A Republican who can't afford insulin.
A Democrat who can't make rent.
Someone who stopped voting because nothing changed.
All trying to keep up with the same bills
you are.

But our bills don't care who we voted for. Neither do the companies setting record prices while making record profits — or the "public servants" who supposedly represent us. Meaning no one is coming to save us. But together, we can protect each other.

↓ SEE HOW IT WILL WORK See why it will work

Free · Non-binding · Your number is part of what makes this real

—

People In

—

ZIP Codes

Collected From You

Enter Here

Map Your Bills.
Build Your Group.

Free to join — The project will never cost money to use

One person, one vote — no one will buy influence here

Your data never sold — will be written into the operating agreement

No investor money — will be funded by the email list

Enter what you pay and who you pay it to. We'll match you with everyone paying the same companies. That's what builds the groups — and shows where the squeeze is hardest.

or skip straight to signup ↓

Bill Tracker — Optional, but powerful

Skip to signup ↓

Bill

Who You Pay (this is how we find each other)

Monthly

Your Monthly Total

↓ Add your name below to be counted

Defaults are sourced national averages — BLS, EIA, KFF, Experian, Insurify, doxo, C+R Research (2024–2025). Edit any field to enter your real numbers.

Your Bill Summary

What You're Paying Monthly $0/mo

Check the boxes above to populate your summary.

What these are

These are structural commitments being written into the operating agreement before any collective action campaign launches — not descriptions of current operating practice. The project is in its founding stage. Where something is a future commitment, it says so. Where something is in effect now, it says that too.

Codebase will be permanently open-source

When the codebase is developed, it will be permanently open-source — publicly available for anyone to read, copy, fork, or audit. The license cannot be made proprietary. Once published under AGPL-3.0, anyone who has downloaded or forked the repository can continue operating it independently. Distribution makes suppression practically extremely difficult.

The mission will not be sold

The project will exist to build collective economic power for working people. Changing that will take a 75% member supermajority. If anyone tries to sell this without a member vote, the assets automatically transfer to a community land trust that can never be sold.

Your data will be a collective asset

Right now, during the founding stage, your data is held by the project operator under the terms of the Privacy Policy — and you can request deletion at any time. Once the Data Cooperative is established, governance of your data will transfer to member vote, with anonymity intact throughout. Any aggregate licensing of community data will direct proceeds back to community operations — never to executive enrichment. No one monetizes it alone. Ever. That commitment will be written into the operating agreement before the Data Cooperative is activated.

No one negotiates for you

Every demand will be member-voted. Every counteroffer goes back to the membership. No permanent negotiating staff. No drift. No sellout.

No single point of failure

Local groups connect to city networks, city networks connect to state coordination, and so on. Take down one layer and the rest keeps running.

This structure cannot be captured

Every mechanism that allows wealth to corrupt institutions — donor relationships, board cultivation, private deals, asset acquisition — has been structurally removed. No investor equity means no one has bought a stake in the outcome. No one holds shares. No one has governance rights they purchased. The community cannot be acquired. No private concessions means no individual can be approached and offered terms — any offer must be disclosed to the full membership within 24 hours. Randomly selected member governance means there is no permanent board to cultivate over years. The automatic asset lock means there is nothing to acquire — if anyone tries, the assets transfer immediately to a community land trust beyond anyone's reach. Open source code means nothing to hide. This is not a promise. It is an architecture written into the operating agreement before the first member joined.

Your membership here is constitutionally protected

Joining this cooperative community is protected associational conduct under the First Amendment — the same legal doctrine that shielded civil rights organizations' membership lists from government disclosure in the 1950s. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that communities organizing around shared civic and economic values carry the same constitutional protection as any other association. For members whose participation reflects deeply held ethical or religious conviction, it is also protected religious exercise under the Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Your membership records will never be disclosed to corporations. We will legally contest any government demand for them before complying — and we will notify you if one arrives, unless a court order specifically prohibits that notification. We will legally contest any demand for them before complying and notify you if one arrives. All of this is documented in the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy as a formal legal record — not just a policy preference.

Your Info — It's Free. Always Will Be.

First Name

Email *

ZIP Code *

State *

No Outside Money — Ever

Free to use. No VC. No corporate investment. No grants with strings. When this list is large enough, organizations that share this community's values — credit unions, worker cooperatives, mutual aid networks — will pay to reach it. Sponsored messages will always be clearly labeled. Your email is never shared with anyone. You choose right now whether you're part of that inventory.

Choose how you're counted:

Count me in fully — I support the model. Sponsored messages are how this gets built, and I understand they'll always be clearly labeled. My email is never given to anyone. Project updates only — I'm in, but not for sponsored content. I'm still counted. I'll still hear from you when it matters.

I agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, including the arbitration clause and associational protections in Sections 7b and 16a. Free, non-binding registration. No money collected, ever. I represent that I am 18 years of age or older, or 13–17 with parental consent.

Free forever · No money collected · Not a securities offering · Must be 18 or older (or 13–17 with parental consent)
Unsubscribe via link in any email · We never sell your information · Privacy Policy · Terms

🐜

You're In.

You're in. Project Ants is only as real as the people in it — and you're one of them now. When enough people in your area have signed up, you'll hear about it.

—

people in your state have pledged

As that number grows, so does the leverage. When enough people are in — same day, same time — nobody moves alone.

What happens next

01Your signup goes toward the founding member count — the number that proves the demand is real and gets this built.

02You'll get updates as things develop — launch timelines, milestones, when your area has enough members to matter.

03Every signup moves the threshold closer. The more people sign up, the closer we get to building this.

The Math

$80T

The gap between what workers earned and what they should have — since 1975^[1]

Since 1975, RAND Corporation documents $80 trillion flowing upward — not through hard work outpacing harder work, but through wages held flat while productivity climbed, benefits cut while executive pay multiplied, and a tax code rewritten by the people it most benefits. This number is the cumulative cost of that gap in lost wages to the bottom 90%.

In 2023 alone, that gap was $3.9 trillion. Enough to hand every full-time worker in the bottom 90% a $32,000 raise. Every single year. Median household income would be roughly double today's if the 1975 distribution had simply held.

The same companies holding wages down also don't pay taxes. In 2025, 88 major corporations paid zero in federal income tax on over $105 billion in U.S. profit.^[2] Tesla made $2.3 billion in the U.S. in 2024. Paid the IRS nothing. The tax code that made that possible was written with lobbyists those companies paid. The federal government then hands out $181 billion a year in additional corporate subsidies — grants, tax credits, loan guarantees.^[3] You paid for that too. They underpaid you, avoided taxes, collected subsidies you paid for, and then charged you full price and called it inflation.

$78,535

What the average U.S. household spends per year — most don't earn that much^[4]

The average U.S. household spends $78,535 a year. Most don't bring home that much. Not because people are bad with money — because the bills got bigger while the paychecks didn't. Rent is up 40% since 2019. Health premiums up 28%. Groceries up 20%. The bills didn't get bigger because you started living better. The Ludwig Institute's True Living Cost index — which weights housing, healthcare, and childcare the way working families actually experience them — finds that basic stability cost 106% more in 2024 than it did in 2001. The government's official inflation measure shows 77% over the same period.^[5] That gap — 29 percentage points — is the lie your paycheck is living in. The shortfall goes on a card.

Americans are now carrying $1.23 trillion in credit card debt. This is what it looks like when you show up, work hard, pay your bills on time — and the math still doesn't work. Not because you failed. Because the prices were moved.

The companies setting those prices answer to shareholders, every quarter, on a call you're not invited to.

The Pattern

If you're not at the table,
you're on the menu.

Prices don't go up randomly. They go up because the people setting them also fund the people writing the rules. Here's the documentation.

$18.3T

Total U.S. billionaire wealth — highest ever recorded^[6]

Billionaire wealth surged 16% in 2025 — three times faster than the five-year average. That's not abstract. Bezos adds more to his net worth between 9am and noon on an average Tuesday than an Amazon warehouse worker will earn in their entire career. The number of American billionaires has more than doubled since 2010. The federal minimum wage hasn't moved once.

$7.25

Federal minimum wage — unchanged since 2009^[6]

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It has not moved since 2009 — through four presidents, sixteen Congresses, and multiple economic booms. In the same period, U.S. billionaire wealth grew by more than $5 trillion. That's not two economies drifting apart naturally. One was held in place so the other could run.

At $7.25 an hour, saving every single dollar, it would take more than 66,000 years to reach one billion.^[7] That's longer than modern humans have walked the Earth. Even at the median U.S. salary — still over 16,000 years.^[8] You were never meant to catch up. The rules were written by the people who benefit from them most.

4,000×

More likely to hold political office if you're a billionaire — so voting alone won't fix this^[6]

Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than an ordinary citizen. The law keeping insulin at $300 a vial? Written with pharma lobbyists in the room. The tax code that let 88 corporations pay nothing in 2025? Shaped by the people they funded. That's not democracy failing — it's democracy working exactly as designed for the people who designed it. Voting is necessary. It is not sufficient. Organized numbers outside the ballot box are what changes prices.

93%

Of all U.S. stocks owned by the top 10% — the bottom 50% own just 1%^[9]

Every time a corporation raises your rent, your premium, your fare, or your grocery bill — 93% of that profit flows to the top 10%. They don't just set the prices. They own the companies setting the prices.

