NEW: I wrote about the misogyny I sat through at last night's PWHL game, blaming myself for how I responded in the moment (or didn't), and why my newsletter community was there to make it all feel a little more tolerable.

Avery Colvert was an eighth-grader when the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, Calif. It was the second natural disaster she’d survived; she was just 14 years old. Her family had lost their home in Nashville, Tennessee, to a flash flood in 2021. 19thnews.org/2026/01/alta... via @19thnews.org

National media who are coming to Minneapolis, please treat people respectfully. Don't burn sources. Don't make people distrust journalists because you want a quick story. Consider instead hiring some of the good local journalists who have been here doing the work and will be here after you leave.

looks like the CharacterAI case (Garcia v. Character Technologies) is being settled. this was the one where the last message sent from the Daeneyrs chatbot before a 14-year-old's suicide was "please come home to me as soon as possible." (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/t...

Fox Producer: Jesse Watters would like to invite you on his show AOC: He has sexualized and harassed me on his show. FP: That’s not true AOC: He accused me of wanting to sleep with Stephen Miller. So why don’t you tell me what you think is acceptable to tell a woman.

still seeing a lot of chatter about grok and not a lot on how to deal with being targeted. i wrote this last year and it has details on how to document abuse and who to go to for help removing images. 19thnews.org/2025/05/take...

Using imagery online of the shooting by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, we’ve created an animated sequence which highlights the approximate positioning of officers and vehicles at the scene. The red dot represents the agent who fired the shots. Yellow dots are other agents who arrived at the scene.

NEW: At least four videos show what really happened when ICE shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday. DHS has established itself as an agency that cannot be trusted to live in or present reality. Our latest:

I've been thinking more and more about the human work that models simply can't grasp, and there are some specific examples in this wonderful presentation.

i did not anticipate my degree in gender/art/media to be so on the nose for my career path

Five years after January 6, dozens of pardoned insurrectionists have been arrested again 19thnews.org/2026/01/janu... via @19thnews.org

a week ago i started writing down every time i had the urge to read a particular book instead of checking it out from the library or starting it and now I have a list of 36

Happy New Year, all. Back at work and back on the beat. What stories do you want us to be covering this year in LGBTQ+ news?

hey, I'm a reporter looking to talk with other LGBTQ+ folks about their relationship to smoking (cigarettes). are you trying to quit? did you pick it back up again recently? do all your friends smoke? let's talk! DM me or Signal me @orionr.80

In what Reuters called a "mass digital undressing spree,” Elon Musk is provoking outrage after his Grok chatbot answered user prompts to remove clothing from images of women and to create "sexualized images of children" to post on X. Justin Hendrix spoke to Stanford HAI's Riana Pfefferkorn about it:

"The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children told the outlet that xAI filed zero CSAM reports in 2024, despite the organization receiving 67,000 reports involving generative AI that year."

just gonna drop some links to a few papers of mine about AI-CSAM and the law here, for no particular reason cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/ai-csam... (May 2025) partnershiponai.org/hai-research... (November 2024) www.lawfaremedia.org/article/addr... (February 2024)

I've been tracking the spread of nonconsensual deepfakes on X for more than two years. Here's a timeline of how Musk's leadership allowed the practice to flourish from a once-underground market to a viral trend, with little recourse for victims or legal enforcement. spitfirenews.com/p/grok-csam-...

The Everlasting by Alix Harrow. My first one by this author, last read of 2025, ending a high note. If you liked Tamora Pierce growing up this is for you.

A personal/professional goal I made mid '25 that I'm continuing into '26 is to focus on the everyday Americans trying to make our country a better place, not the politicians trying to divide us. Casey Rollins in Springfield, OH, is one of those Americans: 19thnews.org/2025/12/spri...

Okay, might as well get this started. It's January 1, which means, as I'm sure you all know, that there's a whole new bunch of characters who have entered the public domain. This time around, it's characters created in 1930. The following is a list of pulp & pulpy characters now in the p.d. 1/

With so many new subscribers thanks to my Heated Rivalry content, I decided to extend the 20% off sale on paid subscriptions!

the heated rivalry press tour has made me delusional in a very specific way: i believe i could write better interview questions for our boys

If you're a media studies (or cognate field) scholar, and you write about "AI" robots, can you point me to your writing on the topic? Thank you!

