Authenticity is a buzzword I hear thrown around, often by people driven by optics and posturing. There's a paradox: people who are calculating whether something will give them influence then harp on being yourself and being authentic. Most of us sense a facade, regardless of race or gender.

There is nothing wrong with adding a literary touch to political speeches. One of FDR's speechwriters was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and historian. Obama's speeches had a rhetorical flourish, too. JFK read hundreds of books a year. Digital savvy isn't synonymous with illiteracy.

Residency requirements for public records aren’t neutral. After Dobbs, they’re quietly restricting abortion scholarship, accountability, and democratic oversight. Transparency shouldn’t stop at state lines. 🔗 reprorights.substack.com/p/when-publi...

One thing I'm hearing from others who sometimes get irritated with Bluesky is the tendency to scold people from other users. It's very unbecoming of people who do that, and it's often for things that aren't transgressions or are minor ones. So lighten up a little.

Abortion access was never equal for Asian and Pacific Islander women. Long before Roe fell, language barriers, immigration fear, stigma, and healthcare deserts shaped who could actually get care. The post-Roe era has only deepened those harms. 🔗 reprorights.substack.com/p/abortion-w...

I’ve spent time around a lot of teachers, superintendents and principals. If you want to be a or the leader, you can’t be afraid of associating with or acknowledging people the cool kids don’t want you to. That’s part of growing up. And who is cool is always a matter of perspective. True for adults.

I’m not embarrassed I drive Uber. It’s honest work and you earn your keep instead of having it handed to you. I’ve learned a lot about the world, but I’m waiting on leaders to step up and make sure I get the shots I worked for. If anyone is embarrassed, it’s people who don’t maximize potential.

If my leaders would help with any of the things that I've written, and help me get out of driving Uber for a living, then I can spend my time exploring gun control. I can visit repositories and interview people. And then produce a comprehensive history that would be useful in our arguments.

Finally got around to getting a Wikipedia page for this. Details the Rosedale Banishment and all the aftermath and things we did on the 100th commemoration. Still hoping to stage a play and film it so we can put it in schools. Spent 12 years working on this. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosedal...

Three days after the snowstorm, the road conditions in Duquesne, Wilkinsburg, and other poor neighborhoods are abysmal. It's dangerous for riders and Uber drivers. Most of my fares are in poor black neighborhoods that get neglected when it comes time to remove snow.

I'm gonna be frank with some of you. I don't appreciate the snowplow fleet funding being gutted as an Uber driver, so we can allocate money to community programs with no financial oversight. Uber drivers depend on good road conditions, and so do their riders. www.post-gazette.com/news/weather...

A lot of people don't realize how much poor snow removal affects Uber drivers. Just because you can get to your destination without trouble doesn't mean we can get our passengers to theirs with ease. We go through all the side streets as guided by the GPS. So if they're icy, we're screwed.

This is one of the moments where a gifted journalist would distinguish themselves by asking more detailed follow-ups to official explanations. They say repairs to the snow plows were deferred. Don’t stop there. Why were they deferred? What priority took its place in getting funding?

You don’t realize how connected white supremacy is to the second amendment crowd. All of those militias formed in the 90s because they feared the gun grabbers as they put it. They became havens for white supremacy. Fears over gun confiscation are at the center of the Turner Diaries.

I’m not pointing fingers here. But how did our snow removal fleet fall into such a state of disrepair? Where were the tax dollars going?

When you get past 40, you're less focused on whether your cultural sell-by date has passed and more concerned with whether what you're doing will stand the test of time. Will it have the same appeal 20, 50, and 100 years from now? True cool and style are timeless.

I saw that Ethan Hawke said that ChatGPT is a plagiarism machine. It depends on how you use it. Can it write essays simply by drawing on other sources and then give you citations? Yes. But that's not plagiarism if it's properly cited. And more complex writing projects require complex prompts.

I’ve been going into rooms full of other ethnic communities for years. It doesn’t build trust when you say you agree that all white people are white supremacists. It doesn’t reassure them that we care. That’s self-evident, but some think agreement is the key, regardless of its actual effect.

One of the things I've found is that there is a small number of leaders who will stand by you amid intense criticism, whether it's fair or unfair. Few people want to walk through the fires for men and women depending on them. So if you come across a rare leader who will, they deserve loyalty.

Another thing I'd say if you want to build "authentic" relationships with me is that, if you want me to be natural or at ease around you, I don't want to be initially or primarily identified as a white man. You can say my name, my job, my expertise, or my background. But don't lead off with that.

I don't think it's possible to be authentic if we're constantly obsessed with optics or how things look to other people. That just leads to posturing or posing, which often conflicts with how we feel and what we truly want to say. There's nothing more authentic than being yourself.

There's a saying that you should treat people well on the way up because they're the people you see on the way down. It's hard to build good relationships when you have to start by saying, "We got off on the wrong foot." That shouldn't happen at all. Don't treat them as non-existent or insult them.

You used to have to be cool to be famous. Now, you have to be obsessive compulsive about social media use. And now it’s not possible to even be a household name. I think I’m just gonna accept a laid back life in obscurity. Add some romance and mystery, and it’s fulfilling.

Everyone should be careful out there in the burgh. Unpredicted freezing rain. Don’t drive.

Maybe this is refreshing. Maybe it isn’t. But I’m gonna hang with people who are fascinating whether they’re canceled or not.