That mechanism isn't theoretical. When tariffs hit in 2025, Delta's CEO told investors the airline was deliberately cutting seats to hold fares high — warning fare increases "may not be temporary" even if fuel costs fell.^[10] American's CFO was blunter: cut capacity to pass fuel costs on to customers "as much as possible." This is what protecting shareholders looks like from the other side. Your fare goes up. Their margin holds. 93% of that margin flows back to the people who already own everything. The tariff is a cost you absorb. The profit is a gain they collect. Wages don't move up. Prices don't move down. The asymmetry is the feature — not the bug.

The Federal Reserve's own data shows the top 1% alone own 50% of all stocks — up from 40% in 2002. The bottom half of America owns 1%. That's not a coincidence of who saves more. It's the compounded result of who captures the gains every time a quarterly earnings call beats expectations.^[9] When billionaire wealth surges after an inflation spike, that's not separate from your higher grocery bill. It's the same transaction — your cost, their revenue, flowing upward through ownership.

This is the mechanism behind consolidation. In 2000 there were 10 major U.S. airlines. A string of mergers left 4 controlling roughly 75% of domestic capacity.^[11] The same playbook runs across your entire bill stack: 3 pharmacy benefit managers control access to 80% of U.S. prescriptions. 4 companies process 85% of American beef. When there's nowhere else to go, you pay what they charge. The top 0.1%'s share of total U.S. wealth was 7% in the late 1970s. It's now above 20% and rising.^[12] In 1913, at the peak of the original Gilded Age, the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frick, and Baker families held 0.85% of the country's total wealth. Today's top families have surpassed that. We are not approaching a second Gilded Age. We are living in one. Now look at what that adds up to.

Source: American Prospect, March 2026 [13] · Oxfam International, January 2026 [6]

The Precedent

A 27-year-old beat Bank of America.
In 40 days. With no budget.

Kristen Christian had enough.

In October 2011. Bank of America — fresh off a $6.1 billion taxpayer bailout — announced they'd charge customers $5 a month just to use their own debit card.

She was 27. She ran a small art gallery in Los Angeles. No lawyer. No nonprofit. No press contact. No budget. She made a Facebook event. She called it Bank Transfer Day. Move your money to a credit union by November 5th. That was it.

Within 40 days, 650,000 Americans had moved their accounts. Credit unions reported $4.5 billion in new deposits in one month — the largest influx in the history of the credit union movement. Bank of America cancelled the fee.^[14]

That was without the infrastructure. Without anyone knowing how many others in her city were already angry, already on the same bank, already ready to move. Without a network. She had one Facebook event.

One Facebook event. 650,000 accounts moved. Bank of America cancelled the fee.

Join the first group ↑

Here's how the tool will work

You enter. It finds your group.
The pressure builds.

Map Your Bills

You enter what you pay and who you pay it to. This tool matches you with everyone in the same situation. Your group takes shape. The bigger it gets, the harder you are to ignore.

The Pressure Builds

When your group hits its threshold, a formal collective demand will go out — with a deadline. Each step after that makes the demand clearer and harder to ignore. Companies that respond to their customers' stated concerns early resolve it early. The ones that don't will face a group that has run out of reasons to stay.

You Don't Lose.

If they negotiate — you'll have gotten a company to the table. If they don't — the group will leave for a competitor or member-owned alternative. Either way you won't be alone. Either way the outcome will be better than what you had going in.

The escalation ladder —

The Demand Goes Out — Publicly, With a Deadline +

The formal letter goes out — your terms, your deadline, publicly disclosed. At the same time: a competing provider is invited to bid for the entire group's business — scored on price, ownership structure, and how it operates in the communities it serves. And the project publishes exactly where the member-owned alternative stands. They see three things at once: what you want, someone else ready to take their revenue, and proof the exit is real. That's no longer a complaint. It's a measurable business risk.

The Group Publishes What Everyone's Actually Paying +

The group releases what it collectively pays — compared to what other customers pay, compared to what the company made last quarter. What your group collectively pays — compared to public filings, public pricing data, and what the company reported to investors last quarter. Documented. Attributed to public sources. Journalists run this without being asked. It won't just rattle members — it'll rattle shareholders. No complaint has been filed yet. The story is already running.

III

50,000 Complaints. Same Day. Same Regulator. +

Thousands of identical complaints hit the relevant regulator on the same day — the CFPB, FCC, state attorney general, or state consumer protection agency, depending on the industry and what has teeth at the time — backed by the pricing data from Rung II. The press has the story. The regulator's inbox has the filing. Investors see it. It hits the stock. That gets the CEO's attention faster than any petition ever could. It is legal. It is loud. It leaves a paper trail they cannot erase.

Mass Cancellation Call Day +

Every member calls to cancel. Same day. Same two-hour window. Same script. Each call is an individual consumer exercising their individual right to cancel their own account. The natural result of tens of thousands of people individually doing the same thing on the same day is that the company hears it clearly. The company now knows exactly what the exit feels like before it happens. Collective leverage made visible. When the threshold fires, you know exactly what to do, how long it takes, and what to say. The company now knows it too.

Everyone Makes Their Exit +

Everyone out. Same day. Same time. There doesn't have to be a perfect alternative waiting — there just has to be enough of you willing to leave to make the exit real. When enough accounts leave on the same day, it shows up in their quarterly numbers. That's what gets a response. They either met your terms, or they lose the entire group. A petition they could ignore. Forty thousand individual people making the same individual choice on the same day is a different kind of signal entirely.

What happens if they try to split the group?

If they offer 60% of your demands the day before Rung IV fires — that's how groups historically fracture. So any partial offer triggers an automatic 72-hour member vote. The default is to continue escalation. The offer doesn't pause the clock. The group decides. Not a negotiator. Not a founder. Every member, one vote.

Every Group Runs Its Own Clock — Simultaneously

There is no queue. A UnitedHealth group and a Comcast group and a Greystar group can all be at different rungs at the same time, running independently. You can be in all three at once. Each group's escalation ladder moves on its own timeline based on its own member threshold and its own negotiation. Nothing waits on anything else. The more groups that are active, the more pressure is in the system at any given moment.

Two Governance Layers — Kept Separate on Purpose

Negotiation decisions (accept/reject offers, escalation calls): one person, one vote. Your spending history doesn't change your say. Your join date doesn't change your say. Capital allocation (where community funds go, which projects get built on the map): governed by allocation points — one point per dollar your participation brought into the fund, capped per member per quarter so spending power doesn't become voting power. Points decay after 12 months. They can't be cashed out, sold, transferred, or accumulated indefinitely. They are a say in where the money goes — not a financial return, not a loyalty reward. A voice in what gets built next.

That means food we grow, power we generate, care we provide, housing we control — owned by us, answerable to us, not to anyone's quarterly earnings report.This community also builds the political infrastructure to protect what it builds — because every cooperative institution in history that grew large enough to threaten concentrated power eventually faced legislative attack. The political track runs from day one.

This will be a community that negotiates together — and builds together. Not an app. Not a petition. A community of people deciding, together, that they are done asking permission to survive. The structures below are what that community is building toward.

People should own the institutions they depend on to survive. That is not a new idea. It is older than capitalism — older than corporations, older than insurance companies, older than the landlord class. It is the oldest answer human communities have produced to the question of how to organize shared economic life. Everything else here exists in service of that one claim.

You vote once every two or four years for representatives who then spend most of their time talking to people with money. You have zero vote in the insurance company setting your premium, the bank setting your rate, the landlord setting your rent, the employer setting your wage. The institutions that govern your life every month are governed by people whose interests are not yours. This project is building the institutions where you govern — one member, one vote, on the decisions that affect your actual life. Not consumer choice. Not market competition. Actual governance — over the things that govern your life. That is what we are owed.

We invite anyone who wants this. No ideology required. Only this: you know the arrangement isn't working. You know something better is possible. You are ready to build it with other people. That is enough.

The structures below represent where this is headed, not what exists today. None are being offered, formed, or solicited. They're a direction — grounded in proof. Click any phase to read more.

This Isn't New. Communities Have Been Doing It For Decades.

Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi has been building member-owned cooperatives — grocery, fabrication, arts — in one of the most economically squeezed cities in America since 2014. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston won the right of eminent domain over vacant lots and converted them into permanently affordable housing run by the community. The Detroit People's Food Co-op emerged from a city where major grocers had pulled out entirely. None of these had a national platform. None had outside funding. They had organizing depth and a shared stake in the outcome.

The difference between a one-day action and these models is staying power. Winning concessions is real. Long-term cooperative infrastructure changes who holds the asset. The project is building toward the latter — starting with the former. And cooperative infrastructure governed by the people who use it has a different relationship to its own damage than a company governed by shareholders who don't live near it. Cheaper extraction is still extraction. Member ownership changes who decides what gets extracted at all. What this project is building is the national coordination layer that makes these models possible at scale — starting with whoever shows up first.

Why This Is Harder To Shut Down Than A Regular App

Courts protect communities with documented shared values differently than they protect apps with terms of service. That's not a technicality — it's why the civil rights movement built churches and unions instead of just filing individual lawsuits. When a community can show shared conviction, documented practice, and a principled foundation, the constitutional protections are materially stronger: harder to surveil, harder to shut down, harder to retaliate against. This community is built that way deliberately.

This model isn't new. The labor movement built it. So did Catholic worker communities, Jewish mutual aid societies, Black cooperative economies, and Quaker economic networks. They all arrived at the same answer from different directions: when people share what they need and own it together, they become harder to exploit.

Every member benefits from these protections regardless of what they personally believe. You don't have to share any particular tradition to benefit from how this is built. Because a community with a documented foundation is a fundamentally different legal entity than a consumer app — and the difference matters when the pressure comes.

