Report on our meeting with Sen. Feinstein's staff in August 2019

We meet with each of our MoCs’ staffs every month. This month, we met with Sen. Feinstein’s staff on August 7th.

In response to the many letters and calls her office received from Indivisible members regarding the Border Supplemental Appropriations Bill, which contains no protection for immigrants and which the Senator voted Yes on, the office gave us a letter containing an excellent, substantive response.

The Senator’s staff was very appreciative of the detailed appropriations asks that we handed them a list of during the meeting. These asks are the specific ways we’ve been asking the Senator—and all four of our MoCs—to use the Power of the Purse to curb the administration’s abusive policies.

We also asked about oversight visits to immigration detention facilities in California. The Senator’s staff informed us that they have field staff visiting the facilities, though the Senator herself hasn’t visited yet, and they’ve made no public release of their findings. We asked them to do so—the first-person testimonies from MoCs last month were instrumental in building public support for more humane immigration policy.

In answer to our question about continuing her work to prevent gun violence, we were told the Senator will do everything in her power to bring gun control legislation to the Senate floor for a vote—the latest strategy is to attach H.R.8 (which passed the House) as a "rider" bill to a must-pass appropriations bill. This strategy was used in last year’s funding battle to excellent effect—it is the Power of the Purse in action.

As always, we thank the Senator and her staff for meeting with us. Meeting with our MoCs’ staff is how we engage them in deep, informed, two-way discussion of our asks as constituents.