A subcommittee of Iowa lawmakers has recommended passage of a bill that would once again allow judges and prosecutors to charge defendants court fees in dismissed cases. The practice was ended by a state Supreme Court ruling last month.

Habeas cases filed by immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have taken off to levels we have never seen before. Just look at that chart. www.propublica.org/article/habe...

BREAKING: On February 2, Sec. Noem issued a memo asserting the lapse in appropriations for DHS meant there is no Sec. 527 — the provision protecting congressional oversight visits to immigration detention facilities — and she was issuing a new (third) policy requiring seven-day notice for visits.

Massachusetts is the only state run by Democrats that still partners with ICE. I dug into this and found that it’s had profound and very troubling consequences: at least 164 people funneled straight from state prisons to ICE since 2023 alone. New in @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/massachusett...

The Trump admin has used 2339A—the “material support for terrorism” statute—against Black Lives Matter protesters in Alabama and anti-ICE demonstrators in Texas. The ex-DOJ prosecutor who pioneered the use of 2339A says he's never seen anything like it. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-d...

BREAKING: A 5th Circuit panel has backed ICE's mass detention policy, a decision that clears the way for the administration to lock up people who are in immigration proceedings It's a 2-1 ruling Majority: Jones (Reagan), Duncan (Trump) Minority: Douglas (Obama) s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

UPDATE: The layoffs announcements at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are trickling in. They include: • Allie Gross, an investigative reporter, and • Jozsef Papp, a crime and public safety reporter So far, all of the (publicly) laid-off reporters are women and/or people of color.

@ethanscorey.bsky.social and I have published a database of congressmembers who take money from GEO Group + CoreCivic. Find out if your reps have taken cash from the companies fueling ICE’s mass deportation efforts. Published in @theappeal.org + @inthesetimes.com. theappeal.org/ice-cold-cas...

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

DOJ: The death rate among state prisoners increased 47% between 2019 and 2024 ... The deaths include homicides, suicides and violence, and the report concluded that understaffing and high turnover “likely contribute” to the increase

New: Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray and HR Chief Wayne Connell tell employees to stay home for a zoom webinar ahead of “significant actions across the company.” Widely expected layoffs are scheduled to begin today.

In the Bay Area, local prosecutors have charged student protesters who participated in pro-Palestine demonstrations with felony-level charges that critics are warning are setting a dangerous template for law enforcement responses. @psfrench.bsky.social reports on what's going on in this new piece:

Among the batch of newly released emails from Jeffrey Epstein: Epstein telling Peter Thiel he would “gladly share…expenses for the Gawker suit.” This was sent the day after @rmac.bsky.social and @mattdrange.bsky.social reported in Forbes that Thiel was behind the lawsuit that would bankrupt Gawker

Ooops. I left out the link. It's from @mathewingram.com's daily send of serendipities: newsletter.mathewingram.com/a-young-poet...

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

NEW in Bolts: How are neighbors jumping into action and what powers do state and local officials have to restrict ICE or hold agents accountable? Send us your questions.

The federal judge overseeing Rikers has finally chosen someone to run NYC's jails, wresting control from the city - a former CIA officer and former head of Vermont Department of Corrections: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/n...

Keith Rabois has been a Thiel acolyte since they were both at Stanford. Rabois infamously harassed a gay instructor, shouting slurs and telling him to "die of AIDS" outside his home. (Rabois is also friends with Sam Altman--Altman officiated Rabois's wedding to Jacob Helberg, a Trump tech advisor.)

News: The Washington Post is preparing to slash upwards of 300 staffers, incl sports, metro and foreign desks @nataliekorach.bsky.social reports. “The newsroom is being punished for absolute incompetence from the owner and publisher,” one staffer told @status.news www.status.news/p/washington...

NEW: I spoke with the Texas inmate who was put in solitary confinement after a GoFundMe for her sick prison cat went viral. While she's since been returned to regular housing, she and her longtime friend worry that more retaliation could be on the way. www.chron.com/culture/arti...

NEW: I've updated the Third-Country Removal Tracker with new info on Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Israel. gillianbrockell.ghost.io/tracking-all... 1/

Witnesses say a man was shot by a federal agent in south Minneapolis this morning. The Minnesota Star Tribune is on the scene: www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...

People are dying in ICE detention at highest rate in decades. Including three since August at a new camp in Texas. ICE is blocking attempts to get answers. They haven't let lawmakers visit. Quote -> www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/u... Chart -> www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Breaking WaPo: The recent death of a detainee at an immigrant detention camp in Texas has been officially deemed a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner.

