Senators Sheehy & Warren show right to repair is bi-partisan & mainstream

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Header Information

• Channel: Louis Rossmann
• Video: Senators Sheehy & Warren show right to repair is bi-partisan & mainstream
• Date: 2025-08-17
• Description:

https://fulu.foundation/military

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AI Summary

Louis Rossman discusses the growing support for right to repair and right to own laws, noting that these issues cut across political divides. The core idea is simple: if you buy something, you should own it fully—meaning companies shouldn’t lock features behind subscriptions, block independent repairs, or make fixing products illegal. Examples include thermostats requiring yearly fees, exercise bikes disabled unless tied to specific apps, and military equipment that soldiers can’t repair without waiting for expensive manufacturer technicians.

Recently, Senators Tim Sheehy (Republican, veteran and former Navy SEAL) and Elizabeth Warren (Democrat, consumer rights advocate) co-sponsored a bill to include right to repair provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Sheehy emphasizes that soldiers need to repair equipment in real time during emergencies and combat, rather than waiting weeks for authorized service. Warren highlights how monopolistic repair rules raise costs for ordinary consumers and leave even the military dependent on defense contractors. Both senators argue that right to repair improves readiness, saves taxpayer money, and fosters competition by letting smaller businesses handle repairs.

The bill would require defense contractors to guarantee right to repair for equipment purchased by the U.S. government—the largest customer in the world. This ensures service members can fix their gear, and also sets a precedent that could spread to other industries like cars, farm equipment, medical devices, and consumer electronics. Rossman sees this as part of a broader movement against corporations that deliberately restrict ownership after purchase, such as by disabling features or criminalizing independent repairs.

Rossman expresses optimism, pointing out that viewers and advocates are already taking action—writing to MPs, pushing edits on consumerrights.wiki, and organizing against anti-ownership laws. For him, bipartisan cooperation on this issue shows that even in a polarized political climate, people can unite around basic fairness and ownership rights. He closes with appreciation for the senators’ efforts and encouragement to keep building momentum toward stronger pro-consumer, pro-ownership laws.

AI Transcription

Something I'm very happy to see is right to repair and a lot of the concepts in right to own just going mainstream to the point where it's not some sort of partisan thing. There are a lot of issues right now where if I know one of your political opinions, I may be able to guess the other 15 or 20 and it gets to be annoying and a lot of things now become this partisan thing where if like you have to be — have the opposite opinion of the person on the other side. But there are a few things where people are in general united and one of those things is if you pay money for something that it's yours. If you buy a thermostat, the company that still do the thermostat shouldn't be able to lock you out of the ability to use features unless you give them $100 a year. If you buy an exercise bicycle, you should not be locked out of the ability of using apps of your choosing. And then if somebody gives you back access to that, that should not be a breach of the law. And one of the areas where many people are in agreement is if we are going to as a country, as a nation, spend 8 or 900 billion dollars on our military, they should be able to fix what they bought and paid for without getting bent over by the manufacturer.

Last month, I spoke to many different military service members, contractors. I spoke to electronics technicians and mechanics. And a lot of the stories they had sound like the stories that I tell on this channel when it comes to trying to fix MacBooks, which is really interesting. You have people who were saying that they couldn't get the router password to be able to log into a piece of gear while out at sea. You had people saying that I would have been able to fix this issue with this plane. I can't because I don't have a real diagram. When the Boeing person comes, which charges a lot of money, they have the diagram and they won't show it to us. It's a lot of the same thing.

And one of the things that I'm happy about when I looked at this piece of legislation that got introduced last month by Senators Tim Sheehy and Elizabeth Warren is — just looking into their political histories. These are two people that, I'm just going to take a wild guess, if these two were sitting together at Thanksgiving dinner, they might have some nice things to say to each other about the state of the world. And the thing that I like is that regardless of all the other gridlock that's going on in Congress, there are these really small areas where there's just so much overlap and agreement that people who would otherwise be slinging stuffing at each other at Thanksgiving dinner can come together, shake hands, get along, and say, "This is bulls--t. Let's fix it." Speaking to each of them, you can understand why this is an issue.

Senator Tim Sheehy with experience in aerial firefighting and as a Navy Seal understands innately that you can't have a society where every single time you need something fixed, you have to wait two to six weeks for the manufacturer to come out and fix it. If there is a fire affecting hundreds of acres of land, you need your s--t to work right now. You need to figure out how to make it work. And if you're a Navy Seal and you're deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq or the some war in the South China Sea, you need to figure out how to make things work right now. You don't have the time to wait for an authorized technician to come out and hold your hand to do it. You don't have the time to wait a few weeks for an authorized technician with all of his certifications to come out and hold your hand from the manufacturer. You need to fix it right now. He understands that.

We're sponsoring the right to repair act that our war fighters on the front line have the ability to maintain and repair their own equipment on the front lines. This is so important for our survivability. We need to make sure that our 18, 19-year-old kids on the front lines have all the equipment they need. This is going to make sure with a right to repair provision, they can do it all on the front line. Let's get it done.

And I also like that Senator Elizabeth Warren, somebody who has tried to be a champion of consumer rights, understands this as a consumer rights issue. She talks about what it was like dealing with car mechanics who were explaining to her what it was like to try to work on modern cars.

