Got a tip recently about how Trump's tariffs are preventing libraries from sharing books, and causing their loaned books to get stuck or lost in other countries: www.404media.co/libraries-ca...

It’s true. I still recall fondly perhaps my favorite headline I’ve ever written, one from probably a decade ago that resembled this lede, after a truck full of butter got wedged beneath an underpass on the Hutch: “Crashed butter truck clogs major NY artery.” Is there anything more satisfying?

As Trump's ban on trans people in the military took effect, we spoke with some San Diego-area members about their lives, plans and uncertainty, and whether they'll leave the service quietly. Most of them won't. As one Marine said: "Come and find me." www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/07/13/s...

Who's ICE arresting in San Diego? Mainly people with no criminal records, our analysis found. "While 20% of arrests in April were of individuals without criminal convictions or charges, it rose to 62% in May and 76% in early June, according to the data." www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/07/06/w...

This is exactly what the data in San Diego bear out, per @sandiegouniontribune.com reporting. "While 20% of arrests in April were of individuals without criminal convictions or charges, it rose to 62% in May and 76% in early June, according to the data." www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/07/06/w...

“Palestinians arriving at the sites say they are caught between Israeli & American fire, said the contractor who shared videos with the AP. ‘We have come here to get food for our families. We have nothing,’ he recounted Palestinians telling him. ‘Why do you shoot at us?’” apnews.com/article/pale...

It’s true! As for the immigration stances of the candidates in the race that will decide which party controls San Diego County? Lucas Robinson recently dug into what they’ve said — and refused to say — about ICE, legal aid & more. Check it out: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/06/10/w...

Kristen Taketa investigated a small charter school network with huge executive pay—& cozy ties with its top vendor. The CEO quit 2 days after our story ran. But public records reveal how she & her predecessor built a lavish lifestyle running the network. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/06/22/e...

"For at least the part of the day that the religious leaders were inside courtrooms, there were no arrests outside. Pham and others said they witnessed ICE agents in the hallway as they entered the courtrooms, but said they then left." www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/06/20/f...

“Obviously, [the New York Times editorial board] decided they didn’t care enough about New York City to make an editorial endorsement, and then they show up with this wimpy, disingenuous editorial basically justifying why people should vote for someone corrupt in Andrew Cuomo.”

“If you go into coverage with the resources of the NYT looking for people to tell you there’s a problem, you’ll find a problem … & if you’re the NYT, more people will flock to you to ask you to tell that story — no matter how contorted the focus of your reporting becomes because of that.” Read this:

This essay by @juliaserano.bsky.social — on the parallels between the Covid “lab leak” theory & conspiracy theories about the origins of transness — is so, so, so smart & succinct & necessary. juliaserano.substack.com/p/what-covid...

If an 11,000-word story has a major, factual error in the fifth graf, it probably should be seen for the biased, hit-piece it is.

Grossmont trustees regularly talked board business (& griped about perceived political enemies) in private messages, raising questions of open meetings law violations, per records Kristen Taketa & @jemmakstephenson.bsky.social obtained. Hell of a story: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/06/13/g...

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria & local Jewish groups are backing away from the city’s Pride festival over headliner Kehlani’s remarks on Israel. Gloria also told the groups that SD Pride revised the singer’s contract to bar “engaging in political speech.” www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/06/06/g...

A huge step from HHS that is at odds with science showing significant risks for young children and pregnant women — and that directly contradicts *the FDA's own publication* from last week listing pregnancy as a high-risk condition that would qualify people for this fall's Covid vaccine

“The subtext of this rhetoric is menacing. It suggests that the loyalty of noncitizens should be seen as inherently suspect—and that they should be seen … as a fifth column of potential spies and saboteurs, whose sleeper-cell progeny shouldn’t be given citizenship for the security of the republic.”

“N.W.S. staff will have an impossible task to continue its current level of services,” the NWS leaders write in the letter. “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

Just coming out and saying you want to put Harvard under a federal receivership because they made Bill de Blasio an adjunct puts the lie to all the other attacks they've made on higher ed in the last few months under the guise of combating anti-semitism.

HIV prevention. Violence against pregnant women. Autism in children. Trump's funding cuts are halting research into these issues & more in San Diego. Kristen Taketa spoke with local scientists about their work & the cuts' impacts. Here're their stories. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/03/30/s...

The two strangers were 18 years & two times zones apart. But a persistent case of mistaken identity by police cost one man his job & landed the other in jail for 7 weeks. This from @kellylynndavis.bsky.social is a Kafkaesque nightmare, & a hell of a read. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/03/30/a...

NEW: The move — along with the CDC’s explanation — is a sign that the nation’s top public health agency may be falling in line under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines. By @sheinvestigates.bsky.social

Cuomo delayed vaccines to a mass-vax site for weeks at the height of COVID & threatened to have NYC health commish “arrested over his interpretation of which first responders were eligible for early vaccines & how those vaccines would be administered,” per Politico. www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

wrote about the common denominator in all the stories of CBP arresting, deporting, and in one case allegedly torturing legal immigrants at airports: mass surveillance www.theverge.com/policy/63284...

