July, 06 2017, 12:00pm EDT

UltraViolet Targets GOP Senators With 'Women Resist TrumpCare' Week of Actions
This week, as Senators are at home for the Fourth of July recess, UltraViolet Action, a national women's advocacy group, is preparing to confront Republicans over the recently introduced health care repeal bill as part of the organization's "Women Resist TrumpCare" week of action. The group warns that the Republican bill would decimate the American health care system.
As part of their week of action, UltraViolet Action has commissioned mobile billboards to run in the following cities between July 6th and July 7th.
WASHINGTON
This week, as Senators are at home for the Fourth of July recess, UltraViolet Action, a national women's advocacy group, is preparing to confront Republicans over the recently introduced health care repeal bill as part of the organization's "Women Resist TrumpCare" week of action. The group warns that the Republican bill would decimate the American health care system.
As part of their week of action, UltraViolet Action has commissioned mobile billboards to run in the following cities between July 6th and July 7th.
- In Portland, Maine -- calling on Senator Susan Collins to vote "no" on the Republican health care plan. The billboard truck will travel throughout downtown Portland and circle Senator Collins' Portland office multiple times before the end of the week. The truck billboard will also be outside a small protest happening at Senator Collins' Portland office on Thursday, at 2pm.
- In Columbus, Ohio -- calling on Senator Rob Portman to vote "no" on the Republican health care plan. The billboard truck will travel throughout downtown Columbus and circle Senator Portman's Columbus office multiple times before the end of the week. The truck billboard will also be outside a small protest happening at Senator Portman's Columbus Office on Thursday, at 12:00pm.
- In Charleston, West Virginia -- calling on Senator Shelley Moore Capito to vote "no" on the Republican health care plan. The billboard truck will travel throughout downtown Charleston and circle Senator Capito's Charleston office multiple times before the end of the week.
- In Phoenix, Arizona -- calling on Senator Jeff Flake to vote "no" on the Republican health care plan. The billboard truck will travel throughout downtown Phoenix and circle Senator Flake's office locations multiple times before the end of the week. The truck billboard will also be outside a small protest happening at Senator Flake's Phoenix Office on Thursday at 9:30am.
** FOR A FULL ITINERARY OF EACH MOBILE BILLBOARD'S ROUTE, please contact brett@unbendablemedia.com.
UltraViolet Action has also launched homepage takeovers of local newspapers in West Virginia, Arizona and Maine, emphasizing the number of people in each state that stand to lose their insurance as well as the estimated cost of premium increases under the Republican health care plan. The newspaper homepage takeovers will occur on Thursday, July 6th:
- The Charleston Gazette Mail urging Senator Capito to oppose the Republican health care plan. The ads point out that under the Republican health care plan more than 118,000 people in West Virginia would lose their health insurance, and that premiums on West Virginia residents would rise by 20% next year.
- The Arizona Daily Star urging Senator Flake to oppose the Republican health care plan. The ads point out that under the Republican health care plan more than 461,000 people in Arizona would lose their health insurance, and that premiums on Arizona residents would rise by 20% next year.
- The Bangor Daily News urging Senator Collins to oppose the Republican health care plan. The ads point out that under the Republican health care plan more than 117,900 people in Maine would lose their health insurance, and that premiums on Maine residents would rise by 20% next year.
In addition to the mobile billboards and newspaper homepage takeovers, local UltraViolet members will be partnering with the Democracy Spring coalition and Indivisible to organize sit-ins, rallies, speak-outs, and more, urging Republican senators in key states to oppose TrumpCare.