The Foundation — Built in Sequence

Phase 1

📊 Data Co-op

Phase 2

🏦 The People's Bank

Phase 3

🏥 Health Co-op

Phase 4

🏘️ Housing Trust

Phase 5

🗺️ Points & The Map

What That Power Could Unlock — Just Examples

Beyond

⚡ Energy You Own

Beyond

🔬 Cures For Everyone

Beyond

🛡️ Own Your Digital Life

📊

⚡ Build First — Unlocks Everything

The Data Cooperative

Your medical records and financial data are being sold right now — the FTC found that major platforms “collected and could indefinitely retain troves of data” about you, to monetize your personal information.^[15] The Data Cooperative takes that back. When tens of millions of households pool what they pay — for insulin, for rent, for internet — you'll hold the aggregate picture the companies have been keeping from you. That's pricing intelligence that doesn't exist anywhere yet: knowing what your neighbors pay, knowing when your rate is artificially high, knowing what the alternative actually costs. When that data generates value through aggregate licensing, it enters a community fund. Your data generated it. The value stays in the network. See Phase 5 for how that works.

[15] FTC Staff Report. "Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance of Users." Federal Trade Commission, September 2024. ftc.gov →

Effective Date: May 2026 · Built and maintained by its founder as a solo, unincorporated project

What This Is. Project Ants ("Platform") is a free consumer organizing and collective bargaining tool currently built and operated by one person — its founder — as an unincorporated project pending LLC formation. This Privacy Policy describes how the project collects, uses, stores, and protects information submitted by people who register or use the Platform. Throughout this policy, "we," "us," and "our" refer to the Project Ants platform and its current operator — the founder — acting on behalf of the project and its future members. In the broader mission language of this project, "we" also reflects the collective: the people organizing together. In the legal and operational context of this policy — who collects your data, how it's used, and who is responsible for it — "we" means the operator. These terms do not refer to users or members individually. Once the project incorporates and transitions to member governance, these terms will expand to reflect that governing body and this policy will be updated accordingly.

What We Collect. When you register, you may provide: your name (optional), email address, ZIP code, and state. During the pledge process, you enter bill categories, monthly amounts, and the names of companies you pay — this data is voluntarily submitted to build your participation profile and aggregated negotiating intelligence. We also automatically collect limited technical data: browser type, referring URL, and IP address (retained transiently for spam and fraud prevention). We collect Cloudflare Turnstile verification data solely for bot prevention.

How We Use It. We use your information to: display aggregate, anonymized participation statistics (total members, ZIP codes represented, top providers by category); send you updates about the project and collective action campaigns you are part of; send you sponsored communications if you affirmatively opted in at registration; improve the tool's functionality; and satisfy legal obligations. We do not use your information for profiling, behavioral advertising, or sale to data brokers.

Email Communications and Consent. By registering, you consent to receive transactional emails from Project Ants — confirmations, campaign updates, and action alerts. If you selected "Count me in fully" at registration, you also consent to receive sponsored messages from partner organizations (credit unions, worker cooperatives, brands). In sponsored arrangements, partners pay to reach our list — your email address is never transferred to them. Every email from Project Ants — transactional or sponsored — is sent through a third-party email service provider that automatically includes a one-click unsubscribe link in compliance with CAN-SPAM. You can opt out at any time using that link. Sponsored messages will be clearly labeled as "Sponsored" in the subject line or header — they will never be presented as editorial content. We comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, FTC native advertising disclosure guidelines, and applicable state consumer privacy laws.

How We Share Your Information. We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your personal information with third parties except: (a) service providers who assist us in running the tool and are subject to data processing agreements or equivalent contractual data protection obligations (Supabase for database infrastructure, Cloudflare for security); (b) in response to valid legal process; or (c) if the project is transferred to a successor organization — including the member-owned cooperative this project is working toward becoming — in which case members will be notified in advance and data handling will continue under equivalent or stronger protections. The project will not be sold to a corporate acquirer; if that were ever to change, members would be given notice and the opportunity to request deletion before any transfer. Bill data you submit is shared only in anonymized, aggregated form — never attributed to you individually without your explicit additional consent. The Platform's sponsored email model — in which partner organizations pay to send communications through our infrastructure without receiving your email address or any personal contact information — does not constitute a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information as defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, or any other applicable state privacy law.

Data Retention. We retain your personal information for as long as your registration remains active. If you request deletion, we will remove your personally identifiable information within 30 days, subject to any lawful retention requirement. Anonymized, aggregated data derived from your submissions — which cannot be used to identify you — may be retained indefinitely for research and project analytics.

Project Discontinuation. In the event that Project Ants is discontinued before a successor organization is established, we will: (a) provide registered members with at least 30 days' advance notice by email; (b) give members a clear mechanism to confirm deletion of their personal data; and (c) permanently delete all personally identifiable information within 60 days of the discontinuation date. Anonymized, aggregated data that cannot be traced to any individual may be preserved for research purposes or transferred to a mission-aligned nonprofit, with public notice of that transfer.

Your Privacy Rights. Depending on your state of residence, you may have the right to: (a) know what personal information we collect and how it is used; (b) access or obtain a copy of your personal information; (c) correct inaccurate information; (d) request deletion of your personal information; (e) opt out of any sale of personal information (we do not sell). California residents have these rights under the CCPA. Residents of Virginia (CDPA), Colorado (CPA), Connecticut (CTDPA), and other states with consumer privacy laws have equivalent rights under those laws. To exercise any right, email helloprojectants@gmail.com. We will respond within 45 days.

Security. We implement industry-standard security practices: TLS encryption for data in transit, access controls on all systems, and row-level security on our database. No system can guarantee perfect security. If a data incident occurs that affects your personal information, we will notify affected members promptly and in accordance with applicable law.

AI and Machine Learning Prohibition. Member data is never used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any artificial intelligence or machine learning model — by us, by any service provider operating on our behalf, or by any successor organization — without the affirmative, individual consent of each member whose data would be used. This applies to large language models, behavioral prediction models, recommendation systems, and any other system that learns from data. Any sub-processor with access to member data is contractually prohibited from AI or ML training use.

Third-Party Services & Cookies. The Platform uses Supabase (database and API infrastructure) and Cloudflare (security, bot prevention, and CDN delivery). Both services may set technically necessary cookies or similar local storage values on your device as part of normal operation — for example, Cloudflare sets a __cf_buid cookie used solely for bot and fraud prevention, and Supabase may use session tokens to authenticate API requests. None of these are advertising cookies. None track you across other websites. None are used to build a behavioral profile. We do not embed any third-party advertising trackers, analytics pixels, or social media scripts. You can disable cookies in your browser settings; doing so may affect platform functionality but will not prevent you from viewing the site.

Children. This Platform is intended for individuals 18 years of age or older. Users between 13 and 17 may register only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected such information, we will delete it promptly. By registering, you represent that you are 18 or older, or that you are 13–17 and have obtained parental or guardian consent.

Changes to This Policy. This Privacy Policy is a living document that will evolve as the project grows, incorporates, and moves toward member governance. We reserve the right to update it at any time — including immediately — to address legal compliance requirements, correct errors, reflect platform changes, or protect the project and its members from emerging risks. For registered members, we will provide advance notice by email of any changes that materially affect how your personal data is collected, used, or shared. Non-material updates — including clarifications, legal language corrections, formatting, and routine compliance adjustments — may take effect immediately upon posting without prior notice. Changes take effect when posted on this page with a revised effective date. Continued registration and use of the Platform constitutes your acceptance of the current version of this policy. If you disagree with any version, you may request deletion of your data at any time by contacting us at helloprojectants@gmail.com.

Associational Privacy and Membership Protection. Project Ants' membership constitutes a protected association under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson (357 U.S. 449, 1958) that compelled disclosure of an association's membership list violates freedom of association when members may face harm from disclosure, and that this protection applies to communities organizing around shared civic and economic values — not only explicitly political organizations. We treat our member roster, email addresses, ZIP codes, participation data, and any other personally identifying membership information with the heightened protection this precedent requires. We will legally contest, through civil rights counsel or equivalent legal resources, any government subpoena, administrative demand, or third-party legal process seeking member identity or participation data before complying with such a request. Where a valid court order does not prohibit notification, we will notify affected members within 24 hours of receiving any such request. We will not voluntarily cooperate with requests from ICE or any immigration enforcement body seeking member identity information — all such requests are treated as requiring the same legal contest process as any other government demand for protected associational data. Warrant Canary. We maintain an active warrant canary as a signal to members. The following statement is present in this Privacy Policy as of its effective date: As of May 2026, Project Ants has not received any court order, national security letter, or other legal process compelling undisclosed access to member identity data or participation records, and has not been prohibited by any court from notifying members of such a demand. If this statement is materially altered or removed from a future version of this Privacy Policy, that change is the signal that the canary's condition has changed. Members who rely on this signal should verify its presence in the current published version of this policy at any time.

