumers and their financial privacy, ASAP! Sign the petition: Congress must pass legislation protecting consumers from privacy violations and predatory lending committed by ‘buy now, pay later’ services!

Just two weeks after Hurricane Fiona devastated communities in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Ian swept through Cuba, Florida, and South Carolina — killing over a hundred people and making the already dire housing crisis even worse. Rescue and evacuation efforts are still ongoing. As the Sunrise Movement said to President Biden: “How can we call this anything but what it is — a climate emergency?” President Biden must declare a national climate emergency immediately, clearing the way for big policies to take on the climate crisis. Sign the petition: Tell President Biden and Congress to declare a climate emergency to help stem the tide of climate change! Unusually warm ocean water turbocharged Hurricane Ian, according to scientists. This amplification will only become more intense as climate change progresses. By stopping oil and gas drilling and investing heavily in renewable energy, the United States can to our part to back off the cliff of extreme weather events that are devastating communities and claiming lives. Declaring a national emergency will empower President Biden to do just that. Once Biden declares a national climate emergency, he'll be able to invoke the National Emergencies Act to halt crude oil exports, limit oil and gas drilling in federal waters, and direct federal agencies to boost renewable-energy sources — all crucial actions if we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, President Biden’s stated goal. Sign the petition: Tell President Biden and Congress to declare a climate emergency to help stem the tide of climate change!

Amazon’s new reality TV show Ring Nation is a disgusting demonstration of Amazon’s monopoly power. The show uses footage from notorious Ring cameras — an Amazon surveillance tool. It’s produced by Amazon-owned MGM Studios. And it’s distributed on Amazon Prime Video. It’s just the latest reminder that Amazon is out of control. Fortunately, legislation has been introduced in Congress that would begin to tackle some of the ways Amazon abuses its power. Majority Leader Schumer has promised to bring that legislation to the floor. Now we need to see action. Sign the petition: Small businesses, and the American people, need protection from the Big Tech monopolies! Majority Leader Schumer must bring legislation blocking massive Big Tech companies from abusing their power to the floor immediately — and Congress must pass it. Already, tens of thousands of people have called on Amazon to cancel the program. Those activists note Amazon's disturbing track record of using Ring surveillance footage to violate people’s constitutional rights. Amazon has provided surveillance footage to law enforcement without a warrant or the consent of doorbell-owners 11 times this year alone. Given this context, Ring Nation is “essentially rebranding surveillance as entertainment,” said Myaisha Hayes, one of the organizers of the petition. We need protection from the Big Tech monopolies immediately. So why is Schumer dragging his feet on bringing popular, bipartisan legislation to the floor? Perhaps he’s feeling the pressure from the $95 million that Big Tech has spent to oppose the legislation. Schumer’s daughters are two potential pressure points: one works for Meta (Facebook), and another for Amazon. Clearly, Schumer’s got some personal hang-ups on this legislation. Based on his personal ties to tech industry, Demand Progress and a coalition of progressive groups have even called for Schumer to recuse himself from dealing with the legislation. Schumer needs to get it together and do the right thing for the American people, before it’s too late. Sign the petition: Schumer must bring tech antitrust legislation for a floor vote! Congress is ready to take on the power of big tech.

The United States is served by just five major airlines. Now, American Airlines — the largest of them all — wants to merge many of its services with JetBlue. We can’t let that happen. Last week, the Justice Department went to trial to challenge the merger. We need to make sure our voices are heard: we demand protection from the big airline corporations! Sign the petition: Tell the Justice Department we demand a strong settlement in the American Airlines-JetBlue case, consistent with the Biden Administration’s stated commitment to antitrust enforcement! In recent months we’ve seen record numbers of flight cancellations and skyrocketing ticket prices. The way the airlines mistreat passengers and workers alike makes clear: big airline corporations have too much power already. The last thing we need is even more consolidation. The Trump Department of Transportation signed off on American Airlines and JetBlue’s proposal to merge services to Boston and New York just before President Biden took office. As Biden’s Justice Department has observed, it’s a “de facto merger,” one that received little to no scrutiny. The US is currently in the midst of one of the biggest consolidations of corporate power the country has seen in the last century. And consumers are suffering — corporate profits are at a 70-year high, as corporations with few competitors use inflation as a cover story to jack up prices. We need antitrust enforcement now more than ever — starting with the airline conglomerates. Sign the petition: Tell the Justice Department we demand a strong settlement in the American Airlines-JetBlue case, consistent with the Biden Administration’s stated commitment to antitrust enforcement!

