freelance journo friends, I'll be at this drop-in! Come hang out.

I savored every word of this article by @oliviamesser.bsky.social Every word. Just brilliant, hopeful, and fucking here.

I wrote the first version of this draft almost exactly a year ago, but I wasn’t ready. I am now. thebarbedwire.com/2025/10/27/t...

I love this quote so much. The punishment for being poor is all too often further poverty, handed down from generation to generation.

This headlines did something to my brain. You can forget what's possible sometimes!!

Sometimes I'll read the Wall Street Journal because they publish way fewer pictures of RUMP and crew than WaPo and the New York Times. There's only so much butthole mouth I can take. Frankly, I'd prefer no butthole mouth ever again.

I left Instagram recently, am not on X, and haven't been on Facebook since 2013, when I deleted my account and never looked back. I no longer want to work for Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk--two morally bankrupt men who have been allowed to dictate how we live our lives.

Just had this thought: Call mom. Ask if her food stamps are still active.

Love!

Excited to do more long-form journalism about mental health—it’s been a long time coming & I had to work on my own mental health first before diving into the wreck. More soon.

This is terrific reporting on a cruel and exploitative state government scam designed to impoverish families after having a loved one dies, who required Medicaid coverage for the cost of their care. It should be illegal in all states.

we’ll see how his mayoral tenure shakes out but i am convinced that Mamdani has the juice. not just the charisma to win an election but the temperament to govern and the measured pragmatism of someone who genuinely believes what they’re saying and wants to accomplish real things.

Bernie Sanders tells @nicholsuprising.bsky.social that the Democratic Party is made up of folks who have money. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-mamdani/?utm_campaign=SproutSocial&utm_content=The+Nation+Magazine&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky

For nearly two decades, the state’s Medicaid Estate Recovery Program has filed repayment claims against Medicaid recipients after they die, threatening the inheritances of vulnerable Texans. buff.ly/kH0rSNE

100%!

Damn, try to follow this logic.

NEW: We sent @stevanzetti.bsky.social to a Turning Point USA event, where Attorney General Ken Paxton was the keynote speaker — just hours after he announced his “undercover operations to infiltrate and uproot leftist terror cells in Texas.” It went how you expect. thebarbedwire.com/2025/10/08/k...

@kitoconnell.com is doing such great work. This bill is disgraceful.

I wrote about the inherent contradiction between the Trump administration's MAHA agenda and its refusal to investigate or halt the dumping of toxic chemicals into our food, water and air. theintercept.com/2025/10/02/r...

Public Citizen identified eight companies that received nearly $1B in non-competitive state contracts between 2014—2024. During those same years, these companies, their PACs, their officers, and their employees donated nearly $3M to Texans for Greg Abbott PAC. www.citizen.org/article/awar...

Thorough and important coverage on Medicaid estate recovery, a policy that continues to be understudied, misunderstood, and deeply harmful to families. Behind every bad policy is somehow always, disturbingly, private equity. Follow up this article with our recent MER paper in @jhppl.bsky.social

Trump hastens plan to deny domestic workers the minimum wage. www.texasobserver.org/texas-domest...

Private Equity: The “Texas Health & Human Services Commission hired HMS to handle the MERP administration, paying the company a 12.5% commission on any recovered funds ... HMS is owned by Gainwell Technologies, which is owned in turn by a private equity firm, Veritas Capital, worth $50 billion.”

You will be shocked to learn that the company the state sends to take people's houses is owned by private equity. Yes someone's making a profit from this ghoulish venture.

Troubling. If we were going to do this, we shouldn’t outsource it for someone to profit off of.

I had to get a lawyer to get POA on my dad who was already in a nursing home with Alzheimer's when my mom passed unexpectedly and then get a Lady Bird deed to avoid this very thing. We were privileged enough to go thru a year+ process. TX gonna TX

It’s the little things, like when a story I wrote shows up in my google alerts.

Important Medicaid programs are being cut right now. The Medicaid Estate Recovery Program is the sort of program the government SHOULD get rid of, instead it’s going after the health care benefits that people actually need. MERP is wasteful spending at its absolute worst.

A few years ago, I didn’t even know how to write a book review. Now I’m writing long form features. As a freelancer, I’ve had to hustle and grind. Most of the stories I do would not exist without grant funding. A handful of editors & organizations are the ONLY reason I get to do this work at all.

Brilliant piece by @josephinelee.bsky.social No need to repeat that Trump has never cared about the working poor. That’s pretty clear by now.

Tomorrow, I’m teaching a class on how to write an artist statement. I searched for the last artist statement that I wrote and what I found blew my hair back. My statement was so bold and vulnerable and true to who I am as a writer. After I reread it I thought, “Damn, that was brave.”

BREAKING: The Federal Bureau of Prisons just terminated its union's collective bargaining agreement this afternoon, according to this letter posted online by the national union president:

Hahahaha!!

As far as I remember from J-school, the media’s job is to hold power to account. And that’s what journalists are doing.

This is a “just keep going” type of moment. A refusal to get knocked off course by hopelessness and despair. I write a list of all the names I love.

What a lovely way to start the morning with such sweet words from a friend and fellow creative soul! Thanks @mistermysterio.bsky.social

Yep, this is pretty much the image I picture.

There are 600,000 of you who now follow us on Bluesky 🦋 As journalists ourselves, we understand that regularly reading stories about broken systems can take a toll, and we never take the community here for granted. Thank you to all of you who care deeply about the work we do.

Now this is the club for me!

Our top story: Ostensibly, medical care in American prisons should look just like medical care offered outside prisons. But decades of litigation and scandals have shown that correctional healthcare occupies a space wholly its own.

Blood, sweat, and tears in each issue.

So much love for this poem by KB Brookins. 💗

I have a master of public health, but it wasn’t until my grandmother got sick and started researching what assistance was available that I found out exactly how states use Medicaid to essentially steal from families that can’t afford to pay for treatment. They’re almost state-run reverse mortgages.

This story took a very long time to report, but it was so worth it.

So much love for this memoir by Neko Case. If you grew up in the PNW in the 80s/90s, you'll experience massive waves of nostalgia and want to bust out those albums you used to listed to on cassette tape.

I'm a day late to #1000wordsofsummer! But I'm here now, streaming services canceled, snacks in the cupboard ready to ROCK. 🥁☠️🛹📓

I’m trying to come up with a mission statement for my role as a freelancer. Right now “it’s finish next assignment, then get a full time admin job.” In a beautiful handwritten script this could work on my company letterhead.

Gawd, I love a bingeable book. (Yes, I’m aware I’m very late to the party but that’s how this old b*tch rolls.) But seriously, I’m giving up two TV nights for this book. @rfkuang.bsky.social

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Season 2 of Severance is just bad. I don't know what happened to the writing but I can picture it all melting down in the writer's room. Everyone under pressure. Lots of different "visions" and no secret sauce.

I need a law degree to understand what's going on with my student loans right now.