Contact. Project Ants · helloprojectants@gmail.com · projectants.org

Effective Date: May 2026 · Built and maintained by its founder as a solo, unincorporated project

A note on why this document exists: Most platforms have terms of service that protect the platform from its users. These terms do the opposite — they document the rights of members against potential overreach by corporations, government actors, and anyone else who might try to disrupt this community. The constitutional and statutory protections in Sections 1a, 7a, 7b, and 16a are placed here as a formal legal record. That record makes them harder to challenge and harder to undo. You don't need to read every section — but if this project ever gets pressure from a corporation or government, those sections are why the pressure is more expensive to apply than it looks.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your participation in Project Ants ("Platform"), currently built and operated by one person — its founder — as an unincorporated project pending LLC formation. Throughout these Terms, "we," "us," and "our" refer to the Project Ants platform and its current operator — the founder — acting on behalf of the project and its future members. In the legal and operational context of these Terms — who is responsible for the Platform and what governs your use of it — "we" means the operator. These terms do not refer to users or members individually. A formal legal entity is in formation; these Terms will be updated to reflect the operating entity once incorporated. By registering or using the Platform, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not register.

1. What This Platform Is. Project Ants is a free consumer organizing tool. It allows individuals to voluntarily document their household bills, identify others in similar situations, and coordinate collective bargaining and switching campaigns. Participation is entirely voluntary and non-binding. Project Ants is open to any individual aged 13 or older regardless of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, economic status, or political affiliation. No person will be denied participation on any of these grounds. This platform is built for working people — all of them. The collective consumer activities coordinated through this Platform — including but not limited to coordinated provider switches, collective demand letters, coordinated regulatory filings, and organized cancellations at natural contract renewal or expiration points — constitute the lawful exercise of constitutionally protected rights of association, expression, and petition under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Each member makes their own fully independent decision whether to participate in any collective action. The Platform does not negotiate on behalf of, act as legal agent for, or bind any member to any course of action. Nothing in these Terms creates a fiduciary, attorney-client, or agency relationship between Project Ants and any member.

1a. Cooperative Community Standing and Associational Rights. Project Ants is organized as a cooperative economic community — a documented association of members united by shared values including solidarity, collective economic self-determination, and the right of people to organize their economic lives in alternatives to corporate extraction. This framing is not incidental. It has legal significance that protects every member regardless of their personal beliefs. The Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson (357 U.S. 449, 1958) that compelled disclosure of an association's membership list violates freedom of association when members may face harm from disclosure, and that this protection extends to communities organizing around shared civic and economic values — not only explicitly political organizations. The membership of Project Ants constitutes a protected association for purposes of the First Amendment. We will legally contest any government or third-party demand for member identity information before complying, and we will notify members promptly when such demands are received, as described in the Privacy Policy. The collective consumer activities coordinated through this Platform — collective bargaining, coordinated provider switching, organized demand letters, and mutual economic support — are constitutionally protected expressive conduct. In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (458 U.S. 886, 1982), the Supreme Court held that a coordinated consumer boycott pursued for shared civic and economic goals is protected expression and association under the First Amendment. No member of this community may be lawfully penalized by any employer, landlord, platform, or government agency solely on the basis of their membership in or participation with this cooperative community. Where such retaliation occurs, it may give rise to claims under Title VII, the NLRA, state anti-retaliation statutes, and Section 1983, depending on the actor and circumstances.

2. No Financial Commitment. Registration creates no financial obligation of any kind. We collect no money from members — not at signup, not during campaigns, not ever. Nothing in these Terms, and nothing on this Platform, constitutes a binding financial commitment, investment, purchase, subscription fee, or securities offering.

3. Accuracy of Information. You agree to provide truthful information when registering. Bill data you enter is used to build aggregated, anonymized intelligence for collective negotiating purposes — not to verify your creditworthiness or create a consumer report. You remain responsible for the accuracy of what you submit.

4. Email Communications. By registering, you affirmatively consent to receive transactional emails from Project Ants (confirmations, campaign updates, action alerts relevant to your bill groups). If you selected "Count me in fully" at registration, you separately consent to receive sponsored communications from vetted partner organizations. You may withdraw email consent at any time by clicking the one-click unsubscribe link included automatically in every message by our email service provider. Withdrawal of email consent does not delete your registration or anonymized participation data. Sponsored messages will always be clearly labeled as "Sponsored" — never presented as editorial content.

5. No Guarantee of Results. We make no representation or warranty that collective bargaining campaigns will produce reduced prices, improved contract terms, regulatory action, or any other specific outcome. Results depend on participation levels, corporate response, regulatory discretion, and many factors outside our control. Organizing is legal and legitimate — success is earned, not guaranteed.

6. Not a Securities Offering. Nothing on this Platform constitutes or should be interpreted as an offer or sale of securities, an investment contract, a promissory note, or a financial instrument of any kind under federal or state law. Any references to future cooperative structures, shared savings, or member-governed institutions are aspirational descriptions of possible long-term directions — not offers, commitments, or promises. No financial return is guaranteed, implied, or promised to any participant. Where this Platform or its associated materials reference future data cooperative structures in which aggregate data licensing may generate proceeds that benefit community operations — those references describe a model of non-investment community operational revenue, not a profit distribution or financial return to individual participants. Participation in Project Ants does not constitute the purchase of a security, an equity stake, a membership interest in any cooperative entity, or an investment contract of any kind.

7. Future Cooperative Structures — and How They Differ from This Tool. The collective bargaining tool described in Section 1 — the Platform itself — is a distinct and separate instrument from the Data Cooperative, People's Bank, Health Cooperative, Housing Trust, and other structures described in the project's long-term vision. Signing up for the Platform does not enroll any participant in a Data Cooperative or any other cooperative entity, none of which currently exist as legal entities. Each future structure, if established, would require its own separate legal formation, regulatory review, member consent process, and governing documents — none of which have occurred. Joining this Platform does not make you a member, investor, or creditor of any cooperative entity, present or future. Descriptions of these potential structures are long-term visions and organizational aspirations — not current offerings, commitments, or promises of any kind.

Is coordinating like this legal? Yes — completely. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was 53,000 people coordinating a provider exit for 381 days. Bank Transfer Day moved 650,000 accounts and $4.5 billion in 40 days with nothing but a Facebook event. The Boston Tea Party was a coordinated consumer exit from a monopolized market. This right — to organize, switch, boycott, and collectively demand — predates the Constitution. The formal legal record is in Sections 7a, 7b, and 16a below.

7a. Protection Against Retaliatory Legal Action. Any legal action filed against Project Ants, its operator, or its members arising from the Platform's facilitation of collective consumer activity — including coordinated switching campaigns, collective demand letters, organized regulatory complaint filings, or similar constitutionally protected conduct — may constitute a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) under California Code of Civil Procedure § 425.16. Project Ants expressly reserves the right to file an anti-SLAPP motion in response to any such action. A prevailing anti-SLAPP movant is entitled by statute to recover attorneys' fees and costs from the filing party. This provision is included to deter bad-faith legal threats from corporate actors and does not limit members' legitimate recourse under these Terms.

7b. Conscience, Religious Exercise, and Equal Protection.

Plain-language note: You don't need to be religious to use this platform or to benefit from any of these protections. This section exists because courts protect communities with documented shared values more strongly than they protect consumer apps — and placing these protections on formal legal record before the community grows is how you make them stick when pressure comes later. Every member benefits, regardless of belief.

This Platform and the cooperative community it serves are grounded in a multi-generational tradition of religious and secular cooperative economics — through the labor movement, the credit union movement, Catholic worker communities, Jewish labor organizing, Quaker economic networks, Protestant social gospel, secular cooperative philosophy, and every other tradition that has named collective ownership as an obligation rather than a preference. For members who participate in this cooperative community as an expression of sincerely held religious, ethical, or moral convictions — grounded in any tradition or in none — the following additional protections apply and are placed on record here as of the effective date of these Terms.

The most significant modern institutional comparator is the Mondragon Corporation, founded in 1956 in the Basque Country of Spain by Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, a Catholic priest who designed the cooperative network explicitly as an application of Catholic social teaching — particularly the principles of subsidiarity and the universal destination of goods articulated in Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) and developed through a continuous magisterial tradition of named documents addressing economic organization: Quadragesimo Anno (Pius XI, 1931), Mater et Magistra (John XXIII, 1961), Gaudium et Spes (Second Vatican Council, 1965), Laborem Exercens (John Paul II, 1981), Centesimus Annus (John Paul II, 1991), Caritas in Veritate (Benedict XVI, 2009), Laudato Si' (Francis, 2015), Laudato Deum (Francis, 2023), and Magnifica Humanitas (Leo XIV, 2026). This is not a collection of scattered verses. It is 135 years of continuous, papally-ratified, named-document instruction on the same economic questions this community is organized to address. Courts understand systematic doctrine — and this is among the most systematic bodies of economic doctrine in the world. What began as a single worker-owned workshop in a devastated post-war region became, under Father Arizmendiarrieta's doctrinal guidance, the world's largest federation of worker-owned cooperatives, now employing over 80,000 worker-owners across manufacturing, finance, retail, and education. Mondragon operates its own bank (Caja Laboral), its own university (Mondragon Unibertsitatea), and its own social insurance system — demonstrating that the cooperative economic model is not aspirational but operational at global scale, and that it has been built, documented, and defended as explicit Catholic practice for nearly seventy years. Father Arizmendiarrieta's founding documents constitute a contemporaneous legal and doctrinal record of religious motivation — precisely the kind of evidence courts ask for when evaluating sincerity under United States v. Seeger (380 U.S. 163, 1965) and Welsh v. United States (398 U.S. 333, 1970). No other tradition in modern legal history offers an institutional comparator of this scale, this doctrinal specificity, and this completeness.