Trump’s Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has demonstrated over and over again he’ll prioritize profit over ensuring USPS accomplishes its key functions. When it comes to the fundamental right to vote, we can’t trust DeJoy to do the right thing. That’s why Congress must pass the Election Mail Act, legislation that would codify Americans’ right to vote by mail and get their votes counted. Sign the petition: Congress must pass the Election Mail Act, legislation that would require USPS to offer First-Class mailing service for all ballots at no cost to voters! In the midst of DeJoy’s Great Consolidation of the US Postal Service, the need for laws protecting mail-in voting is greater than ever. If DeJoy shutters facilities and cuts the USPS workforce, as planned, he’ll be jeopardizing Americans’ right to get their votes counted — especially in rural areas. President Biden and Congress need to be countering DeJoy’s austerity plans at every step of the way. Right now, Congress can stand up to DeJoy on the urgent issue of voting rights. The Election Mail Act includes vital safeguards such as ensuring voters don’t have to pay to return mail-in ballots; making sure USPS postmarks ballots, and states count them on time; protecting absentee voting; and preventing USPS from making operational changes within 120 days of an election. These reforms must pass now! Sign the petition: Congress must pass the Election Mail Act, legislation that would require USPS to offer First-Class mailing service for all ballots at no cost to voters!

After months of eagerly waiting for Democrats’ proposal to ban Congressional stock trading, key negotiators say the final proposal released last week was designed to fail. Members of Congress have a financial incentive to continue trading stocks and profiting off the insider information they’re privy to as public servants. We need to make sure our representatives feel the pressure: we demand that leadership introduces, and Congress passes, legislation forcing Members to completely divest from stock ownership while in office! One reason Democrats’ proposal was dead on arrival is that it fails to ensure Members fully divest from their stocks. Instead, it allows Members to place their assets in ‘qualified blind trusts’ — a non-starter for many Members who recognize the trusts would create a loophole. In the words of one Democratic staffer involved in the negotiations, qualified blind trusts are “kind of fake.” The public is still waiting on an adequate proposal to end corruption in Congress. Meanwhile, Members continue to profit at the public’s expense. Congress should be focused on making decisions that serve the public interest — not their personal stock portfolios. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi must bring legislation requiring Members of Congress to divest from individual stock ownership while in office to the floor immediately!

A report in Vice News explains that several branches of the U.S. military purchased an internet surveillance tool from a private cybersecurity firm. The tool, called Augury, allows for the monitoring of 90% of the world’s internet traffic.2 Warrantless collection of our data is never OK. And it violates our Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure without a warrant. What the U.S. military is doing with the help of private companies is in direct conflict with our most basic constitutional rights. The U.S. military is using taxpayer dollars to spy on Americans with the help of private firms. Congress must pass the Jacobs-Davidson Amendment to determine the extent of this surveillance and make sure these constitutional violations stop now. Will you sign our petition demanding Congress take a stand against the military’s warrantless collection of our internet data right now? Congress must preserve the Jacobs-Davidson Amendment and protect our constitutional rights.