In 2024, Gavin Newsom sent a "surge" of California Highway Patrol officers to combat crime in Oakland. But in the first year of the surge, state troopers arrested very few violent criminals. Instead they stopped 15,000 Black and Latino drivers. oaklandside.org/2026/01/21/n...

Khawla somehow manages to _understate_ the amount of time and effort she put into this piece. Please give it a read!

In February 2021, seven men sat down to pray in a Missouri prison. Within minutes, guards put them in shackles and covered them in pepper spray. The incident highlights the dangers Muslims face practicing their religion in prison, @khawlanakua.bsky.social reports. theappeal.org/pepper-spray...

In one of his final moves before leaving office today, NJ Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed bills aimed at protecting immigrants out of fear it would invite legal challenges from the Trump admin. Immigrant advocates decried the decision: "ICE is already here, kidnapping people." boltsmag.org/new-jersey-g...

1. ICE has STOPPED PAYING for medical treatment for its 73,000 detainees ICE has not paid its bills to 3rd party providers since OCTOBER and the situation will likely persist for MONTHS, a Popular Information investigation reveals Meanwhile, critically ill ICE detainees are not receiving care 🧵

New from 404 Media: ICE's facial recognition app, which the agency is using to decide who to detain and deport, misidentified a woman. Twice. ICE says results of the app are definitive and override a birth certificate; obviously this case shows the app is inaccurate www.404media.co/ices-facial-...

More people have died in ICE custody during the first three weeks of 2026 than died during the first three months of 2025

Update: The admin is moving to quickly deport witnesses who saw ICE detainee die. They say the man was just trying to get his meds. ICE guards shackled him Then they choked him. The admin moved to deport the witnesses — right after they spoke to WaPo. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

ICE confirms 5th in-custody death of 2026. www.ice.gov/news/release...

In case you missed it, our investigation from earlier this week: Amid a MASSIVE expansion in immigration detention in 2025, the number of ICE detention facility inspections dropped by 36.25%. Read more in this collaboration between POGO and American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop:

In Louisiana, a man drowned being chased by ICE agents. www.nola.com/news/crime_p...

well, that's reassuring

Combining state-backed racial violence with petty crime gives real Gun Trace Task Force vibes

BREAKING: We've found 40+ cases of agents using banned chokeholds & other moves that can cut off breathing People have had seizures. They passed out. “I felt like I was going to die” said 16-yr-old citizen Admin won't say whether any agents have been punished www.propublica.org/article/vide...

Eerie how much Greg Bovino looks like Col. Steven J. Lockjaw was hit by the shrink ray from "Honey I Shrunk the Kids"

Gift link! (Dewan is a great reporter.) Authorities Often Justify Motorist Shootings by Saying the Vehicle Was a Weapon By Shaila Dewan Federal officials said the Minneapolis driver who was shot by an immigration agent was using her vehicle as a weapon, a claim that local officials have disputed.

Genuinely disturbing that "America has an [INSERT ETHNICITY HERE] problem" has become this normalized in U.S. politics.

Not to be a RETVRN guy, but this just feels like the latest and most extreme in a series of increasingly incoherent dietary guidelines infographics. The original food pyramid may have been _wrong_, but at least it communicated its message clearly.

via Minneapolis photographer Chris Juhn on Facebook

Check out this fascinating feature by @burness.bsky.social on an effort to criminally prosecute American Samoans living in Alaska for participating in local politics. Learn how colonialism, voter fraud myths, and small-town politics collided in rural Alaska: boltsmag.org/prosecuted-f...

Our first investigation of the year just landed, and it’s a doozy. More than 1,000 children across Texas were affected by this. Through interviews with more than a dozen former employees and the review of internal documents and court records, The Barbed Wire found:

NEW: A judge ruled Dec. 30 in my lawsuit that Northwestern DA David Sullivan’s office cannot block the public from seeing the names and case numbers of police officers who have been charged with crimes like possession of child pornography, assault and battery, and driving under the influence.

New in partnership with @invisible.institute and @phoenixnewtimes.com: Scotty Bach left the Seattle Police Department after an investigation found that he had attended Trump's rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Phoenix hired him anyway: theappeal.org/phoenix-poli...

Greg Bovino is headed to Minneapolis for a 30 day surge.

The split-screen here is unbelievable - first from yesterday, the others from 2017. Musk’s Twitter has truly driven us mad. People absorb far more of their beliefs from their social environment than they realize, and we’ve created an environment where being a gutter bigot is the baseline expectation