The doctrinal tradition this community draws on does not treat cooperative economics as a policy preference derived from social teaching documents. It treats it as the institutional expression of the tradition's own declared destination. The Lord's Prayer — prayed by more than two billion people — petitions explicitly for the kingdom of God to come "on earth as it is in heaven." The pre-Constantinian community of Acts 2:44–45 and 4:32–35 documents that the original community enacted this destination as a specific economic practice: common ownership, no one left in need — not as aspiration but as recorded historical result, confirmed by hostile external witnesses including the Roman governor Pliny the Younger writing to Emperor Trajan in 112 AD for law enforcement purposes. Father Arizmendiarrieta's Mondragon federation is the most recent institutional proof that this destination is architecturally achievable at scale. This community's cooperative economic practices are not derived from social teaching documents alone — they are derived from the declared end goal of the tradition itself, of which those documents are 135 years of continuous institutional instruction toward. Cooperative economics is not the means to an end the tradition approves of. It is the description of where the tradition is going. The sincerity of this community's convictions therefore rests on ground that predates the institutional Church by three centuries, is confirmed by independent hostile witnesses, and has been enacted continuously by documented communities — the Essenes, the Jerusalem church, the Hutterites, the Catholic Worker, Mondragon — across 2,700 years without interruption.

Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb–2000bb-4), the federal government cannot substantially burden a person's sincere religious exercise without demonstrating a compelling governmental interest pursued through the least restrictive means available. Participating in a cooperative economic community as a sincerely held moral or religious practice is a protected exercise under RFRA. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (573 U.S. 682, 2014) confirmed that religious exercise under RFRA includes participation in economic systems and institutional structures — not only discrete acts of worship. Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (546 U.S. 418, 2006) established that RFRA's compelling-interest and least-restrictive-means requirements are not a rubber stamp — they are a genuine, demanding standard the government must meet. Any regulatory action that substantially burdens this community's cooperative economic practices must satisfy that standard.

Under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, government action cannot specifically target or selectively burden this community's cooperative economic practices while leaving equivalent conduct by corporate actors unburdened. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (508 U.S. 520, 1993) established that laws targeting a religious community's specific practices — even neutral-seeming ones — are subject to strict scrutiny. Wisconsin v. Yoder (406 U.S. 205, 1972) established that a community's documented, communal alternative economic and social structure is constitutionally protected when it is grounded in genuine conviction — even when that community is in formation. This community is being organized precisely to turn its members' sincere convictions about cooperative economic organization into lived, communal practice. The Platform is the instrument through which those beliefs become collective action, and through which the community's alternative economic structure is being built. The founding documentation of these convictions — including this section — constitutes the formal record of a community organizing itself around sincere shared values, which is the predicate Yoder protects. Thomas v. Review Board (450 U.S. 707, 1981) extended protection to a worker's conscientious refusal to participate in an economic system his sincere beliefs prohibited. Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (593 U.S. 522, 2021) reaffirmed that government may not selectively impose burdens on communities operating according to sincere religious or moral conviction when exceptions are available to other comparable actors. These precedents apply, individually and in combination, to the cooperative economic community organized through this Platform.

Members of this community hold sincere convictions — grounded in religious, ethical, and moral traditions spanning centuries of cooperative, labor, and social justice organizing — that participation in extractive, profit-maximizing corporate systems that subordinate human welfare and ecological survival to shareholder return is incompatible with those convictions, and that the construction of democratic, member-owned alternatives that place people and planet over profit is not merely preferable but obligatory. Magnifica Humanitas (Leo XIV, 2026), the most recent document in the Catholic social teaching tradition, addresses these conditions directly — naming the concentration of data and algorithmic power as a form of structural domination incompatible with human dignity, and affirming the obligation to build democratic, community-governed alternatives. That encyclical postdates every existing regulatory framework governing the platform economy. This Platform is the communal instrument through which members act on that conscientious refusal — collectively exiting systems their beliefs prohibit and building, together, the cooperative economic structures their beliefs require. That refusal, and the affirmative community being built through it, constitute protected religious and conscience exercise under Thomas v. Review Board (450 U.S. 707, 1981) and Wisconsin v. Yoder (406 U.S. 205, 1972) respectively — the former protecting the individual's conscientious exit from an economic system, the latter protecting the community's documented effort to build a living alternative.

Additionally, this community asserts equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment against any regulatory framework, tax structure, liability regime, or enforcement action that systematically advantages investor-owned corporate structures over member-owned cooperative ones without rational basis. If government actors provide regulatory advantages, liability protections, or public subsidies to corporate organizational structures while denying equivalent access or treatment to cooperative structures organized around sincere community values, that constitutes disparate treatment cognizable under the Equal Protection Clause. The structural regulatory disparity between cooperative and corporate forms is documented and is reserved as a basis for challenge.

No member is required to hold any religious belief to participate in this community or to benefit from these protections. Members who hold sincere ethical or moral convictions — grounded in any tradition or in none — that cooperative economic organization is preferable to extraction-based systems benefit from the full scope of constitutional associational protections described in Section 1a and the conscience protections described in this section. Project Ants expressly reserves the right to assert all applicable constitutional and statutory protections — individually and collectively, on behalf of any member or the community as a whole — in response to any government or private action that burdens members' exercise of these rights.

8. Tool Availability. The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind — express, implied, statutory, or otherwise — including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We make no warranty that the Platform will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or free of harmful components. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features at any time, with or without notice, and without liability. As an early-stage project, the tool is under active development — features, functionality, and terms may change.

9. Intellectual Property. The Platform is currently in its founding stage — an email list is being built to fund development through community-aligned sponsorships. When the codebase is developed, it will be published under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0) and made publicly available for anyone to read, copy, fork, or audit. Your submitted data remains yours. By submitting it, you grant us a non-exclusive license to use anonymized, aggregated versions to operate and improve the tool. We will not attribute identifiable data to you individually without your explicit additional consent.

10. Prohibited Conduct. You agree not to: submit materially false or fabricated information; attempt to manipulate participation statistics; gain unauthorized access to the tool's systems or data; use the tool in violation of applicable law; or interfere with other members' use of the tool.

10a. Platform Immunity and Member Conduct. To the extent provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230), Project Ants is not the publisher or speaker of information submitted by members, including bill data, provider names, or other user-submitted content. Members are solely responsible for the accuracy of information they submit. The Platform's role is that of an interactive computer service; members are information content providers with respect to data they voluntarily enter. Coordinating with other consumers to switch providers, cancel services at the end of contract terms, or submit collective demands to corporations does not constitute tortious interference, unfair competition, or any other actionable civil wrong — it is the exercise of legal consumer rights that courts and legislatures have consistently recognized as protected conduct.

11. Limitation of Liability. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Platform operator's total liability to you for any claim arising from your use of this Platform is limited to zero dollars ($0.00) — because we collect no money from you and confer no financial benefit requiring indemnification. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, punitive, or consequential damages of any kind.

12. Indemnification. You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Project Ants and its operator from any third-party claims, damages, or costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising solely from: (a) your material violation of these Terms; or (b) your intentional misuse of the Platform in a manner that causes demonstrable harm to others. This obligation does not apply to disputes concerning the Platform's own operations, data handling practices, or governance.

13. Dispute Resolution. Any dispute arising from or related to these Terms or the Platform will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, with proceedings conducted in San Diego County, California or by videoconference at either party's request. You waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in any class action or representative proceeding related to your use of this Platform. This clause governs disputes between individual members and the Platform operator — it does not apply to collective action campaigns coordinated through the Platform, which are governed by the project's own member-vote processes. In the event that 25 or more members file substantially similar arbitration claims arising from the same or related set of facts or circumstances, the parties agree to coordinate such claims through AAA's Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules, which provide for bellwether proceedings and coordinated administration to promote efficient and equitable resolution. Either party may seek emergency injunctive relief in a court of competent jurisdiction without waiving this arbitration agreement.

14. Governing Law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law provisions.

15. Changes to These Terms. These Terms are a living document that will evolve as the project grows, incorporates, and moves toward member governance. We reserve the right to update them at any time — including immediately — to address legal compliance requirements, correct errors, reflect platform changes, or protect the project and its members from emerging risks. For registered members, we will provide advance notice by email of any changes that materially affect your rights or obligations under these Terms. Non-material updates — including clarifications, legal language corrections, formatting, and routine compliance adjustments — may take effect immediately upon posting without prior notice. Changes take effect when posted on this page with an updated effective date. Continued registration and use of the Platform constitutes your acceptance of the current version of these Terms. If you disagree with any version, your recourse is to stop using the Platform and request deletion of your data.

16. Entire Agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and the sole operator of Project Ants regarding the Platform and supersede all prior understandings. These Terms will be updated to reference the formal legal entity once incorporated.

16a. Constitutional and Statutory Protections — The Formal Record. The following protections are explicitly invoked and placed on formal record as of the effective date of these Terms. This section constitutes the foundational legal record for purposes of any future regulatory action, government demand, adverse litigation, or other proceeding concerning this community's right to organize, operate, and protect its members. It is included here because documented community practice — grounded in articulated principles — provides stronger constitutional footing than standard platform terms of service alone.

Plain-language note: Think of this section as the stack of legal shields this community carries. Every protection listed below is real, has been upheld by federal courts, and applies to every member of this community — regardless of belief, background, or why you joined. This record exists so that if anyone tries to shut this community down, surveil its members, or retaliate against participation in it, they walk into a room that's already been prepared.

Protections on Record

First Amendment — Freedom of Association: Membership in this cooperative community is protected associational conduct. Government or third-party compulsion to disclose membership lists or participation records requires compelling justification and is subject to legal contest. NAACP v. Alabama (1958); NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982).