We are in the middle of a deep and growing housing and homelessness crisis. While we are devoting unprecedented resources toward helping people move from the street into housing, we also have to make sure that those people don't lose their housing and slip back into homelessness because they can't afford the rent. No one should ever receive a $400 rent increase. Poor people living in city-subsidized affordable housing should never receive a city-sanctioned $400 rent increase. A $400 rent increase is not "affordable", by any metric. In 2012, the city incentivized developers to produce over 1800 of "MULTE" units, giving up millions in property tax revenues and waiving development fees that would otherwise go toward our parks, roads, street lighting and sidewalks. In exchange, developers agreed to set aside some of their units to be "affordable". We don't know why the city decided to exempt MULTE landlords from the policy limiting affordable housing rent increases to 5%. But we know they have the tools to fix it. We don't know why the city hasn't increased relocation amounts since 2016, but Median income (and hence affordable rents) have increased by 45% over the same time period. We know that they are okay with MULTE landlords increasing rents by this amount, so we trust they will agree to increase relocation payments as well. We don't know what the city was expecting when they only required affordability for 10 years, or what they thought would happen to low-income people living in those buildings when they expire and get $1000+ rent increases. But we know they have the tools to fix this now. Winter is coming. If the city doesn't act, urgently, more families will be sleeping outdoors. The city talks big about addressing homelessness and "anti-displacement". Now is the time to act.

There are people in jail right now for the “crime” of not realizing they’d lost their right to vote. Take Pamela Moses – whose story sparked national outrage when Tennessee officials gave her six years in prison for voting without realizing that she’d been disenfranchised by her past felony conviction, even after officials told her her voting rights were restored. The charge was later abandoned after Moses won a new trial – but it’s far from the only case. Just this summer, Therris L. Conney got one full year added to his jail sentence – after officials inaccurately told him he could vote while serving time in a county jail. The unjust reality is that when it comes to voting errors, those who are least able to mount a defense are punished more harshly. As a result, poor and Black people in the U.S. are punished more harshly for lesser violations than wealthy white retirees. That’s NOT how our democracy should work. We need to fix these inconsistencies in our legal system – and get rid of the racist felony disenfranchisement laws that put people in these precarious situations. We shouldn’t be incarcerating people for good-faith efforts to participate in democracy. It’s time to fix our system so that ALL of us get the say we deserve in our democracy – and no one is put in jail for an honest voting mistake.

We need a thorough, unobstructed investigation to determine what kind of threat Trump’s mishandling of these White House files posed to national security. But ever since the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his defenders have thrown everything they can at the wall to distract the public and prevent the investigation from moving forward. This includes Trump’s outrageous efforts to include a “special master” in the investigation, which made headlines last month. Trump likely hoped that this third-party individual, who would be tasked with reviewing the seized documents, would be able to block the DOJ investigators from seeing some of the materials. Trump also tried to make sure that the special master’s work would keep the investigation from moving forward until AFTER this fall’s midterm elections. And even though he wasn’t successful in that effort, and the files are now under DOJ review, it’s clear he won’t stop these schemes until he is forced to. If you agree that Trump shouldn’t be able to delay or manipulate the DOJ’s investigation into the documents he stashed at Mar-a-Lago, add your name today.

The graduating class of 2022 at California State University, San Bernardino deserves a commencement ceremony after all their hard work and dedication. We feel that CSUSB did not try hard enough to accommodate their winter graduates, nor did they consider the students’ input or offer alternatives such as: limiting the number of guests allowed to attend, splitting up graduation ceremonies between colleges, etc. Considering the fact that CSUSB has been increasing tuition costs every year and has the finances to fund the construction of a new building every year, we feel that more could be done.

In middle school I washed dishes to pay for my lunch. My parent made too much money to qualify for the free lunch program, and worked so hard that she fell asleep on the couch before being able to spend quality time with me. I looked for other ways to bring in income to cover any extras such as babysitting and lawn mowing. Today’s inner city kids are pushed toward drug selling, prostitution, and theft. I have seen it and stopped them. It’s now illegal for schools to allow children to do the lunchroom work I did as a kid. I have taken initiative when I lived in the inner city of Columbus to help these kids find legal ways to earn the money for what they wanted to buy. The one kid that stuck out in my mind the most was doing those things to get diapers and wipes for his baby sisters. A 1 to 2 cent tax on the dollar for almost any necessary disposable item would cover the cost for lunch for every child in the state. I think that’s a minor inconvenience to solve a major problem.