Not racist. Fans did it to Chuck Noll too.

In 1911, New York passed the Sullivan Act—not as a constitutional showdown, but as routine governance. Licensing public carry, regulating dealers, enforced quietly, and upheld by courts. Even gun-owner groups accepted it. Gun law was ordinary. 📜 codymcdevitt.substack.com/p/the-sulliv...

This didn’t happen overnight. Virginia’s reproductive freedom amendment took years of organizing, close races, odd-year elections, and a constitutional process designed to test whether change can endure. Now the question is finally with voters. 🔗 reprorights.substack.com/p/the-long-r...

Pittsburgh should hire the next coach solely on the consideration of merit. That’s it. Only factor in our decision-making. Whoever is the most intelligent and promising coach. There’s shouldn’t be other considerations in selecting who we have to lead the team, and we shouldn’t feel pressured.

When people say this or that politician in Pittsburgh or from here were great leaders, it just doesn’t square away with what I see on the streets every day. I’m in McKeesport, Braddock and every other neighborhood nightly for eight hours. I saw the state of things with my own eyes.

After the Civil War, Americans didn’t abandon gun regulation — they refined it. Courts and cities focused on public carry, licensing, and self-defense standards, while even the early NRA accepted regulation as compatible with lawful ownership. 📜 Read: codymcdevitt.substack.com/p/after-the-...

I intend to have my abortion book out by late March. I’ve made significant improvements and am waiting for an index, which will give it greater value and make it more accessible. After that? I plan on continuing my newsletter and then publish a book arguing for gun control.

The only coach who was ever an assistant under Tomlin and went on to be a head coach elsewhere was Bruce Arians, who was hired by Cowher and fired by the Steelers before becoming an assistant coach and then a head coach. He hired former failed head coaches. But never mentored new ones.

Whoever the new Steelers coach is, he's not going to inherit a good team or staff as Tomlin did. The franchise is in disarray, and the culture has disappeared. The expectation changed from championships to winning seasons. There's no quarterback. Poor drafting. Aging team. It'll take years to fix.

I’m not part of polite society and most real writers aren’t because we tell the truth, which people can think is impolite if it’s inconvenient. If you do this shit for real, you’re gonna be kicked out of those circles. Stephen King made that point.

Well-regulated” in the Second Amendment didn’t mean optional or decorative. In the 18th century, it meant disciplined, organized, supervised, and under law. 📜 Read more: codymcdevitt.substack.com/p/why-well-r...

California Governor Gavin Newsom has rejected Louisiana’s request to extradite a California physician over abortion care that is legal in California, escalating an interstate conflict over abortion enforcement in the post-Dobbs era. Full report: reprorights.substack.com/p/california...

The Senate hearing on abortion pills wasn’t about safety — it was about ideology. One side relied on fear and anecdote, another on moral absolutes, while evidence-based medicine was forced to defend itself. When science is on trial, patients pay the price. reprorights.substack.com/p/when-evide...

In a single week, Louisiana’s attorney general sought the extradition of a California abortion provider and testified before Congress—pushing abortion enforcement beyond state borders and onto the national stage. This is what escalation looks like. 🔗 reprorights.substack.com/p/a-week-of-...

They’ve chosen more popes in my lifetime than Steelers coaches.

The best term I can give Pittsburgh the last half decade is "stuck." We were stuck in the middle, in sports, in civics, in employment, in place. Hopefully, with the new leadership we have coming in, we can start moving toward our dreams again. Part of being lucky means having bold leaders.

A gas-station sign in South Dakota asked a simple question. State officials responded with threats, investigations, and demands to stop speaking. Now a federal lawsuit asks whether a state can censor lawful health information it doesn’t like. reprorights.substack.com/p/when-speec...

Party leaders say VP picks must be “managed” for unity. Voters hear: decided without you. Legitimacy comes from participation. Let primary voters help choose the vice president—and decide for themselves what matters. #politics #election2026 #midterms codymcdevitt.substack.com/p/who-choose...

When I first said to keep your head down, which later became popular, I meant that you should work humbly and not brag about results. It shouldn’t be construed to mean work, stay in your lane and don’t talk about issues of public concern that involve middle eastern diplomacy. I never meant that.

It does a disservice to the debate about Israel-Palestine to describe one or the other side as a bunch of kooks, as John Fetterman said. It also dismisses that reluctance of the country to get into a war when he's so blase about sending troops into Venezuela. #politics #trump #fetterman

Wyoming’s Supreme Court just did something rare in the post-Dobbs era: it enforced the constitution as written. The court held that abortion is health care—and that lawmakers can’t erase a constitutional right by redefining it out of existence. Read more: reprorights.substack.com/p/the-wyomin...

There were other things too. I tried to take hard-hitting and revelatory stuff about UPMC that really raised eyebrows to City Paper, and I wouldn't even get a response email.

I stopped reading this several years ago, largely because I disagreed with the editorial priorities and direction of the editor at the time. I wanted a greater emphasis on reproductive rights in the Post-Dobbs era, whereas I thought it was obsessing over other issues. triblive.com/business/pit...

The real story with me is that an Uber driver spent a decade researching a critical moment in black history and then compiled a comprehensive history of abortion with the money he made delivering food and driving poor people around. During that time, he fought for equality and education.