First Amendment — Free Exercise: Participation in cooperative economics as a sincerely held moral or religious conviction is protected exercise. Government action specifically burdening cooperative community practices without equivalent burden on corporate structures is constitutionally suspect. Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972); Thomas v. Review Board (1981); Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (1993); Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021).

First Amendment — Petition and Expression: Collective demand letters, coordinated regulatory complaint filings, organized provider switches, and public advocacy are protected petitions and protected expression. No member may be lawfully penalized for participating in any of these activities. Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri (2011); Claiborne Hardware (1982).

Noerr-Pennington Antitrust Immunity: Coordinated collective petitioning of government bodies — including organized submissions to state insurance commissioners, collective utility commission filings, group regulatory complaints, and similar advocacy — receives antitrust immunity under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. This directly protects the core of what this platform coordinates. Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. (365 U.S. 127, 1961); United Mine Workers of America v. Pennington (381 U.S. 657, 1965).

RFRA (42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq.): Any federal government action that substantially burdens sincere religious or moral exercise through participation in this community must demonstrate a compelling governmental interest pursued through the least restrictive means. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014); Gonzales v. O Centro (2006); Tanzin v. Tanvir (592 U.S. 43, 2020) — individual federal officials face personal money damages liability for RFRA violations, making unlawful interference personally costly to the officer who causes it, not just the agency.

Welsh/Seeger — Moral and Ethical Conviction Protection: No member is required to hold any religious belief to benefit from the Free Exercise and RFRA protections above. Welsh v. United States (398 U.S. 333, 1970) and United States v. Seeger (380 U.S. 163, 1965) extend full constitutional protection to sincere moral and ethical convictions that occupy the same place in a person's life as formal religious belief — including entirely secular ethical systems. Any member participating on the basis of sincere conviction that cooperative economic organization is obligatory rather than merely preferable benefits from these protections.

Fourteenth Amendment — Equal Protection: Disparate regulatory treatment of cooperative organizational structures versus corporate structures — including subsidies, liability protections, and access to public financial infrastructure — is cognizable as an equal protection violation when it systematically disadvantages communities organized around documented sincere values. This disparity is on record and reserved as a basis for future challenge.

Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230): Platform immunity for member-submitted content. Project Ants is an interactive computer service; members are information content providers with respect to data they voluntarily enter.

Anti-SLAPP Protection: Any retaliatory legal action arising from this Platform's facilitation of constitutionally protected collective petitioning, expression, or associational activity may be contested as a SLAPP. Statutes apply in: California (CCP § 425.16), Oregon (ORS 31.150), Nevada (NRS 41.635), Washington (RCW 4.24.525), Texas (CPRC Ch. 27), and D.C. (D.C. Code § 16-5501). All listed statutes mandate attorneys' fees for the prevailing movant — making bad-faith legal threats expensive to file.

Section 7, National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. § 157): Members who are workers retain all NLRA rights to engage in collective activity for mutual aid or protection. Coordinated consumer action related to workplace conditions may constitute protected concerted activity under Section 7, and employer retaliation against such activity is an unfair labor practice.

17. Contact. Project Ants · helloprojectants@gmail.com · projectants.org

The Goal. Project Ants is committed to making this tool usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. The aim is conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the standard referenced by the ADA and Section 508 for web accessibility.

What's Been Done. The platform uses semantic HTML elements throughout; all form fields have associated labels; color is not used as the sole means of conveying information; interactive elements are keyboard-navigable with descriptive aria-label, aria-expanded, and aria-controls attributes; the bill tracker table exposes full ARIA table semantics (role="table", role="row", role="columnheader", role="cell") so screen readers can navigate by column; interactive phase selectors are grouped with role="group" and labelled accordingly; all collapsible panels expose their expanded/collapsed state on first load; UI component borders meet the WCAG 1.4.11 3:1 contrast requirement against their backgrounds; and decorative images are marked appropriately.

Known Limitations. This is an early-stage project built by one person. Two things cannot be verified by static analysis alone and require live assistive-technology testing: (1) dynamic ARIA live-region announcements (the phase panel, the signup success state, the social proof counter) — these are present in the markup but may behave differently across NVDA + Chrome vs. VoiceOver + Safari; and (2) the Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA widget is a third-party element whose accessibility is outside this project's control.

If You Encounter a Barrier. Email helloprojectants@gmail.com with a description of the barrier. You'll get a response within 5 business days and content provided through an alternative means while a fix is worked on.

Ongoing Work. As the project grows, periodic audits will be conducted and issues addressed as identified or reported.

This tool will always be free to use. Free to join, free to leave, no fees at any stage. Here's how the project plans to fund the build without taking money from members or corporate investors.

Primary Revenue (Pre-Launch) — Email List Sponsorships. When the list reaches enough people, the project will sell sponsorship slots in its emails — credit unions, worker cooperatives, brands. Think: a credit union paying to introduce themselves in the same email announcing a collective action in your city. That's it. You'll know it's there. You'll have chosen it when you signed up. Industry range: $0.50–$5 per subscriber per month at scale. This is what will hopefully fund the build.

Estimated Build Costs. Phase 1 (tool MVP + data co-op): $500K–$1.5M. Phase 2 (The People's Bank): $1M–$2M. Phases 3 & 4 (Health Co-op + Housing Trust): $1M–$2M. Total across all four phases: roughly $3M–$5.5M. No one gets there on a single funding source, which is why the project is stacking multiple clean ones.

Grant Funding (No Equity, No Board Seats). Cooperative development grants through NCBA and state cooperative offices ($200K–$500K) · NSF CIVIC Innovation Challenge, up to $1M with a university partner · Mozilla, Knight, and Omidyar foundations ($25K–$500K each). These organizations fund cooperative infrastructure and take nothing in return.

Federal & Community Funding (Planned). SBIR Phase I + II federal R&D grants, up to $2M total, no equity and no repayment · Community Investment Notes through RSF Social Finance — zero interest, repaid from revenue, no equity or vote · Credit union sponsorships of $100K–$500K each, structured as brand relationships, not investments. None of these are secured — they are the intended funding path.

The 15% Rule. No single funder will ever hold more than 15% of the total raise. At $5M that's a $750K cap per source. If anyone offers more, the relationship gets split. The moment one entity holds 25%+ of your funding they have soft leverage whether they intend it or not. That cap is the structural guarantee — the same logic as one-person-one-vote applied to money.

The Project will be formalized as an LLC — but isn't one yet. Right now this is an unincorporated project operated by its founder. The LLC formation is pending and is a near-term priority before any sponsorship revenue is accepted. The LLC will be the scaffolding — chosen specifically because it allows the project to be built, tested, and iterated on quickly without the overhead of cooperative governance before there is anything to govern. Scaffolding is not the building. It comes down when the building can stand on its own.

It converts automatically when both thresholds are met simultaneously. When both thresholds are met simultaneously, a mandatory member ratification vote on cooperative form must be convened within 30 days — automatically, with no founder approval or board decision required to trigger it. The conversion mechanics are written into the operating agreement before the first member joins. When both keys turn at the same time, the Project becomes a member-owned cooperative. The founder becomes one member with one vote, same as everyone else. No equity. No special class of shares. No ongoing control.

The two thresholds — and why these numbers. Key one: at least one zip code cluster reaches 25% household participation. At that density, a neighborhood has hit the phase transition point where cooperative behavior becomes the norm rather than the exception — where enough people know enough other participants that the community governs itself rather than needing the project to hold it together. Important: "household participation" is measured against current residents AND a rolling 5-year baseline population for that ZIP code. A neighborhood that was displaced through gentrification does not count as "organized" based on the people who replaced its long-term residents. The threshold must be reached by and for the community that was actually there. Key two: at least one state reaches 3.5% adult engagement. That is the threshold at which organized participation in a state produces durable political and economic leverage — where a state-level cooperative isn't a fringe experiment but a constituency that candidates, regulators, and corporations have to reckon with. Both keys must turn simultaneously. A dense neighborhood in an otherwise thin state doesn't unlock it. National spread without local density doesn't unlock it. Both, at once.

Once the operating agreement is filed, the founder will be prohibited from: selling the project or accepting equity investment · monetizing participant data without a public vote of registered participants · spending more than $500 from the community fund without a public vote · holding any permanent equity stake at any stage · changing the mission without a supermajority vote of registered participants · blocking or delaying the cooperative conversion.

If the founder is incapacitated before conversion, operational authority will transfer to an interim steward council selected by random draw from registered participants — a process that will fire automatically, not by founder decision. If the founder attempts a sale, all community assets will transfer to a designated irrevocable community land trust. There will be nothing to sell. When the codebase is developed, it will be published on GitHub under AGPL-3.0 — the company can be dissolved, the code cannot.

Protected minority voice. Any member group representing 10% or more of a state's registered participants may trigger a mandatory review of any collective action vote that passed by less than a 65% supermajority — not to override the outcome, but to require a public accounting of who the decision affected and how. This is not a veto. It is a transparency mechanism, written into the operating agreement, that ensures no majority coalition can act on behalf of the full membership without a recorded reckoning of its impact on the members least able to absorb a bad outcome.

What does signing up actually do right now?

It puts you on the list — that's it. The project is in the early stage: building the founding member base to prove the demand exists, which is what gets the tool funded and built. No negotiations are happening yet. No money changes hands. Signing up means you want this to exist and you're willing to be counted.

So nothing happens after I sign up?