“The message, consistent and unrelenting, is that trans people are a threat to the nation. The subtext is that we are not of this nation.” Essential reading from @mashagessen.bsky.social here: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/o...

“Most of Trump's attacks mirror the Times' past news & opinion coverage on trans issues. The paper may not have explicitly called for restrictions on trans passports or for a trans military ban, but few … have done such an efficient job at laundering transphobia.” Spot-on @katelynburns.com critique:

The idea that there should be a public debate about the appropriate medical care for a minuscule population of children remains one of the most absurd lies that these liberal transphobes, NYT edit board included, tell themselves. No there shouldn’t! It’s not an appropriate matter for public debate!

SCOOP: Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

One impact of the NSF freeze: They fund the small nonprofit, EarthScope, that manages seismic and GPS stations used worldwide to detect and warn of earthquakes and navigate autonomous vehicles. EarthScope can maybe make payroll this week. A prolonged freeze could see stations fail.

The San Diego sheriff released its first records as required under a new state oversight law prompted by the county’s persistent pattern of jail deaths. Those records offer damning details of what precipitated some deaths. They also seem to lack key information, @kellylynndavis.bsky.social reports:

NEW: Elon Musk's friends have infiltrated the GSA and they're looking for ways to use White House credentials to access agency tech, potentially allowing them to remote into laptops, read emails, and more, sources say. w/ @zoeschiffer.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

Breaking: We contacted 38 prison & jail facilities in the LA area to ask how they’re preparing for air quality issues, possible evacuations, and power outages. Thousands of people—including hundreds of children—sit in potentially impacted facilities. theappeal.org/los-angeles-...

“…the patriarchal binary is deeply impoverished when it comes to ways of describing, naming, or thinking about gender.” This line is affects me like a harmonic resonance in Jude’s excellent easy. Please, give it a read and then a think, consider the myriad of Steves.

Excellent reporting from @kellylynndavis.bsky.social on how San Diego jails treat people with mental illness — in particular their persistent habit, despite warnings, of triple bunking those in custody. One previously unreported death is a case study. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/12/22/d...

Somber piece from @americalabs.org about the demise of our open gov institutions. "We are at twilight, and the light is failing rapidly. It’s time to pay the electric bill or get used to the darkness." https://www.thebulwark.com/p/open-government-nonprofits-are-dying-off-just-when-needed-most 1/

“In 2014, the California State Auditor found many violations of the consent process leading up to the sterilization procedures, including physicians failing to sign documents certifying that the women ‘appeared mentally competent’… They also found that the sterilizations were not always reported.”

💥 My 2024 Mile Marker: The inside scoop on how America lost control of the Bird Flu, opening the door for another pandemic. "We're in a terrible situation" said @angierasmussen.bsky.social 🧵Here's how we got here & how to get out @kffhealthnews.bsky.social kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

I'm at @theverge.com today talking about digital decay, link rot, watching my work slowly being erased from the internet, and how it makes me feel like I am fading away.

This. There’s no good reason audience jobs shouldn’t be considered as legitimate a training ground for editorial management as, say, copy desk jobs. I suspect the reason folks get stuck in audience/digital, taken less seriously as editors & afforded less growth has more to do with the demographics.

“I feel the absences of the disappeared. Even as some become nameless, the edges of their shrouds sometimes still brush against my skin.” This is so, so good.

"Homeless Californians represent nearly 0.5% of the state’s population, suggesting they are about 40 times as likely as others to end up at the hospital for hypothermia." kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

ICYMI: Fantastic deep dive on Awaken Church & why its Coronado expansion is sparking such fierce opposition — along with uneasy debate among local Christian leaders about faith, freedom of expression, love, hate & Awaken's unabashed right-wing politics. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/12/15/i...

Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs, including abolishing the FDIC www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

'Substack has become the Amazon of publishing. It offers the consensual hallucination of independence and ownership while deceivingly consolidating control and dictating the terms of success for sellers (i.e. you, the writers).' A really sharp look at Substack's business model.

“House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., left no ambiguity about the legislation’s intent, saying it would work by ‘permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors’ on military insurance.”

“This is not an abstract case, and the result will have real effects. It is good for the justices to face that — and good for the rest of us, including those trans people who will be affected by their decision, that trans people were in the courtroom forcing the justices to do so.”

If the IRS wants to get serious about cracking down on bad actors, start here: www.propublica.org/article/irs-...

In one of the strangest chapters of my life, I spent several months in the trenches of Big Headlight, looking to understand just how and why headlights became brighter than the sun. Answers, graphs, penis sketches—it's all here, on the brand new Ringer site: www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/t...

ICYMI: San Diego is quietly scrambling to fend off a developer & hang onto Liberty Station—part of a previously unseen fight for control of the sprawling complex. David Garrick goes deep in this scoop, unearthed (like many!) from an obscure agenda item: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/12/01/w...