cases like this have caused public outrage in other countries like Ireland that led to huge protests and changed laws; the majority of Americans don't seem to care.

No place does bizarro working-class cosplay quite as dramatically as the American West, where you can spot moneyed new arrivals for their expensive cowboy hats, boots and big trucks, and their leaning into yeehaw-isms, while everyone else just ... kind of normal.

Organizers now say they've got more than enough signatures to qualify this initiative that could upend Citizens United for the November ballot in Montana 👀

Anyone looking to understand corporate influence in American politics, this figure from @axios.com should be a wake-up-call as AI has dwarfed even oil and gas (though there are obviously connections there). To learn more about AI and the midterms, see this piece: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/t...

Someone commission me to write a piece about how the red state/blue state-ification of American discourse has doomed us superficial, bad thinking about just about everything.

If you contextualize the mass expansion of data centers in spite of widespread public opposition as the latest, largest assault in an ongoing class war waged mostly from the top, things do make a bit more sense.

A grassroots effort in Montana aims to make Citizens United irrelevant by cutting corporate money out of elections. @kemc.bsky.social on the Montana Plan. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

How the Montana Plan Could Make Citizens United Irrelevant By Kathleen McLaughlin A transpartisan initiative to return power to the people. @kemc.bsky.social

I wrote something last year about the repurposing of America's local newspaper buildings into new things and what it says about communities, but someone could write a very interesting book rooted in that shift in what's valued.

Read my piece on Montana's (very long) fight against money controlling politics and why it matters.

Starting to believe that a certain percentage of the American commentariat class are operating in a state of AI-induced psychosis.

The longest-running family owned Chinese restaurant in America shut down yesterday. Survived 115 years, two world wars and the Great Depression but couldn't withstand whatever it is we're doing right now.

I genuinely don’t think America can fix itself without an honest reckoning on class and inequity, but I also see no evidence that’s going to happen.

I think people are allowed to draw conclusions about the American people based on their decision to put this man in office bsky.app/profile/pear...

There was a village in rural China back in the mid-2010s where the local government had grown so corrupt that a couple of old ladies started their own competing official government, stamping documents and making decisions, and I think of them often.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. I know trans people and I know fascists who are making life difficult for trans people. The trans people are pretty cool and I'm glad I know them. The fascists can go fall down a deep dark hole.

Unpopular opinion but perhaps we need to send coastal urban writers and journalists down to the countryside for a certain amount of time before they are allowed to write about it.

I wrote about a great new book by Megan Kate Nelson, out today, that blows apart the myths of the American West by telling the stories of real, interesting lives substack.com/home/post/p-...

The Lindy West book is grating not because of her relationships but because she demands grace and acceptance from everyone, but gives none to any of the people she encounters on a cross-country road trip. It's the opposite of what a road trip memoir should do, especially in our current moment.

I think there are a lot of Americans who don't realize that, in regards to purchasing power and no matter what their age or job, they will never make more money then they made in 2024—unless something radically changes.

As our economic divide widens, the plasma economy is reaching its tentacles into the middle class (I'm quoted in this one) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/b...

My local airport is having a food drive to support TSA employees who aren't getting paid for their work because the government is still shut down, in case anyone needs further evidence that the USA has lost its way entirely.

A million years ago, when the private prison industry was just gaining a footing, I wrote some stories about the perception of corruption with one company in Texas (they had a county judge on their board), and just that was enough for the company to lose its contracts. Whew.

Regarding Montana politics and a US Senator unnecessarily involving himself in breaking a retired Marine's arm over a peaceful protest, don't forget, we also have a second-term governor who assaulted a reporter for asking a question.

Please recommend to me the best books about the Balkans. Nonfiction or fiction, whatever you like!

Updates at both our jobs today have me thinking, "Man, neither of us is even eligible to sell plasma." But anyway, the U.S. economy is FINE, clearly.

As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.

Please take a moment to think about what this illegal and unjustified war on Iran mean to the basic moral fabric of our nation. newrepublic.com/article/2071...

Saving the people of Iran from being massacred by their government in the streets by massacring elementary schoolgirls from the air.

The backlash against AI and data centers has been entirely predictable, when the promise of AI thus far has been "We're going to steal your work, eliminate your ability to make a living and make art and you can't do anything to stop it."

The Washington Post's description of the bodycam video of his arrest last year, and the translation of Mr. Shah Alam's comments, is gutting. Remember, he was entirely blind in one eye and could only see three feet in the other, and he spoke virtually no English. He spent a year in jail for this.

This story is going to haunt me: a disabled man escaped the genocide in Myanmar, came to the US as a refugee seeking asylum, then died, alone, as a direct result of actions of the American government.

Everything else aside, I just keep trying to imagine winning an Olympic gold medal and immediately wanting to party down with...the head of the FBI?

Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai's daughter will be a guest at tonight's SOTU. To understand the context, the story of repression and censorship in Hong Kong and some lessons on creeping authoritarianism in the US, read my new interview with author Louisa Lim, out now substack.com/home/post/p-...

The journalists-on-social-media discourse is fascinating because when I quit twitter in 2024 I was liberated from regular posting and mostly forget to do it now. This is an excellent thing!

"So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity," UN experts said. www.reuters.com/world/allega...

When I decided to do a series of interviews with smart folks about surviving this current moment in America, @garrettbucks.bsky.social was one of the first people I wanted to hear from. We all need some optimism to get us through and he has it, authentically. kemc.substack.com/p/theres-jus...

Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon, dies aged 84

Related to this, Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America's Blood Industry by @kemc.bsky.social is a book that I think about all the time. If you haven't read it: www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blood-...

“Collection of Handwritten Letters from Children in Detention Center” sounds like an exhibit in the Holocaust Museum.

I've been saying this for literal years, but American journalists desperately need training in how to report safely under authoritarianism because buddy it is here.

It's becoming chillingly clear: an administration that gleefully dismantled USAID and consigned countless people to slow death by starvation and preventable disease will not hesitate to inflict hunger on tens of millions of Americans by cutting off SNAP funds.

We live in a time of even greater wealth inequality than preceding the French Revolution

Kathleen McLaughlin’s book about the plasma industry is an extremely eye-opening look at poverty in the US, and how people who sell plasma to help make ends meet are exploited without being given proper protection and support. This is a labor issue conveniently shrowded in stigma.

I strongly recommend this book, I learned so much from it - I hadn't even known the economics of blood was a thing! IMHO it's also a really good example of a former foreign correspondent using that experience/lens to reveal/learn something new about their home country in a very thoughtful way

Given that the vast majority of Americans who sell blood primarily do so first and foremost for money, yes it does reflect the economic hardships of the United States. Really do wish more people would read my book!

Did you know payday loans wither when plasma centers open? Check put my new radio documentary for BBC World Service here www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

I wrote a whole book about this, and the experience of reporting it was an education in how deeply unequal American life has become. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blood-...

"The writers have been talking to each other in their essays, without even knowing it. They are deeply connected, in their words, through this place. It’s thrilling to watch unfold and an unexpected honor to experience," @kemc.bsky.social re: a book I'm psyched for! open.substack.com/pub/kemc/p/m...