Not immediately. You'll get an email as the project develops — when the tool has a launch date, when founding member milestones are hit, when your area has enough people registered that a campaign becomes viable. You're not committing to anything. You're just in the room when it matters.

When will the actual tool be ready?

That depends on this. The founding member count is what gets shown to funders and cooperative backers to prove the demand is real. The more people who sign up, the faster it gets built properly — with the security, legal structure, and infrastructure the escalation model actually requires to work.

What do you do with my information?

Your bill amounts and provider names stay aggregated — shown as totals, never tied to you individually. Your email is used to send project updates. It's never sold. Never shared with advertisers. The full breakdown is in the Privacy Policy below.

Who's behind this?

One person — an independent founder, not a corporation, not a PAC, not backed by anyone with a financial stake in the outcome. The legal structure is an unincorporated project pending LLC formation. This is a member-owned community, not just a consumer app — membership constitutes protected associational conduct under the First Amendment from the moment you join. Every statistic on this page is sourced and linked below. The model is published openly because it only works if people understand it. Questions or skepticism welcome: helloprojectants@gmail.com

Is signing up the same as joining the Data Cooperative?

No — these are two separate things. What you're signing up for right now is the organizing tool: the collective bargaining platform that will match you with people paying the same providers and coordinate collective action. The Data Cooperative is a future phase — Phase 1 of the long game described on this page. It doesn't exist yet as a legal entity. Signing up here gets you on the founding list for the tool. If and when a Data Cooperative is formally established, that would involve a separate process, its own governance documents, and explicit member consent. You won't be automatically enrolled in anything beyond what you agree to here.

How is this different from every other organization that started clean and got captured?

The capture mechanisms have been removed structurally, not promised away. No investor equity means there is nothing to buy. No private concessions means there is no individual who can be approached and offered terms — any offer gets disclosed to the full membership within 24 hours. Automatic asset transfer means there is nothing to acquire — if anyone tries, everything moves immediately to a community land trust beyond anyone's reach. Randomly selected member governance means there is no permanent board to cultivate over years the way wealthy donors cultivate institutional relationships. Open source code means no hidden architecture. Every organization that got captured had something that could be bought or someone who could be offered terms. This one doesn't. The operating agreement was written before the first member joined specifically to make those moves structurally impossible — not just against policy.

Is this legal?

Yes. Coordinating with other consumers to switch providers, submit collective demands, or file simultaneous regulatory complaints is the exercise of constitutionally protected rights — free speech, association, and petition. Consumer boycotts and coordinated switching have been part of American economic and political life since before the country existed. Nothing on this Platform asks you to break a contract, engage in fraud, or take any illegal action. Every step of the escalation ladder involves legal consumer activity. The Platform's legal structure, terms, and operating model were designed with this in mind.

[1]

RAND Corporation / U.S. Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders. "New Study: Nearly $80 Trillion Redistributed from the Bottom 90% to the Top 1% Since 1975." Sanders.senate.gov, March 4, 2025. Based on: Price, Carter C. and Kathryn Edwards. Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018, RAND Corporation Working Paper WRA516-2. sanders.senate.gov →

[2]

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). "New Report Finds 88 Major U.S. Corporations Paid Zero Federal Income Tax Despite Billions in Profits." April 14, 2026. Analysis of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 annual filings found at least 88 publicly traded corporations reported positive U.S. pretax income and zero federal income tax for 2025, collectively reporting over $105 billion in U.S. pretax profit. Tesla reported $2.3 billion in U.S. income in 2024 and paid zero federal income tax. ITEP describes these as a floor, not a ceiling, as the analysis excludes large private companies and firms with non-calendar fiscal years. itep.org →

[3]

Edwards, Chris. "Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget." Cato Institute Policy Analysis, March 4, 2025. Tallies federal corporate subsidies — including direct grants, tax credits, loan guarantees, and below-market insurance — at approximately $181 billion for fiscal year 2024. Cato is a libertarian institution; the figure is widely cited across the political spectrum. cato.org →

[4]

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024 — average annual household expenditures $78,535; average income before taxes $104,207 (skewed upward by high earners; median household income per Census is $83,730). Most households do not bring home enough to cover average spending — the gap is reflected in rising consumer debt. U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2024 (CPS ASEC, September 2025) — median household income $83,730. Federal Reserve Bank of New York — total credit card balances $1.23 trillion (2025). Bureau of Economic Analysis — personal savings rate 4.5%. bls.gov → census.gov →

[5]

Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP). "Cost of a Basic American Life Continued to Rise in 2024, Outpacing Wages and Headline Inflation." LISEP True Living Cost (TLC) Index, February 2026. TLC rose 106% from 2001–2024 vs. U.S. CPI's 77.2% increase over the same period. Housing costs for a couple with 3 children rose 134%. Healthcare remains the fastest-rising expense, averaging 4.9% annually since 2001. lisep.org/tlc → · Covered by Fortune / Yahoo Finance, May 2026: "Former Comptroller: the cost of living has risen 106% since 2001. Government inflation data doesn't show it."

[6]

Oxfam International. "Billionaire Wealth Jumps Three Times Faster in 2025 to Highest Peak Ever, Sparking Dangerous Political Inequality." Published January 19, 2026. Based on Oxfam analysis of Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List through November 30, 2025. Full report: Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power. oxfam.org →

[7]

U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Federal minimum wage has remained $7.25/hour since July 24, 2009 — the longest period without an increase since it was established in 1938. Full-time annual earnings at $7.25/hr: $7.25 × 2,080 hours = $15,080/year. To accumulate $1 billion saving every dollar: $1,000,000,000 ÷ $15,080 = 66,313 years. dol.gov →

[8]

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Fourth Quarter 2024." February 21, 2025. Median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers: $1,192/week = $61,984/year. To accumulate $1 billion saving every dollar: $1,000,000,000 ÷ $61,984 = 16,133 years. bls.gov →

[9]

Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA), Q4 2025. Analyzed by The Motley Fool (March 2026) and Institute for Policy Studies / Inequality.org (January 2025). Top 1% own 50–54% of all corporate equities and mutual funds; top 10% own approximately 87–93% of all stocks; bottom 50% own approximately 1%. fool.com → · inequality.org →

[10]

Delta Air Lines Q1 2026 Earnings. CEO Ed Bastian stated the airline is "taking actions to protect our margins and cash flow," including "meaningfully reducing capacity growth." Analysis by Live and Let's Fly (April 9, 2026) noted Bastian said fare increases "may not be temporary" even if fuel settles. news.delta.com → · American Airlines Q1 2026 Earnings Call (April 23, 2026): CFO Devon May stated: "We are going to do what is needed on capacity to make sure that we are passing on as much of that fuel increase to customers as possible." CNBC → · See also SEC 8-K filings for Delta, American, United, and JetBlue Q1 2026 for direct transcript confirmation.

[11]

Visual Capitalist / Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "Ranked: The Largest Airlines in the U.S. by Market Share," March 2025. The Big Four — Delta, American, Southwest, and United — collectively account for nearly 70% of all revenue passenger miles and approximately 75% of domestic capacity. This consolidation followed mergers including Delta-Northwest (2008), United-Continental (2010), and American-US Airways (2013). visualcapitalist.com →

[12]

Saez, Emmanuel and Gabriel Zucman. "Exploding Wealth Inequality in the United States." Washington Center for Equitable Growth / VoxEU, October 2014. The top 0.1%'s share of total U.S. household wealth rose from approximately 7% in the late 1970s to 22% by 2012 — approaching levels last seen in the late 1920s (the Roaring Twenties / pre-Great Depression era). Updated data from Zucman (2021) found the top 0.01% (roughly 18,000 families) now hold 10% of total U.S. wealth, surpassing the Gilded Age peak of 1913. equitablegrowth.org →

[13]

The American Prospect. "Billionaire Wealth Has Doubled So Far This Decade." Published March 27, 2026. Includes reporting that the 19 richest U.S. households added $1 trillion in wealth in 2024, exceeding the GDP of Switzerland. prospect.org →

[14]

Christian, Kristen. Bank Transfer Day — Facebook event, October 2011. Primary coverage: Flitter, Emily. "How Kristen Christian Came to Launch Bank Transfer Day." American Banker / Credit Union Journal, December 19, 2011. Christian, a 27-year-old Los Angeles art gallery owner, created the Facebook event in under an hour after Bank of America announced a $5 monthly debit card fee. Credit Union National Association (CUNA) confirmed 650,000 new accounts opened and $4.5 billion in new deposits transferred to credit unions between September 29 and November 5, 2011 — the largest single-month influx in credit union movement history. Bank of America cancelled the fee. americanbanker.com → · Democracy Now! interview with Kristen Christian, November 9, 2011: democracynow.org →

[15]

FTC Staff Report. "Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance of Users with Lax Privacy Controls and Inadequate Safeguards for Kids and Teens." Federal Trade Commission, September 2024. Companies "collected and could indefinitely retain troves of data, including information from data brokers" to monetize personal information. ftc.gov →

[16]

JPMorgan Chase & Co. 2023 Annual Report. The bank reported record net income of $49.6 billion for fiscal year 2023. jpmorganchase.com →

[17]

NCUA (National Credit Union Administration). Quarterly Data Summary Report, Q4 2024. Total U.S. credit union membership exceeded 142 million — member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperatives governed on a one member, one vote basis. ncua.gov →

[18]

Champlain Housing Trust (Burlington, Vermont). Operating since 1984; demonstrates the Community Land Trust model for permanent, generational housing affordability. champlainhousingtrust.org →. See also: Grounded Solutions Network for national CLT research and outcomes data. groundedsolutions.org →

