On Oct. 31, a judge acquitted former Cook County juvenile jail guard Kevin Walker of battery and official misconduct saying, “The defendant puts his hand on [the boy] and maybe pushes him at best.” Now, you can watch the video for yourself.

A Republican sheriff in a swing county that Trump won by 0.1% signed a contract to help ICE, then lost last week by 11. New by me in @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/sheriff-of-b...

the TX AG's office has a long, ugly history of targeting Black and Latino organizers who register new voters www.texastribune.org/2025/11/10/t... Under Abbott, the office staked out the home of an old woman bc she helped a housebound neighbor mail a ballot www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

Incoming NJ governor Mikie Sherrill hasn't said whether she'll uphold a state policy limiting law enforcement cooperation w/ ICE. Advocates say lawmakers must pass legislation to preserve & expand protections for NJ's 2.2 million immigrants before she takes office. boltsmag.org/immigration-...

Ten years ago this week, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance failed to pass. It would have protected Houstonians from discrimination in a variety of ways, but it failed after Republicans ran ads about trans predators in bathrooms. Here's my retrospective from last year: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

New Jersey's unusually productive lame-duck session is around the corner, & immigration advocates want lawmakers to promptly codify the protections against ICE put in place by the outgoing admin. Why? Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill has declined to say if she'd keep them, Lauren Gill reports.

Last night’s overwhelming Democratic sweep in Pennsylvania preserves liberal control of the state supreme courts across the Midwest’s Blue Wall—MI, PA, WI. These courts are really important for election law and voting rights. boltsmag.org/pennsylvania...

A photojournalist was arrested by ICE at gunpoint — and his DACA status revoked. “Ya’akub isn’t being accused of breaking immigration law — his DACA protection doesn’t expire until May 2026. In fact Ya’akub’s lawyers say he hasn’t been accused of any crime.” thebarbedwire.com/2025/11/04/h...

All day, many of you have been asking for a Cheney obituary from me. Get ready:

As we see indicia of big turnout in today's NYC mayoral election, worth keeping in mind that roughly one in seven adult NYC residents are categorically barred from voting. If you're on the fence about turning out, remember that this is a privilege many of your neighbors do not have

Most likely don’t have this on the Election Day radar, but felony disenfranchisement is on the ballot next week in Virginia, an unusually harsh state for denying voting rights to people with criminal records. Major reform may be coming there, and Tuesday is pivotal. Here’s what you need to know:

Great reporting here on a measure on the TX ballot this week that would expand Greg Abbott’s growing influence over a commission that disciplines judges www.texastribune.org/2025/11/03/t...

Just over an hour after 3 Supreme Court justices warned that Alabamian Anthony Boyd would suffer psychological torture, he was subjected to the longest nitrogen gas execution in US history, gasping for air more than 225 times. Read my eyewitness account: www.treadbylee.com/p/after-just...

SCOTUS just allowed Alabama's execution of Anthony Boyd: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p... Justice Sotomayor wrote this vivid dissent blasting AL for using the method of nitrogen gas. @laurengill.bsky.social's reporting from an AL execution shows you why: boltsmag.org/alabama-nitr...

Alabama plans to execute Anthony Boyd tonite by suffocating him with nitrogen gas, an experimental method that appears to be agonizing by most available witness accounts read Lauren's important reporting on Boyd's case and the death penalty in Alabama boltsmag.org/alabama-nitr...

For @boltsmag.org, I wrote about one group that, despite being a huge chunk of the adult population in NYC, is uniformly excluded from electoral coverage: noncitizens. A 2021 law promised many could participate in municipal elections for the first time, before it was challenged and struck down

I’m guessing you haven’t even hard of this case: San Antonio Police Officers shot and killed Melissa Perez in 2023. Now, her daughter is hoping a criminal trial will mark the first time murder charges stick for on-duty officers in the city. thebarbedwire.com/2025/10/16/s...

Everything about this case shows how easy it is to send someone to death row. Anthony Boyd was sentenced to death entirely on dubious eyewitness testimony. His lawyer had a month to prepare for trial. Alabama plans to execute him next week. My latest @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/anthony-boyd...

also worth noting that Boyd is set to be executed by nitrogen gas, an experimental method that involves suffocating people to death read Lauren's bracing eyewitness account of this grisly new method of execution boltsmag.org/alabama-nitr...

Anthony Boyd was sent to death row for murder with no physical evidence but rather on the word of a codefendant who testified against him to avoid execution. Boyd’s court-appointed lawyer admitted he was unprepared at trial important new story by @laurengill.bsky.social boltsmag.org/anthony-boyd...

Dispatch from Pennsylvania on a highly unusual state Supreme Court election—one of the few most consequential matters on the ballot anywhere in the country next month. New from me in @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/pennsylvania...

If you want to see how much a single local official can change things, look no further than Chicago, where the new prosecutor this year has ground exonerations to a halt by hindering the work of the commission that reviews wrongful convictions boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

Boston's Michelle Wu has attracted notice for standing up to Trump on ICE raids. But her stance is undermined by the city's fusion center, which civil liberties advocates have warned abt for yrs: "The whole purpose of it is federal & local law enforcement collaboration." boltsmag.org/boston-polic...

