CBS didn't air the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, but @propublica.org talked earlier this year to those who Trump had sent to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador: www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8IN...

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

PR declines reporters' requests for comment absolutely all the time! We owe it to any subject the chance to respond, tell them they have 2 days or asap or whatever, and proceed with with comment or noting they declined or didn't respond. A dance that happens with practically every news story you see

Imagine if just by refusing to comment, you could stop any story from running. You would literally never find out anything unflattering about anybody. It amounts to asking people for their blessing to publish your reporting about them.

Wow. Sharyn Alfonsi said, "In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

CBS News chief Bari Weiss pulls 60 Minutes story Weiss said investigation had to include comments from Trump administration 60M's ⁦‪Sharyn Alfonsi‬⁩ said multiple US agencies refused to comment - and this lets WH veto coverage My NPR story www.npr.org/2025/12/22/g...

Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.

When the Sunday scares hit

2025 really couldn’t end without taking one more thing from us 😫😫 www.vulture.com/article/marb...

"Memorial"

The Supreme Court refused Friday to prohibit a lower court from reviewing an administrative board’s competency, rejecting a request from President Donald Trump in an ongoing fight over the free speech of immigration judges. @kelseyreichmann.bsky.social www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...

It's so weird that the "surprise" "vote" happened yesterday but they had the external lettering, tarps, and crew all ready to go.

Wonder if/how this might impact the case pending right now at the Supreme Court, in which the administration is defending the federal law barring marijuana users from owning guns against Second Amendment challenge.

An F-35 pilot's helmet costs roughly 3 penises

Well that helps to explain this Brooks column from last month. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o...

this is nuts

“Sorry, a WHAT?!,” exclaimed the military about its commander-in-chief.

Video on TikTok shows Scott Bessent storming out of Reveler’s Hour in D.C. after a confrontation www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8y2vA1g/

NEW: President Trump is expanding the previous 19-country travel ban to a whopping 39 countries (plus the Palestinian Authority), and appears to expand a block on legal immigration to now include spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens, who were previously exempted.

Nearly 2 months ago Trump asked SCOTUS for help deploying National Guard troops to Illinois. The justices have yet to issue a ruling despite the "emergency" posture of the appeal www.courthousenews.com/calling-prot...

"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.

Almost like he's in a dying industry where even making it to a senior position isn't all that much to write home about in terms of benefits and job stability, despite being a huge achievement competitively. Surely this must be the fault of women and Blacks, not of structural changes in the economy!

Once had a conversation with a photographer who explained that a portrait wasn't supposed to offer dermatological documentation. He would gently blur photos (keeping the eyes and mouth crisp) to present people in the best light. Just thinking of that as I look at this photo of Leavitt in VF.

But please, tell me more about the male loneliness epidemic because that’s obviously our most pressing issue abcnews4.com/news/local/n...

11 GOP-led states submit brief supporting Trump's SCOTUS appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

New analysis from @fairfightaction.bsky.social says that SCOTUS' Callais ruling could eliminate 191 state legislative seats held by Dems. The report claims that 9 out of 10 forfeited districts could be Black majority districts — eliminating nearly half of all Black-majority districts in the South.

Serious questions about the delay on the Illinois National Guard deployment emergency application courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...

"The court won't decide anything for Trump," the writer says over a case literally brought by Trump asking the court to do the thing he wants, which it has already done via the shadow docket.

As we mourn Rob Reiner, don’t skip this: he was, pretty much, personally responsible for overturning California’s Prop 8 banning same sex marriage. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

tysm for honoring me

Blaming “the media” for the political ill of the day is boring and unimaginative

A reminder that immigration judges work for the Justice Department, meaning they are not actual judges, and the administration now calls them “deportation judges” after pushing a bunch of them out.

".... an outbreak of infant botulism tied to recalled ByHeart baby formula ... now includes at least 51 infants in 19 states." apnews.com/article/byhe... via @apnews.com

The SG seems to have asked for immediate administrative stays in most if not all his applications.

NASCAR, Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing reached a settlement agreement Thursday, toward the end of a two-week trial in which the teams accused the sports racing company of violating antitrust law. @shaulenbeek.bsky.social www.courthousenews.com/nascar-teams...

In an interview with Politico, Trump says he hadn't thought of whether he'd retroactively apply his birthright citizenship order But WH lawyers have thought about it, at least that was my understanding of the EO which says it applies to individuals born 30 days after the date of the order

2025 in a snapshot

Two painstaking hours of arguments on Wednesday left the Supreme Court no closer to untangling whether an Alabama man’s intellectual disability should disqualify him for capital punishment. @kelseyreichmann.bsky.social www.courthousenews.com/death-penalt...

Death penalty IQ test leaves justices befuddled “The arguments and assertions in this case are all over the map and very hard to follow,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson remarked. @courthousenews.bsky.social www.courthousenews.com/death-penalt...

“It’s almost as though he is making a statement by doing it, because he can’t have been oblivious to the implications of attending a rally that can only be described as a political rally for a president with whom he worked,” @iumaurerlaw.bsky.social's Charles Geyh told @benjaminweiss.bsky.social.

Fix the Court filed a complaint against Emil Bove following his attendance at Trump's Pennsylvania speech last night. "There will be questions from reasonable and unbiased observers as to whether Judge Bove’s attendance imperils his impartiality"

🚨 SCOOP: DHS is buying its own fleet of passenger jets to conduct deportation operations without a contractor. ICE is spending $140 million to buy six planes. The money comes from Trump and GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which supersized DHS’s budget by $170 billion.

Live view of my reaction to SCOTUS arguments this morning on standard for Atkins claims