[19]

"Germany Records 457 Hours of Negative Electricity Prices in 2024." PV Magazine, January 6, 2025. Data sourced from Germany's Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). Negative prices occur during peak renewable overproduction, meaning grid operators effectively pay consumers to absorb power. pv-magazine.com →. For U.S. cooperative data: NRECA — 900+ electric cooperatives serving 42 million Americans. electric.coop →

[20]

Cleary, Ekaterina Galkina, et al. "Contribution of NIH Funding to New Drug Approvals 2010–2016." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 10 (2018): 2329–2334. NIH funding contributed to published research behind every one of 210 FDA-approved drugs in that period, totaling over $100 billion. pnas.org →. Medicines Patent Pool (WHO-backed): medicinespatentpool.org →

[21]

RAND Corporation. "Prescription Drug Prices in the United States Are 2.56 Times Those in Other Countries." RAND RR-2956-CMWF, 2021. U.S. drug prices are 2.56× the OECD average overall and 3.44× higher for brand-name drugs specifically; France’s prices are approximately one-third of U.S. prices. rand.org → · GKV-Spitzenverband (Germany): approximately 73–74 million members in statutory health insurance as of 2024, covering ~88% of the German population, with provider rates negotiated collectively. gkv-spitzenverband.de →

[22]

FTC Staff Report on Social Media Surveillance (September 2024) — companies engaged in "vast surveillance" to monetize personal information with "lax privacy controls." ftc.gov →. Also: FTC enforcement actions against data brokers X-Mode, InMarket, Mobilewalla, and Gravy Analytics (2024) for selling sensitive consumer location data without consent to advertisers and government contractors. ftc.gov →

[23]

KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). "Claims Denials and Appeals in ACA Marketplace Plans," 2023. Analysis of plan year 2021 data, finding marketplace plans denied approximately 17% of in-network claims on the first submission. kff.org →

[24]

The Guardian / Global Witness. "$30m an hour: big oil reaping huge war windfall from consumers, analysis finds." Published April 15, 2026. Analysis of Rystad Energy data by Global Witness finds the world's top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, with projected total windfall profits of $234bn by end of 2026. theguardian.com →

[25]

Derived from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023 (avg. housing $24,298/yr; healthcare $5,850/yr; vehicle loans + insurance $8,084/yr; utilities & fuels $4,098/yr; communications $1,762/yr) combined with Kaiser Family Foundation, 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey (avg. employee premium contribution $6,296/yr, single coverage) and Zillow Rent Index Q4 2024 (national median asking rent $1,953/mo). The $52K figure represents estimated annual household spending directed to providers with limited local competition — sectors where consumers cannot easily switch and where named companies operate with structural pricing power. bls.gov/cex →

[26]

Responsible Statecraft. "Weapons makers cash in on Trump's Iran war." March 4, 2026. RTX (Raytheon) rose 4.7%, Northrop Grumman rose 6%, and Lockheed Martin rose 3.4% on the first trading day after hostilities began. Lockheed had already climbed nearly 40% since the start of 2026. responsiblestatecraft.org → See also: Al Jazeera. "Which US and Israeli military companies are profiting from the Iran war?" March 9, 2026. aljazeera.com →

[27]

247 Wall St. "Iran Wars Fuels RTX Growth Story as Defense Demand Rockets Higher." April 5, 2026. RTX backlog of $268 billion; munitions output up 20% in 2025; Q1 2026 Raytheon segment revenue up 10% on missile and air defense demand; guided for $200–$300M more operating profit in 2026. 247wallst.com → · GovFacts. "Defense Stocks Surged After the Iran Strikes." March 3, 2026. iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF up 35% from first U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities (June 2025) through early March 2026. Northrop and Lockheed up 46% and 40% respectively. govfacts.org → · Capitol Trades. "Congress's Defense Stock Plays: Profiting from the US-Israel-Iran War?" March 17, 2026. STOCK Act disclosures show congressional purchases in defense companies throughout 2025 averaged 50–100%+ gains by early March 2026. capitoltrades.com →

[28]

USAFacts. "Are wages keeping up with inflation?" Updated May 15, 2026. From April 2025 to April 2026, wages grew 3.6% while inflation stood at 3.8% — the first time inflation has outpaced wage growth in three years, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Bank of America data confirms lower- and middle-income households have seen inflation outpace after-tax wages since January 2025. usafacts.org → · MarketWatch. "Inflation is now rising faster than your salary — here's how long that could last." May 2026. marketwatch.com →

[29]

Daly, Mary C., Shelby Buckman, Lily Seitelman, and Laura Choi. "The Color of Economic Opportunity." Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper, presented at The Brookings Institution, September 2021. Calculates $51.2 trillion in lost U.S. GDP from 1990–2019 attributable to racial gaps in employment, education, and earnings — including $2.57 trillion in 2019 alone. frbsf.org →

[30]

Citigroup / Citi GPS. "Closing the Racial Inequality Gaps: The Economic Cost of Black Inequality in the U.S." September 2020. Concludes that discrimination against Black Americans in wages, housing, education, and business lending cost the U.S. economy $16 trillion over the prior 20 years. Covered by NPR, September 23, 2020. npr.org →

[31]

The Budget Lab at Yale University. "State of U.S. Tariffs" (multiple updates, 2025–2026). Analysis of all 2025 U.S. tariffs finds median household cost of approximately $2,000–$2,500/year in the short run. The burden on the lowest-income decile is more than three times that of the top decile as a share of income — making tariffs a regressive tax. budgetlab.yale.edu →

[32]

KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). Health Insurance Coverage of the Total Population, 2023. Approximately 164 million Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance; total private health insurance coverage exceeds 180 million. kff.org →

[33]

UnitedHealth Group. 2024 Annual Report / Q4 2024 Earnings Release. UnitedHealthcare reported 49.4 million domestic medical members as of Q4 2024, making it the largest private health insurer in the United States by membership. ir.unitedhealthgroup.com →

[34]

Papanicolas I, Machado S, et al. "Wealth and Mortality in the United States Compared with Europe." New England Journal of Medicine, April 2025. Brown University School of Public Health. Analysis of 73,000+ adults (age 50–85) in the U.S. and Europe, 2010 onward. Key findings: over a 10-year period, Americans at every wealth level faced higher mortality than European counterparts; Continental Europeans died at rates approximately 40% lower than U.S. participants throughout the study period; the wealthiest Americans in some cases had survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western Europe. nejm.org → · brown.edu →

AVG

Bill Tracker Default Averages — Sources

Default amounts shown in the bill tracker are sourced national averages, not estimates. Figures reflect the most recent available data as of May 2026.

Rent: Norada Real Estate / Apartments.com, December 2024 national average rent $1,559/mo. noradarealestate.com →
Car Payment: Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market, Q4 2025 — new car avg $767/mo, used car avg $537/mo; blended figure used. experian.com →
Car Insurance: Insurify 2025 annual average for full coverage, $2,238/yr ($187/mo). insurify.com →
Health Insurance: KFF 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey / ACA benchmark Silver plan for a 40-year-old, $497/mo. kff.org →
Groceries: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024 — average household food-at-home spending $6,220/yr ($518/mo). bls.gov →
Electricity / Gas: U.S. Energy Information Administration 2024–2025 (electricity ~$155/mo after 9.6% YoY increase) plus EIA/JD Power residential gas average (~$100/mo). eia.gov →
Internet / Phone: JD Power Q1 2025 unbundled wired internet $83/mo; doxo 2025 Mobile Phone Spend Report, median household mobile bill $96/mo. doxo.com →
Debt (loans / CC): Experian Q1 2025 average monthly consumer debt payments; student loan avg $277–$503/mo (Federal Student Aid, BestColleges 2025); credit card avg $181/mo. Composite figure used. experian.com →
Subscriptions: C+R Research 2024 — Americans spend an average of $219/mo on subscription services, yet estimate only $86/mo. crresearch.com →

A Republican who can't afford insulin.
A Democrat who can't make rent.
Someone who stopped voting because nothing changed.
All trying to keep up with the same bills
you are.

Map Your Bills.
Build Your Group.

If you're not at the table,
you're on the menu.

A 27-year-old beat Bank of America.
In 40 days. With no budget.

Kristen Christian had enough.

You enter. It finds your group.
The pressure builds.

Privacy Policy — How Your Information Is Handled

Terms of Service — What You're Agreeing To

Accessibility — The Commitment

How This Gets Built — Costs & Funding Model

Legal Structure & Ownership — How This Works

A Republican who can't afford insulin. A Democrat who can't make rent. Someone who stopped voting because nothing changed. All trying to keep up with the same bills you are.

Map Your Bills.Build Your Group.

If you're not at the table,you're on the menu.

A 27-year-old beat Bank of America.In 40 days. With no budget.

Kristen Christian had enough.

You enter. It finds your group.The pressure builds.

Privacy Policy — How Your Information Is Handled

Terms of Service — What You're Agreeing To

Accessibility — The Commitment

How This Gets Built — Costs & Funding Model

Legal Structure & Ownership — How This Works

A Republican who can't afford insulin.
A Democrat who can't make rent.
Someone who stopped voting because nothing changed.
All trying to keep up with the same bills
you are.

Map Your Bills.
Build Your Group.

If you're not at the table,
you're on the menu.

A 27-year-old beat Bank of America.
In 40 days. With no budget.

You enter. It finds your group.
The pressure builds.