I am heartbroken to share the devastating news of the death of my dear friend, Paul Conroy. Paul died of a heart attack. He did not hesitate. He faced his final moments with courage and dignity.

The first US president in history to announce a war while wearing a baseball cap.

grim stats here — particularly in the sunbelt compared to the northeast — and right to include in the toll of deadly accidents those who (blameless or not) survive behind the wheel www.economist.com/united-state...

boy I don't know www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Much attention is rightfully paid to the victims. But far too little is given to the tens of thousands of people struggling after unintentionally taking a life

If you're a Londoner, you should be subscribing to London Centric

The Washington Post's description of the bodycam video of his arrest last year, and the translation of Mr. Shah Alam's comments, is gutting. Remember, he was entirely blind in one eye and could only see three feet in the other, and he spoke virtually no English. He spent a year in jail for this.

Wow

Perfect @zachweinersmith.bsky.social cartoon

Breaking news: A federal judge found that the IRS violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer.

'IT ENDS TODAY': A federal judge in NJ says the Trump admin has continued to violate court orders in immigration cases and says he's prepared to haul in DOJ and DHS officials under oath. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Don't miss my letter to the editor in the @chicago.suntimes.com : When 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins asks, “Am I supposed to close all of the restaurants?” [to enforce road safety rules] he’s presenting a false choice. chicago.suntimes.com/letters-to-t...

NYT: Immigration Agents Arrest Student Inside Columbia Building, School Says By Sharon Otterman Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said that the federal officials had misrepresented themselves to gain access. GIFT LINK!

NEW: Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils & paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to detainees and others. After one inspection, the children just “cried and cried and cried,” a mother said. The facility denies the claims. By @mckenziefunk.com @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Jim has just dominated this story

My article this week, on how domestic migration into the Midwest has turned positive for the first time... in decades probably? www.economist.com/united-state... The most plausible reason why is the declining appeal and affordability of the South rather than the Midwest getting cool, but hey

WATCH: Gregory Bovino asks journalist Amanda Moore to bake him a pie. “Perhaps you could make the pie for us,” Bovino tweeted at Moore. Then it got even weirder.

So roughly still 6X pre-surge, down from 16X, and planning for 3X long run.

This post is the single best advert for the fact that proper local journalism matters. If Jim’s team hadn’t put the pieces together quickly, this wouldn’t have been stopped.

Waymo cars delivered to Chicago today, and the trucks are illegally parked in the bike lane 🙃

Well here's a post that makes me regret living next to the blue line

Correct. This is why I still make notes through all of my interviews, despite having access to great transcription software

One of those evenings where I would give an extraordinary sum of money to be transported to a dimly-lit courtyard bar in Goma to watch a Congolese rumba band while drinking Tembo and eating barbecued goat

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is suspending the TSA PreCheck and Global Entry airport security programs as a partial government shutdown continues. n.pr/40tsZAN

Went to some stand up comedy tonight. I have developed a new rule of American stand-up that I am increasingly sure is 100% accurate: anybody who makes jokes about dating apps or sex is going to be utterly awful, and on any given night, that will be half the set. The other half will be great

Obviously nostalgia engagement bait is dumb but I do not remember being livid in 2006. I had an iPod, went to gigs every week for like £10, picked up NME at HMV, and then did a ski season in Canada

It’s startling how much more urban third-tier Canadian cities are compared to Midwestern cities in the US that once saw their competition as Chicago, or booming Sunbelt cities

This clip is all over the other place and has made its way onto GB News and Talk TV so I’ll do a bit of an explainer here too! The clip doing the rounds is of a fantastic police officer telling a group of Muslim men that a Christian preacher nearby is entitled to freedom of expression. 🧵 1/19

Daniel Knowles, our Midwest correspondent, on why the civil-rights fight feels newly urgent

For those not following along, when transit vehicles go faster they complete more trips in a day and you can get the same service level for fewer vehicles and a lower wage bill

Next para: "A regime of secret policing has no place in our society. Here, the Government’s power is derived by the People, and the People must be able to identify the Government when it acts to infringe on their liberty."

Making people pay for street parking in this gridlocked city? That could generate $1.3 billion—yes, billion—each year. And unlike taxing the rich, this revenue idea is completely within the City's power to implement. Now we're talking! hellgatenyc.com/feed-the-met...

ICE shot and killed an American citizen last March but DHS involvement was only recently revealed. They again claim the victim hit a federal agent when ordered out of his vehicle near an unrelated crash. But witness statements contradict the official account. No video has emerged.

👀The federal judges in West Virginia, where ICE has been pulling over and detaining people on the freeway, are literally screaming about ICE's tactics. "It is an assault on the constitutional order," Judge Goodwin says. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF

“All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it. And yet, likely because of the same personality flaws that drew me to technology in the first place, I am annoyingly excited.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/o...

"An Associated Press reporter was beaten by the police and detained along with three other journalists on Tuesday in Cameroon while reporting on a secretive Trump administration program to deport migrants to the Central African country, according to two of the people detained." (gift link)

Phenomenal journalism in my own publication here, reported from a Ukrainian border crossing where people fleeing occupied territories can get back into government-held Ukraine www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

1. DHS surges 3,000 officers to Minneapolis without doing anywhere near enough prep first. 2. Hundreds of habeas cases overwhelm local courts. 3. Dozens of DOJ lawyers quit in disgust/anger. 4. The DOJ brings in JAGs to cover. 5. A JAG was just held in contempt and fined $500/day for ICE's failures.

My neighbours just posted a note through our door suggesting we write to our alderman to oppose a new housing development by our street. I can't vote so I doubt my alderman will care about my opinion but thinking of organising a campaign in support

Carney's incredible secret sauce seems to be - say what the problem is, whose fault it is, what you will have to do about it and what it will cost.

Univision correspondent Lidia Terrazas reports: Dilley pediatric concentration camp guards searched for & destroyed children’s letters & drawings (Last week, ProPublica published letters & drawings from children imprisoned at that concentration camp.)

“In plain language, Sanchez Estrada is facing up to 20 years behind bars for allegedly moving a box of anarchist zines from his parents’ house to another residence in his hometown of Dallas.”

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.” - 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas. Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children. www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

Stephen Colbert said that the FCC and CBS - which is in no way a compromised or complicit organization - wouldn’t allow him to broadcast an interview with Democratic State Rep James Talarico. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/a...

I have a pet theory that a non-trivial share of modern frustrations trace back to over-optimization. We get to see the early fruits of incredible innovation...but then, someone tries to squeeze the last 10% of blood from the proverbial turnip and it all goes to heck. Customer service often the 10%.

I have spent an entire afternoon anxiously waiting for the delivery of a whole box of stuff that has already been returned to the UK once and then crossed the Atlantic again. The UPS delivery vehicle was, according to their tracking, literally maybe 200ft from my house. Delivery then... failed?

Been working on a story recently that is off the usual newsy topics, and AI reassuringly crap for even basic research. Hallucinating plausible quotes with source links that are not even interviews. Underlines how much AI briefings are parasitical on people actually gathering information

Minnesota criminal investigators have again been denied access to evidence and other materials collected by federal authorities after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, state officials said Monday.

I basically think about 95% of the rage directed at AI should be pointed at shortform video instead