It was Direct Tire and Auto. This is an independent car repair place. You know the kind of place. They've been there for a zillion years. Only I'm in there talking to this guy and what he explains, the guy who owns it, is that he can't repair a bunch of things on cars now because legally the only person who can repair them are the dealership that sold you the car. And you know what the consequences of that are? That means you're going to pay a whole lot more and probably have to wait longer to get it repaired. So, I'm all fired up talking to the owner of Direct Tire and Auto. I talk about it a lot publicly. I go on, you know, various shows and talk about it. And I keep hearing from more people, including hearing from folks in the military who say, "You're not going to believe this, Senator Warren, but I got this piece of equipment. Here I am out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I got this piece of equipment that is broken and I want to repair it. And the answer is not allowed to touch it. Gotta call the seller of the equipment, the defense contractor that manufactured it, and they got to fly somebody out and spend all that money, waste all that time in order to fix it. And one guy tells me, he said, I looked at the thing and looked at the thing. It was just a safety clip. He said some safety clips had broken on a piece of equipment, but you're not supposed to operate it without the clips to be able to protect people. And he said, "I went in the back and just used a 3D printer and printed this stuff up for 15 cents worth of materials and a half an hour of time." And that's when you begin to understand this right to repair business is about protecting your own rights to get your car repaired wherever you want. And it's about our military being able to repair equipment that's broken. So man, I'm all in on right to repair and we need it every — You can't fix it yourself or take it to somebody who can fix it. Then they've got like this one person monopoly over you. You bought this car and now you can only go to one place to have it fixed and they can charge you whatever they want. And giant corporations have figured this out not just with cars. They figured it out with farm equipment. They figured it out with medical equipment. They figured it out with your uh phone. They figured it out all across the items you buy. And that means they're able to charge one price upfront knowing where the real money is going to be is getting you on the repairs and maintenance on the other end. And right to repair actually says we can have some competition around that. Good for you uh and good for our economy overall. So, what we've got right now is a bill to make it into the National Defense Authorization Act. I sit on what's called Senate Armed Services Committee and every year has a big, big defense budget and for a long, long time what I've done is I've focused in on how the government buys things and I do a lot of fighting with the defense industry. So, I've been asking the different generals when they come through about right to repair. And I have to say when I started this even a year ago, they're like, "Sure, what is that?" They don't they're not really quite on top of it. They've gotten into it. And now the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy have both said, "Yeah, we need right to repair. It's an important part of military readiness and it's an important part of spending taxpayer money wisely. So I partnered up with a Republican Tim Sheehy who's new to the committee and the two of us put a bill into the NDAA that basically just says the US government biggest customer in the world. The US government is not going to buy anything else from these defense contractors unless we are guaranteed right to repair so our service members can actually repair this stuff and so that other little businesses can grow up and help with the repairs. So that's what we've got in the bill and that's what we're pushing forward right now.

They didn't just talk about it. They put together a bill. They wrote it. They tried to push it through Congress and I would like to see them push it through Congress successfully because right to repair in one area helps right to repair everywhere and right to own in one area affects right to own everywhere. There are many products that I talk about on this channel where the company has changed the terms of the sale after the sale or tried to claw back functionality from their consumers. I don't own these products but I still talk about them on a regular basis because at some point it is going to affect me and the products that I buy and the products that I want to use and enjoy. And when we work together to make these issues mainstream, what we're doing is we're ensuring that we live in a future where people are willing to work together on common sense solutions to it.

Remember when I was talking about that future home thermostat where you wouldn't be able to use the some of the features and functionality anymore unless you paid $100 a year? I talked about trying to find a way around that and the CEO of that company said that if we find a way around that, that is illegal hacking and you can't do that. Unfortunately, in the United States, you might be right.

I want to push back on laws that say that we can't help give you back access to what you bought and paid for if the manufacturer takes it away. And seeing people that are so diametrically opposed on so many other issues willing to sit down, shake hands, and work things out on basic issues like this gives me faith that we can also do that in other areas as well. And we're going to try to get things pushed through Congress to reform these types of s--tty anti-ownership laws that are on the books right now that say that if I help you get back access to your f--king exercise bike that I could be doing something that's illegal.

Echelon sent out a firmware update that stopped the exercise bicycles from working with third party applications, but it'll work just fine if you subscribe to their service. How is that legal? But giving people back access to what they bought and paid for is not. It's insane.

And the thing that I'm really happy about here since doing that Clippy video is that you haven't just change your profile picture, you've actually done something about it. I have hundreds of emails sitting in my inbox since the video I did yesterday where you've been CC'ing me on the emails that you've been sending to your MP saying you don't want to see chat control in the EU. Yesterday was the single best day that we've ever had on consumerrights.wiki for edits, new articles being created and people reading it to understand how they're getting screwed and to push back against it. You're not just complaining about the issues to me and amongst yourselves in a comment section, nor have you just changed your profile picture to a Clippy. The numbers speak for themselves. You're actually putting in the work.

Our foundation is going to be working over the next several years to make sure that you have the ability to say that you own what you bought and paid for. Thank you to Senators Tim Sheehy and Elizabeth Warren for working together to get this done. I really appreciate it and I look forward to seeing more pro-ownership laws in Congress going into the future. I'll see you in the next video. Bye now.

[Outro]

We also have the duty not to infringe the IP rights in the process. It is in fact the manufacturers who have the relevant rights, not consumers.