NEW: Billions of pounds of food are imported to the U.S. each year. The FDA inspects foreign producers to ensure what we're eating is safe from pathogens and dangerous manufacturing practices. But now, after Trump's drastic staff cuts, these inspections have plummeted to a historic low. 🧵/

"Educators say parental apathy is one of the biggest obstacles to solving the problem."

I am SO happy to be able to share the wonderful cover for DISPATCHES FROM THE AVANT-GARAGE: THE ALTERNATIVE PRESS coming in March from Wayne State UP. The cover has it all—postcards, letterpress, a bison. Beautifully designed, as it happens, by Lindsey Cleworth, who grew up in my/our hometown.

"I wanted to check in and see how much “Gulf of America” had stuck in news media. The answer is: not very much." www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/nine...

Detroit elects its first new mayor since 2013, when we were under both bankruptcy and emergency management. via @freep.com : www.freep.com/story/news/p...

News you could really use: Here’s How TurboTax Just Tricked You Into Paying to File Your Taxes www.propublica.org/article/turb...

"Ms. Albrecht voted three times for President Trump, but the right-leaning legal organization she heads is now leading the challenge to his sweeping tariffs, representing the coalition of businesses that has sued over the legality of the policy."

"These folks are unable to do the jobs that they were hired to do, so we’re really missing out on valuable skills and expertise and scientific talent that should be being applied for the public good.” -- director of the NOAA Great Lakes cooperative institute

"Volunteers were passing out meals. Donors were pitching in. The mayor of the state’s second-largest city began fasting with a group of religious leaders in a show of solidarity." via @bridgemi.com

Journalism tip: If someone says drop the story, that’s a sign to keep reporting. Back reporters who won’t flinch. Support our independent journalism ➜ propub.li/43MugoG

NEWS: Federal agents crashed with woman’s car, pointed guns at her, dragged her out by legs, tossed her in a minivan, held her and (eventually) let her go without charges. This as Chicagoans say the immigration blitz is out of control. (DHS blames her.) www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/03/c...

"Michigan's 10-cent deposit... applies only to carbonated beverages, fizzy and bubbly drinks. But the number of beverages available to consumers has skyrocketed since the Bottle Bill was enacted in 1976. It was the following year, 1977, when Perrier launched a successful U.S. advertising campaign...

"Reuters has discovered a mass grave near Damascus that was created in a clandestine campaign to conceal atrocities under Bashar al-Assad. From 2019 to 2021, thousands of bodies were dug up from a known mass grave and trucked to a vast new site in the desert... This is the story of how it was done."

If you see any business owners belittling SNAP recipients for accepting government money to get through tough times, maybe look them up on @propublica.org's PPP Loan Tracker to see if they got any of the $793B in bailout money (96% of which was forgiven) projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/...

“When it comes to, in this case, dental treatment, we're not promoting fluoride one way or the other, good or bad," one lawmaker said. "We're trying to steer away from that conversation ..."

Last week, a federal judge ordered immigration agents in Chicago to use body-cams: "That is not a suggestion." Yesterday, agents stopped a state lawmaker and *pointed a gun at him* They had body-cams -- that weren't on I know b/c the cameras have a blinking light when on. These weren't flashing

"The Great Lakes Science Center in Michigan would lose 108 of 137 positions." via @eenews.bsky.social

"Around the time of Kennedy’s pronouncement, however, Western lawmakers began sidestepping public input and unilaterally banning water fluoridation." via @leahsottile.bsky.social / @highcountrynews.org

“The new outbreak began in August and has sickened more than 100 people, making it the second-largest cluster of cases in the country this year. A majority of the cases are in unvaccinated people… “We certainly have not had anything like this in many, many, many years,” said Walter Ornstein”

Last week, the Indiana University administration asked their student newspaper not to print any news stories in the Homecoming edition. When the faculty advisor refused, IU fired him and ended paper printing. So students at the Purdue paper printed the IU edition and drove it down to Bloomington!

