A reader sent this one to me and I wanted to highlight it:
BREAKING: 144 House Democrats Join 203 Republicans to Pass CORCA Which Gives DHS and ICE the Absolute Power to Collect Personal Information on Everyone Under Guise of Fighting Retail Theft, in Case the Democrats Weren’t Disappointing You Enough
— born miserable (@bornmiserable.bsky.social) 2026-05-16T05:01:25.664Z
CORCA is the Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act. Here’s the one-pager bullet-point list of what the bill does [pdf]. From my cursory, non-specialist reading, most of it seems pretty basic, such as treating gift cards as money for the purposes of money laundering statutes, and aggregating the theft totals of small thefts over the period of a year so if it’s more than $5,000, it’s subject to federal prosecution.
But it also establishes an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center within the Department of Homeland Security. This is a data collection center, and some justice non-profits are upset about that:
CORCA encourages broad data-sharing between retailers and federal law enforcement without clear limits or oversight,” said Aiden Cotter, director of Federal Advocacy at Vera Action, a New York-based justice nonprofit launched in 2021. ”Because private companies are not bound by the Fourth Amendment in the same way the government is, retailers could collect and share large amounts of customer surveillance and behavioral data with DHS—potentially creating a backdoor surveillance system with little judicial review or transparency.”
CORCA achieves that goal by creating a new “national intelligence hub” that reports directly to the Department of Homeland Security. The center’s director will be named by acting ICE Director David Venturella, and will be empowered to work “directly with retailers” to collect data on any person a retailer accuses of engaging in “organized retail theft.”
The bill’s language doesn’t include a single safeguard limiting what data can be collected, how it can be used, or who DHS can share the data with once it falls into government hands.
I can’t think of any reason why any Democrat would sign onto this in the context of the way ICE has been acting in the Trump Administration. The overall merits of the bill are irrelevant — if it’s that good, we can pass it in 2028, with some serious oversight attached. A message needs to be sent by the opposition party about DHS funding, and, clearly, it wasn’t with the passage of CORCA.
Digging into the roll call, I see the Democratic Nays are all the Democrats who I think get it — AOC, Becca Balint, Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar, and a bunch of others. There are a few I want to call out in the context of the Colorado politics I’m trying to learn.
First, Diana DeGette (CO-1) voted “Nay”. I’ll bet you a few tacos at your favorite Denver-area taco truck that she would have voted “Yea” if she didn’t have a serious primary challenge from Melat Kiros. Second, Joe Neguse (CO-2), who is clearly angling to move up in leadership, voted “Yea”. He’s supposedly a progressive, and he represents a D+20 district — this should have been an easy “Nay”. Jason Crow (CO-6) betrayed his 22% hispanic D+11 district, which includes Aurora, where ICE has been wilding, by voting “Yea”. Brittany Petterson (CO-7), who’s my new rep, voted “Nay”. She represents a D+8 suburban Denver district, and I’m thinking she might be better than expected. Perhaps she’s been radicalized by the experience of having to fly to DC almost immediately after giving birth with a newborn in arms because the Republicans decided to fuck around with proxy voting. (I’m pleasantly surprised by this vote — she currently holds the tightest CO district that has a Democrat representing it. Good for her.)
As far as I’m concerned, any vote by a Colorado Democrat that gives a penny to any arm of the DHS that’s anywhere near ICE is inviting a primary challenge. I’d love to see some loudmouth young hippie from Boulder go at Joe Neguse. Ditto for Crow, though it should be a loudmouth Mexican-American from Aurora who should challenge this pendejo.
I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to click on the roll call for this bill and look at your state delegation, as well as the Democrats you think are worth supporting. With everything that’s going on with the Trump Administration, this vote was under the radar. Unfortunately for those of us hoping for big change from the Democratic Party, it showed that there are roughly 60 who will do the right thing when nobody is looking. We have a long way to go.