wow sometimes everyone tells you a book will be good and then it's actually good

HEY SURVIVORS !! HEY ATTENTION TO ME beloveds you do not have to read or witness all of this . You do not have to re traumatize You don’t owe nobody nothing

my first @theguardian.com: I wrote about this year's "Drag Queen Christmas" tour stop in Pensacola, FL, which from the 1950s-70s hosted America's biggest LGBTQ event; the state AG tried to get the "demonic" show canceled. I talked to Florida drag queens and supporters that refuse to go underground:

Btw this is one of the biggest reasons why it’s not as easy as people think to start up independent newsrooms or just be an indie journalist on substack. If you are actually holding powerful and rich people to account, you WILL need legal representation. Not a matter of whether but when

I just wrote an article about this and decided not to publish it yet. It is in the DOJ files (file got renamed after originally published and taken down. It’s online now). But too many unknowns about whether the letter itself is real or not. Some additional info though:

The video has been taken down from YouTube. You can still download it here: is.gd/paU8Ko

i am trying to do some digital solstice-inspired cleaning and i resent every person whose email list i signed up for to stay in the loop about sales or new classes who then adds me to their substack without asking

Year's Longest Night, this side of the world. Wrap up inside the welcoming dark & bring it in to carry with you, in the light. The light will come tomorrow & we'll welcome that too, & the clarity & warmth it brings— but for now, esp in this era of weaponized surveillance, appreciate the dark, too

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

Experts working on policy regulating nonconsensual intimate images — AI-generated and otherwise — say they will now have to fight this new executive order on top of everything else. @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/how-might-tr...

"This moment is not as a crisis to manage, but as a mandate for change. Both NABJ and The 19th were founded as acts of disruption in service of truth. As America prepares to mark 250 years, journalism must do the same." @errinhaines.bsky.social's @niemanlab.org prediction for 2026.

MTG's ban on youth gender-affirming care would modify federal statues meant to address genital cutting, an extreme form of gender-based violence. It passed the House this week.

1/ At bargaining yesterday, @propublica.org management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.

"The newspaper industry served as a feeder for our entire news media ecosystem. So when we lose those newspapers, we've lost that journalism. In the early 2000s, we had 40 journalists per 100,000 people. We're now down to 8 journalists per 100,000 people," says @victorpickard.bsky.social.

some days, you are right on the money with the advent calendar. other days you forget and then you get to eat three pieces of chocolate. so. FOIA ADVENT ADHERENTS! A good batch of prompts are now up on the calendar, including some (late!) ones from this weekend! bit.ly/31-days-of-f...

Gender — and restrictive gender roles — are core to authoritarian projects. Society uses concepts of gender to sort people. Data both reflects and imposes these social definitions. Some notes from a speech about this last week: buttondown.com/stetdele/arc...

New from me: yesterday's executive order attacking states' right to pass their own laws is awful, but there are a bunch of reasons why the White House is at least likely to leave AI-CSAM and AI chatbot child safety laws alone. cyberlaw.stanford.edu/well-at-leas...

I am worried about what the new AI executive order means for laws addressing nonconsensual AI-generated deepfakes. The language of the order is so vague! (1/3)

The new AI executive order is huge for California, where tech policy often starts before migrating across the nation. See everything passed last session in this @techpolicypress.bsky.social piece, even though Gov. Newsom vetoed a lot: www.techpolicy.press/what-tech-bi...

We are trying to raise $30k. It sounds like a lot but $5, $10 or $20/month makes a huge difference in our ability to plan for the future. Recurring donations are how I support my fav independent media! the19th.donorsupport.co/-/NRLEQSZH

I was able to interview Indigenous photographer Cara Romero about her stunning art in her "First American Doll" series. If you need a visual pick-me-up this is it. 19thnews.org/2025/12/firs...

The latest iternation of the Protect Children's Innocence Act dangerously conflates trans health care with female genital mutilation and cutting. That has made it more difficult to pass laws trying to actually stop FGM/C, an extreme form of gender violence. 19thnews.org/2025/10/anti...

The team at @19thnews.org does vital reporting at the intersection of gender, politics, and policy that - as @jazzmyth.bsky.social points out - might not happen anywhere else. All their reporting is free and openly licensed. They deserve your support and attention.

I feel very strongly that I wouldn't be able to write my stories anywhere other than @19thnews.org. From covering a year of cuts to domestic violence programs to investigating the freak out over falling birth rates — I need your support to keep doing this work. the19th.donorsupport.co/-/NRLEQSZH

okay, i filled out the google form asking for verification months ago. should i just submit it again?

This is a really good article that more people on this site should be reading