Here's part two of my Denying Innocence series on the failures by Cook County prosecutors to investigate innocence claims. Thanks to our friends @boltsmag.org for copublishing.

revelations about cops planting evidence, threatening or coercing witnesses, and torturing people into false confessions have made Chicago the epicenter of the wrongful conviction crisis yet prosecutors are weakening their response, even as another police abuse scandal looms over dozens of cases

"It’s a blueprint for authoritarianism wrapped in barbed wire and dressed up as local revival.” ICE has its eyes on an idle Core Civic-owned prison in Walsenburg. Local officials have welcomed the potential influx of money and jobs. But residents are pushing back. My latest for @motherjones.com:

“If children can record everyday events with ease, law enforcement cannot claim hardship to record perhaps its most consequential investigative act" here's how some state supreme courts are bolstering protections based on their own state constitutions even as SCOTUS rulings erode our rights

some really clarifying reporting here on this shooting that you're sure to read and hear a lot of very inaccurate things about just before reading this i heard my local public radio station reference this as a shooting by multiple protesters

NEW: California was on track to pass a law this year that'd bring a path out of prison for some survivors of domestic violence who've been convicted of harming their abuser. But the bill ended up dying in the state Senate as the session drew to a close this summer. Bolts reviews what happened:

Chilling dispatch from Mario Guevara, the journalist trapped in ICE detention for...doing his job.

People who are thrown in solitary confinement aren't told how long they'll spend there. Some people end up there—for years. There are so few restrictions. Read how this Texan who's experienced this describes it: boltsmag.org/designed-to-...

NEW in Bolts: The authors of a new book on solitary confinement answer questions about their experiences with isolation and the movement to end the tortuous practice.

“Isolating people inside a small, closet-like cell for weeks, months, and even years on end remains common inside this country’s prisons and jails, even though the United Nations defines the practice as torture.” boltsmag.org/designed-to-...

Missourians have repeatedly used ballot initiatives to adopt policies that lawmakers in the GOP supermajority refuse to move on: abortion rights, paid sick leave, Medicaid expansion. In response, Missouri Republicans are attempting to make direct democracy impossible: boltsmag.org/missouri-ame...

"We don’t want this mega prison in this state. We don’t need this mega prison in this state.” New must-read from @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/arkansas-pri...

For @boltsmag.org & @thenation.com, I went to the farms, livestock sale barns, and roadside bars of Arkansas and the prison towns of Upstate New York to report on how rural communities are changed (or changing) when a prison comes to town. boltsmag.org/arkansas-pri...

19 people say they were sexually assaulted under Leonard Dixon – a Chicago superintendent who draws a $280,000 yearly salary and whose public records trail, including voting records, ties him to suburban Detroit. Amazing work here by @kellygarcia.bsky.social: www.injusticewatch.org/juvenile-cou...

Four deaths in two weeks: What’s behind the surge in violence at one Texas prison www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investi...

Abbott revived this bill by amending his special session call to effectively admit it's broader in scope than GOP and police proponents have been publicly saying it's back on the calendar, could come up today more on why Uvalde families are against it www.uvaldeleadernews.com/articles/edi...

We're finishing up our weekly newsletter at @boltsmag.org. It's full of info on: today's elections, latest on redistricting, homelessness sweeps, DA races, voting rights restoration, prison reforms... If you want to follow local politics & policy, you should be on this! boltsmag.org/newsletter

good thread here on the TX police secrecy bill that derailed yesterday (but some are already vowing to revive) it would make more police files secret, undermine voter-mandated reforms in Austin, and help the state cover up its bungling response in Uvalde www.uvaldeleadernews.com/articles/edi...

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 Blackwell and Harris, who are incarcerated in Washington state and Texas, respectively, co-authored the book ***Blackwell and Harris have agreed to answer questions from Bolts readers about their new book and the experience of writing it*** Submit by 8/27 boltsmag.org/solitary-con...

JUST IN: Federal appeals court just *upheld* Gov. Youngkin's 2022 decision to eliminate automatic rights restoration in VA. So people with a felony remain barred from voting *for life.* Bolts reported here on people who were banned from voting, incl. one man who later became center of this lawsuit:

I had fun answering questions from @boltsmag.org readers about what is going on in Texas - and Texas’ long history of drawing gerrymandered and racially discriminatory maps. #txlege boltsmag.org/a-new-cycle-...

NEW: Texas Republicans have unveiled a new gerrymander to gain as many as 5 seats in next year's midterms. *Can they do that? What data must they use? What are legal avenues here!?* You sent us a ton of questions. And a redistricting expert who knows Texas inside out answered 9 of them:

New regulations were set to slash the exorbitant prices for prison phone calls across the country, but Trump's FCC chair blocked enforcement last week. Phill Smith, who's incarcerated in North Carolina, reports on the impact to people behind bars and the families fighting for state-level reforms

Texas Gov. Abbott's summer special session agenda released today calls for further abortion restrictions—potentially reviving this sweeping, unprecedented bill targeting abortion pills that narrowly failed to pass last session. Background: boltsmag.org/texas-1925-a... slate.com/news-and-pol...

New from me for LA Public Press. What’s a little crossfire among friends? I found three calls from LAPD complaining about being gassed and shot by LASD. I have the audio! lapublicpress.org/2025/06/ice-...