🚨NEW: After we revealed Russ Vought's "put them in trauma" video, I spent the next year reporting on him, his influence, and his vision for America. Yes, I got *new* recordings & videos of Vought. Here is the story. A @propublica.org + @newyorker.com collab: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer. @nicolefoy.bsky.social

“What they’re really doing, they want to spoon-feed information to the journalist, and that would be their story. That’s not journalism,” said Jack Keane, a retired U.S. Army general and Fox News analyst, said on Hegseth’s former network. Via @apnews.com

“You’d 100% get more decay, especially in children in low-income communities,” Dr. Randa Jundi-Samman, a retired dentist, said about halting fluoridation. “We already see it in people who don’t have fluoride in their water.” By @annaleighclark.bsky.social

“‘How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?’ This is the college that (formerly) named its journalism school after the legendary Ernie Pyle. I went to an inspiring high school journalism camp here one summer.

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat. Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇

NEW: After decades of fluoridating drinking water to improve public health, some communities are increasingly wavering on the practice. In one Michigan county, the medical director is mirroring Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts against fluoridation.

A surprising sight in St. Clair County, Michigan: A man waving Fixodent denture cream before the county commissioners at an August meeting. “I am an unfluoridated child,” he declared, “with a set of uppers and lowers.”

"ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelans who said they wanted to take the U.S. government’s offer of a safe and easy return. They signed up months ago on the CBP Home app and were given departure dates. ...

Welp. Helluva game. Congrats, Mariners. We’re gonna get ‘em next time. Baseball is still the best. Zzzzzz

"Oh yeah? You like baseball? What if I make you smoke *an entire pack* of baseball?"

Team founded in 1901.

What mad portal have we passed through.

Tigers status:

"'Maine is grappling with such a shortage of dentists that some doctors are adapting to treat early tooth decay themselves.'" via @themainemonitor.org

NEW An EPA report found that PFNA, a chemical in the drinking water of some 26M people, interferes with development and likely causes liver problems & male reproductive harms. The report was done in April, scientists told me. But the agency hasn't released it www.propublica.org/article/epa-...

"The Livingston County Sheriff's Office reported an increase in requests for deputies to appear at community meetings. ... "'Some of them frankly have gotten to the point where we're there every meeting just because of the rift between the public and the particular board,'" said the sheriff.

"Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice told ProPublica: 'I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.'” by @megomatz.bsky.social / @jsmithrichards.bsky.social

"The study found that before the Flint crisis ... [a certain number of water systems] reported lead concentrations rounded exactly to the federal threshold—a pattern the researchers say is statistically unlikely to occur by chance. "After Flint, those suspicious clusters all but vanished ..."

"External reviews are one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and only a tiny fraction of those eligible actually use them." by @deldeib.bsky.social / @propublica.org

COMING UP: I'm teaching this one-session online class on Sunday, October 12, and I'd love for you to join! "This craft seminar will explore what is possible when we take the light as seriously as the dark."

Some additional behind-the-scenes info on how the text messages were vetted. Thrilling to watch national news orgs following Andy Mannix's reporting in the @startribune.com — and a reminder to support your local newspaper!!! www.startribune.com/editors-note...

Trump wanted to give King Charles one of Ike's swords. The Eisenhower presidential library said it could not provide one because it is government property and illegal to give away. Now the library director has been fired. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/a...

The ex-Chicago cop who got out of dozens of traffic tickets by repeating the same bogus story — that his girlfriend stole his BMW — pleaded guilty. But there’s more: @jodiscohen.bsky.social and I have been tracking pending court cases that relied on his policing. More than 90 have been dropped.

Hell of a life.

Bloomington, Indiana -- home to Indiana University -- has been "without consistently fluoridated tap water for nearly six years, a fact that’s not been publicized despite impacts to public health."

"While legislation strengthening ethics oversight did pass in some places, a ProPublica analysis found lawmakers across multiple states targeted or thwarted reforms designed to keep the public and elected officials accountable to the people they serve."

"In the absence of new state aid, some Michigan school districts started charging students for meals Wednesday, while others kept subsidizing all students for breakfasts and lunches out of existing revenues in hopes of receiving continued funding." via @detroitnews.com

"Ten people were shot, two fatally, late Sunday morning at a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township after a Genesee County man allegedly rammed his truck through the church's entrance and opened fire. "A 40-year-old man from Burton also is accused of setting fire" to the church....