In Little Rock, Arkansas - local UltraViolet members will hold a sit-in at Senator Tom Cotton's office urging him to oppose the Republican health care plan:
- WHEN: Thursday, July 6th. 11:00am LOCAL TIME
- WHERE: Senator Tom Cotton's Little Rock office in the Victory Building, 1401 W. Capitol Ave, Little Rock, AR 72201
- FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.facebook.com/events/1378599262255450/
- LOCAL CONTACT: Christina Mullinax, 501-352-5328
In Anchorage, Alaska - local UltraViolet members will hold a sit-in at Senator Lisa Murkowski's office urging her to continue to oppose the Republican health care plan:
- WHEN: Thursday, July 6th. 12:00pm LOCAL TIME
- WHERE: Senator Lisa Murkowski's Office, 510 L Street, Anchorage, AK 99501
- FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.facebook.com/events/1544945065535813
- LOCAL CONTACT: Shoshanah Stone, 907-360-6302
In Reno, Nevada - local UltraViolet members will hold a sit-in at Senator Dean Heller's office urging him to continue to oppose the Republican health care plan:
- WHEN: Thursday, July 6th. 9:30am LOCAL TIME
- WHERE: Senator Heller's Reno Office, 400 S Virginia St # 738, Reno, NV 89501
- LOCAL CONTACT: Autumn Zemke, 206-218-9435
FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://act.weareultraviolet.org/event/women-resist-trumpcare-attend/
"This week, as Senate Republicans wheel and deal trying to buy votes, women across the country will be showing up in force to make it clear to their Senators that no band-aid will fix this cruel bill. And make no mistake, this bill is crueler than we could have ever imagined: making health care worse for everyone, especially women and especially women of color," explained Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet Action. "Repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with a plan that covers less people and makes insurance less affordable for those with insurance, all to give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans isn't a plan, it's the making of a national health care crisis. We won't stop until opposing the Republicans' extreme health care agenda - until repeal is off the table and this bill is dead."
UltraViolet is a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.
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Congress Urged to Require Warrants in Reauthorization of Key Spy Power
"FISA 702 has been abused in shocking ways," said one campaigner. "If Congress genuinely cares about surveillance abuse, weaponization, and 'lawfare,' it needs to rein in this warrantless surveillance power."
Feb 24, 2026
Privacy advocates are backing a bipartisan bill introduced in the US Senate this week that's intended to protect Americans from warrantless government surveillance.
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) unveiled the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act on Monday, in the wake of Politico reporting that President Donald Trump's White House "is quietly pushing for a key spy authority to be extended as is into 2027, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks."
There have long been arguments on Capitol Hill and beyond over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which empowers the federal government to surveil electronic communications without a warrant. The law only allows for targeting foreigners outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, but Americans' data is also collected.
Despite such arguments, Congress reauthorized Section 702 nearly two years ago, under then-President Joe Biden. That decision is set to expire on April 20, setting up a new battle over the spying power—hence the bill's introduction this week.
Under Durbin and Lee's proposal, the authority would be extended another two years, but government agencies must obtain a FISA Title I order or a warrant before accessing Americans' communications. As the pair noted in a statement, it also "closes the 'data broker loophole' that intelligence and law enforcement agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment" to the US Constitution, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures and details requirements for issuing warrants.
"Section 702 is a valuable tool to help keep our nation safe," said Durbin. "However, it's being used to conduct thousands of warrantless searches of Americans' private communications. That's unacceptable. Our bipartisan SAFE Act is a commonsense solution to continue protecting our country from foreign threats—while safeguarding Americans' civil liberties and privacy."
In a Tuesday statement welcoming the legislation, Demand Progress senior policy adviser Hajar Hammado highlighted that "right now, the government can freely troll through your private emails and texts swept up in 702 collections and this power has been abused to spy on everyday Americans, journalists, and even members of Congress."
"No government, whether it's run by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller or Joe Biden, should be able to do this," argued Hammado. According to Politico, Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, "is a leading advocate" for extending Section 702.
Hammado stressed that "the SAFE Act is a bipartisan solution to this problem, and all members of Congress should not support reauthorization without these critical reforms. We thank Sens. Lee and Durbin for their leadership on this bill and for modeling how Republicans and Democrats can come together to stop oppressive government overreach."
Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security & Surveillance project, also endorsed the bill in a Tuesday statement.
"FISA 702 has been abused in shocking ways," said Laperruque. "The FBI has misused it to snoop on protesters, lawmakers, journalists, judges, and campaign donors. If Congress genuinely cares about surveillance abuse, weaponization, and 'lawfare,' it needs to rein in this warrantless surveillance power."
