Survivor Parents to Tell Congress to Choose: Big Tech or Families

Big Tech floods the AI midterms with cash, 70+ parents are at the Capitol today demanding action after the landmark verdict, and Palantir's manifesto reveals what Big Tech actually wants;

Welcome back to The Dispatch from The Tech Oversight Project, your weekly updates on all things tech accountability. Follow us on Twitter at @Tech_Oversight and @techoversight.bsky.social on Bluesky.

📣 BIG TECH OR FAMILIES: SURVIVOR PARENTS THROW DOWN THE GAUNTLET: Today, more than 70 parents are at the U.S. Capitol putting trial evidence directly in front of lawmakers and demanding they choose: will they stand with families or with Big Tech

They have backup in pushing Congress for change: At a bipartisan press conference last week (video), Sens. Dick Durbin and Josh Hawley and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez stood alongside TOP’s Sacha Haworth and dozens of survivor advocates to make clear the pressure to act isn’t letting up.

Sen. Durbin: “Big Tech will not reform on its own. It has shown time and again that if given the choice, it will choose profits over people. But the dam is breaking.”

Sacha Haworth: “It is truly hard to overstate the impact the trials in California and New Mexico have had on the movement, because for the very first time we are seeing in black and white how Big Tech executives talk about us when they think no one is listening.”

AG Torrez: “[S]tates cannot do this alone. We need Congress to pass KOSA with a real duty of care….”

The rapid rise of AI is supercharging existing dangers, accelerating everything from child sexual exploitation to addictive design at a scale lawmakers didn’t have to contend with even a few years ago — and Congress must not wait.

Fortunately, this time around, a broad coalition of policymakers and advocates is on the case from the start. Congress has no excuse to wait.

🎶 DON'T TAKE THE MONEY, DON'T TAKE THE MONEY: New FEC disclosures filed this week have provided the clearest picture yet of just how much money a small group of Big Tech billionaires is pouring into this election cycle in order to rig AI rules in their own favor.

Leading the Future, one of the biggest PACs, raised $15 million last quarter. The catch: that entire haul came from just two sources – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of a16z and Greg Brockman of OpenAI. The PAC has since moved $10 million into subsidiary super PACs Think Big and American Mission, and quietly launched a previously unreported new PAC – American Mission Florida – to spend in the Florida Governor's race, seeding it with $3 million. The cycle total is now $140 million.

Their goal is straightforward: elect lawmakers at every level who will pass AI preemption and kill bipartisan state laws that lower costs for families, protect our kids, and hold these companies accountable.

TOP's Sacha Haworth: "If it wasn't obvious before today, it should be now: a small handful of powerful Big Tech CEOs are spending enormous amounts of cash to drown out the voice of the American people. They want to force a dangerous AI agenda down our throats, and we have to band together to beat them at the ballot box. Leading the Future and other Big Tech super PACs' sole mission is to pass universally hated AI preemption and ban bipartisan measures that protect ordinary Americans. By a two-to-one margin, voters believe states should be able to pass their own AI laws, and Members of Congress must decide whether they are on the side of Big Tech or the people they serve."

A reminder: Last week, TOP joined 13 children's safety, disability rights, tech watchdog, and AI safety organizations in urging Democratic Members of Congress – including Reps. Clarke, Gottheimer, Gomez, Liccardo, and Subramanyam – to disavow Leading the Future's endorsement.

💸 HOME OF DATA CENTER ALLEY SOURS ON BIG TECH HANDOUTS: The politics of “Make Big Tech Pay” are coming into sharper focus in Virginia, as the Legislature debates ending data center tax breaks, which cost the state’s taxpayers $1.9 billion a year. In a new Hart Research/Clean Virginia poll this month:

67% of Virginia voters support ending tax breaks for the data center industry
62% hold an unfavorable opinion of data centers
46% said they would be more likely to support a state legislature candidate who backs ending data center tax breaks, while only 14% said they would be less likely.

Data center tax breaks are expected to be a top topic of discussion when the VA legislature comes back for its special session this Thursday. We'll be watching closely – together with Virginians who are tired of subsidizing Big Tech’s energy bills.

👁️ SURVEILLANCE FOR THEE, NOT FOR ME: Palantir CEO Alex Karp has written a manifesto laying out his vision for the future of the company – and the country. He worked on it for years, and this weekend, his company just tweeted it out.

Palantir is hoovering up enormous amounts of data on intelligence, immigration enforcement, policing, health systems, and logistics from the federal government. The problem? That's an enormous amount of consolidated power, and there aren't modernized data privacy laws on the books. Karp's manifesto makes clear what its CEO wants to come next: a fusion of U.S. government and Silicon Valley authority, unconstrained by oversight. As one analyst put it after reading the full book: "No public oversight for me, surveillance for thee."

Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at Georgetown, identifies the manifesto's sharpest tell: its depiction of two classes of public servants. The Silicon Valley contractor class deserves grace and freedom from criticism. For civil servants, it’s another story. As Moynihan writes:

“Billionaires have joined a war on professional administrative class of public servants precisely because of their proximity to formal mechanisms of accountability. Civil servants are sworn to uphold the constitution, report wrongdoing to officials, follow the rules. They are in most respects more accountable than our politicians to ethical and legal requirements, and more difficult to buy off.”

Karp once declared his "biggest fear is fascism." Now he's a Trump donor. As Moynihan concludes: “The Palantir manifesto reflects the worldview not of deep philosophical consideration but of a rotten information environment, one where pluralism and accountability are bad, and coercive power is the necessary and profitable price of freedom.”

Big Tech CEOs won’t stop at profits – they want power and to be shielded from criticism while they’re doing it.

ICYMI: A blockbuster lawsuit from California Attorney General Bonta brought to light new evidence that Amazon has engaged in a national price-fixing scheme costing Americans millions of dollars. The evidence alleges that Amazon deployed three tactics to pressure sellers:

Coercing vendors as intermediaries to pressure competitors
Directly raising prices
Blocking product distribution

For years, the Amazon and the Big Tech lobby have tried to desperately refute the claim that the Big Tech giant has quietly been turning the screws on customers to pad its corporate profits while making it harder for families to make ends meet. AG Bonta broke the whole argument down with one filing.

1. Boy, Amazon is in a heap of trouble. Evidence made public today by California AG @AGRobBonta shows blatant price fixing. And there are so many examples. Here's Amazon scheming with a pet food supplier to get Chewy to raise its prices. pic.twitter.com/G1CENsAO8p
— Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) April 20, 2026

Institute for Local Self-Reliance co-director Stacy Mitchell broke down how Amazon forced prices higher on brands like Hanes and Levi's, and how it forced prices higher market-wide by bragging how it would force Home Depot and Walmart to raise prices as well.