"The SAFE Act includes bold FISA reforms, creates strong guardrails against surveillance misconduct, and has been meticulously crafted to protect national security," he continued. "With less than 10 weeks until FISA 702 expires, Congress should take up reform legislation quickly. Kicking the can on FISA would be a dereliction of duty."
A CDT-led coalition of privacy advocates across the political spectrum recently identified these as the four key issues to address in FISA reform. The SAFE Act effectively takes on all of them. With just SEVEN weeks until FISA 702 expires, we hope Congress will quickly take up this vital bill.
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— Jake Laperruque (@jakelaperruque.bsky.social) February 24, 2026 at 12:22 PM
Republicans have a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress but, due to Senate rules, generally need some Democratic support to send legislation to Trump's desk. However, the GOP could also run into trouble on this issue in the House of Representatives. As Politico pointed out last week:
Ultimately, there's no easy path to pass a clean extension in the House. One of the people with knowledge of the discussions said GOP leaders are "going to have a problem" trying to unite Republicans behind a special "rule" allowing for an up-or-down floor vote on a clean extension, which are typically party-line affairs.
But Republicans also believe that with Trump in office, a number of Democrats who previously supported leaving Section 702 intact will now support putting more fetters on intelligence agencies—making the alternative route, a two-thirds-majority bipartisan vote under suspension of the rules, all but impossible.
The latest Section 702 fight comes as Trump is under fire for his rising authoritarianism, from invasions of US cities targeting immigrants to his sweeping assault on First Amendment rights, including reported federal watch lists to track and categorize US citizens—especially activists and protesters—as "domestic terrorists."
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A coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday "seeking to prevent a pattern of unlawful warrantless arrests in North Carolina that is harming communities" during the Trump administration's deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their defenders.
Democracy Forward, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) sued the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of five individuals, including four American citizens and one legal US resident from El Salvador.
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Another plaintiff, 23-year-old North Carolina native Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, said: “I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me."
“I think it is important to take action through this case so that the government starts doing their jobs correctly instead of stopping people solely because they look a certain way," Cuenca added.
Democracy Forward said in a statement announcing the lawsuit: "In mid-November, the Trump-Vance administration accelerated its immigration crackdown across North Carolina during Operation Charlotte’s Web. Heavily armed, masked DHS agents, including ICE and CBP officers, roamed Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh, and other communities, detaining and arresting people indiscriminately without warrants or legal justification."
"Each plaintiff was arrested by DHS agents without probable cause to believe that they are legally removable from the country and that they pose a flight risk—determinations required under federal law for warrantless arrests," Democracy Forward continued.
The plaintiffs “represent a class of individuals who have been or will be subjected to warrantless immigration arrests by DHS in North Carolina, including arrests made without probable cause based on flight risk or removability," the group added. "They ask the federal court for the Western District of North Carolina to declare DHS’ mass warrantless arrest policy unlawful and to issue a permanent injunction blocking these unlawful practices.”
ACLU-NC staff attorney Corina Scott said in a statement Tuesday: “Federal immigration agents have consistently ignored the law and trampled civil rights in North Carolina. This lawsuit seeks to stop this abuse of power and demand accountability going forward so that our communities do not continue to suffer violent and unlawful arrests.”
We just filed the first class action lawsuit challenging unlawful warrantless immigration arrests in North Carolina amid the federal government's crackdown. Join us in calling for an end to ICE & CBP terror! https://rebrand.ly/iceout
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— ACLU of North Carolina (@aclunc.bsky.social) February 24, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said that “when armed, masked agents are breaking car windows, handcuffing people without probable cause, and dumping them on the side of the road, that is not law enforcement, it is lawlessness."
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"Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the president of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House," said one Democratic congressman.
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The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee announced Tuesday that an investigation will be opened into the US Department of Justice's withholding of Epstein files related to an alleged sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl committed by President Donald Trump decades ago.
“For the last few weeks, Oversight Democrats have been investigating the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump by a survivor," Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said in a statement.
“Yesterday, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice. Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes," he continued. "Oversight Democrats will open a parallel investigation into this."
"Under the Oversight Committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these records must immediately be shared with Congress and the American public," Garcia added. "Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the president of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover-up."
Oversight Dems have access to a list of documents, including interviews detailing serious allegations against President Trump, that are missing from the DOJ’s so-called “unredacted” files.Where are the missing files? What do they say? This all points to yet another cover up.
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— Rep. Robert Garcia (@robertgarcia.house.gov) February 24, 2026 at 2:21 PM
The Trump administration is accused of continuously flouting the Epstein Files Transparency Act—which mandated that all materials related to convicted child sex criminal and longtime former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein be released by December 19. But critically, the law gives Attorney General Pam Bondi wide discretion to redact large amounts of information that could harm "national security."
Files on Epstein—who died under mysterious circumstances in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges—that have not been released to the public despite the transparency law "include what appears to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, and notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor," NPR reported Tuesday.
That minor was allegedly introduced to Trump around 1983, when she was 13 years old.
“[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump, who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit," a DOJ file on the alleged incident states. "In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out."
The child is one of more than two dozen women who have accused Trump of raping, sexually assaulting, or sexually harassing them.
In 2023, a civil jury in New York City found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million. In a separate defamation trial, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll another $83.3 million.
Trump, who denies any wrongdoing, is challenging these civil awards. Trump also denies an allegation that he and Epstein "brutally raped" a 13-year-old girl identified by the pseudonym "Katie Johnson" at a 1994 party.
As NPR reported Tuesday:
Other files scrubbed from public view pertain to a separate woman who was a key witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of Epstein's co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Maxwell is seeking clemency from Trump. Some of those documents were briefly taken down and put back online last week, while others remain hidden, according to NPR's comparison of the initial dataset from January 30 with document metadata of those files currently on the Justice Department website.
Earlier this month, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said that the unreacted Epstein files, which he had viewed, contained "more than million" references to Trump.
Robert Glassman, an attorney representing a woman who testified against Maxwell, blasted the DOJ for its "ridiculous" handling of the Epstein files.
"The DOJ was ordered to release information to the public to be transparent about Epstein and Maxwell's criminal enterprise network," he told NPR. "Instead, they released the names of courageous victims who have fought hard for decades to remain anonymous and out of the limelight. Whether the disclosures were inadvertent or not—they had one job to do here and they didn't do it."
Responding to the NPR report, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said on X, "I guarantee if these files exonerated Trump, they would have been released," adding that Bondi "must resign, and she must be prosecuted."
Democratic National Committee Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer released a statement Tuesday asserting that "Donald Trump continues to lie about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, while his administration works overtime to hide the truth about Epstein’s heinous crimes from the American people."
"Tonight at the State of the Union, Trump will be in the same room as survivors of Epstein’s crimes, whom he has denied transparency and justice," Witmer added. "He and his administration must be held accountable for protecting pedophiles.”
Democratic lawmakers including Garcia, Raskin, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have invited Epstein survivors as guests to Tuesday night's speech by Trump.
Elisa Batista, campaign director at the advocacy group UltraViolet Action, said in a statement Tuesday that we are in solidarity with the courageous survivors showing up in defiance of Trump’s attempts to change the conversation at the State of the Union tonight."
Batista continued:
Their bravery represents the will of millions of Americans who are demanding accountability not just for all those who enabled Jeffrey Epstein, but also for public officials like Attorney General Pam Bondi who continue to protect those abusers and enablers by refusing to release all of the Epstein files.
When it comes to the Epstein class, the real state of the union remains unchanged: These powerful abusers and enablers believe they will be shielded by their wealth, networks, or influence. Now, like before, it’s been the fearless insistence of survivors that’s stood in the way of efforts by politicians like Trump and Bondi to sweep the full legacy of Epstein’s child sex trafficking network under the rug.
“No matter how much Trump and Bondi try to distract us from the fact that they broke the law to keep the public in the dark about the extent of Epstein’s child abuse, we, survivors and allies, will not allow them to forget their role in offering cover for Epstein and his enablers," Batista added.
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