Now that’s what I call a pivot

Trump is rescinding road safety grants all over the country, in blue states and red ones. The reason: those projects are "hostile" to cars. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the Trump administration’s promise to go after the “radical left” a study showing most domestic terrorism is far-right was disappeared.” www.404media.co/doj-deletes-...

dudes rock

Tuesday, September 23, 2025 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT MuckRock & Trans Journalists Association collaboration + learn how to file your own FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Besides the effects on the tech industry, right now there are H-1B holders—people—who built a life in the US. If they are traveling, they have 17 hours to get back to the US, or the life they built will be shattered and taken from them. Can you imagine constantly living with this uncertainty?

OpenAI won't say whose content its video tool was trained on. So @nitasha.bsky.social & @kevinschaul.bsky.social did a deep dive and turned up some telling clues... www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

I experienced this last week & refused, saying I had never before been asked to provide the names of any analysts I was planning to quote to get a comment. Spox replied that maybe they were D donors. (In that case, it was 3 retired top military JAG officers.) I guess that was not a weird oneoff.

For those who cannot get enough Suzette Smith, tune into this morning's City Cast Portland for a roundtable discussion where myself, Oregonian reporter @zane.bsky.social, and host Claudia Meza recap recent news stories.

this is absolutely wild the court *sua sponte* dismisses the case for violating Rule 8(a) so that means the court, all on its own, looked at the complaint and said it's too long, too scattershot, too arbitrary to even count as a complaint. *never* seen this happen to a private party with counsel.

This number one tip on this advisory is to set public online profiles to private when facing harassment, which bsky does not allow, and which really should’ve been a feature implemented on day 1.

I submitted a FOIA request about the actions of DOGE months ago, but I keep getting bounced around different federal agencies and offices. If anyone in my network has successfully submitted a FOIA request about DOGE, can you let me know which office/agency you submitted it to? Ideally with a link

Some news from me: I was laid off yesterday from Rolling Stone. Kind of in shock, but will be looking for a new gig. Here are Quincy and Lou

fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi

When I wrote, the EPA wouldn't admit it was eliminating requirements for polluters to collect and report their GHG emissions Today the agency proudly announced the change, saying it's "cutting unnecessary red tape" and "unleashing American energy" www.propublica.org/article/trum...

FOIA alert 🚨🚨🚨 USAID (like DOE some months ago), is due to publish a notice that claims to mass cancel all #FOIAs submitted before Jan 20, unless the requester emails them. This is, once again, wildly illegal. public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-17820.pdf H/T Michael Ravnitzky

The hunger strike that broke a supermax prison. The powerful inside story of an improbable resistance movement. This week on Reveal.

OK folks. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is meeting on Friday to discuss Covid vaccines. If it is possible, I do recommend getting a Covid vaccine before then. I know due to out of pocket costs and prescription requirements in some states it is easier said then done.

My story on (some of) the misinformation in the last 48 hours:

Accurate. You can watch the video on C-Span www.c-span.org/program/sena...; Snider walks in at 2:22:48. You can also read the transcript here (link is to p. 72, where Snider's testimony starts): hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b51....

With no warning, HUD reopened a set of housing grants that were already awarded. This time, to be eligible, programs had to show they conform to Trump's views on immigration, gender and more. Not just the programs — the cities where they work have to show that too. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

fbi puts another one in the books. closing the case the way most crime is solved: someone calls and tells them who did it.

The markings that supposedly expressed “transgender ideology” were………..a series of arrows.

This. A reputable news organization would not print this without providing additional detail. Again, we have a case of a major news organization abandoning basic journalistic standards when the reporting is about trans people.

A third of jobs related to race, diversity, and equality that were created in U.S. newsrooms since 2020 are gone as of this summer. 
 @hanaatameez.bsky.social with a months-long investigation and new data on American journalism's turn away from DEI initiatives. www.niemanlab.org/2025/09/from...

Kendra wasn't trying to be exhaustive, but I also want to add: In June, two MN legislators and their spouses were shot: John Hoffman & spouse survived, and Melissa Hortman & spouse died. In 2020, a man intending to kill federal judge Esther Salas killed her son, shot her husband.

We took the paywall down on this one. defector.com/how-the-fuck...

BREAKING: Trump says a US tip to Qatar came “too late to stop the attack,” backtracking on earlier White House claims that Doha was warned in advance — a claim Qatar has firmly denied. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/wjkdm9

My favorite part about meetings is the bit where I come down from the over-stimulation of talking to >1 other person at a time and spend the rest of the day hating myself for every single thing I said!

The belief that poverty and homelessness are about "individual choices" didn't arise on its own. It was manufactured through decades of messaging designed to protect the policies and interests that create mass precarity. As this new poll shows, that propaganda campaign has been wildly successful.

I used Goodreads for more than a decade, and found StoryGraph a better substitute but lonely, so maybe for a bit I’ll test out maintaining a thread of what I’m currently reading here. September 9: Currently reading The Exorcist. I’ve never seen the movie, but plan to afterward. #booksky

Trump's takeovers of America's largest cities are about much more than deportations and supposed "crime." Advocates worry that they preview the plan for the 2026 midterms: the military at polls + ICE citizenship checks at the ballot. Read @ariberman.bsky.social's latest:

As noted by @carlmc.bsky.social, one odd pattern in these results is that ALL the estimates and confidence interval bounds are multiples of 0.008 What could explain that? 🤔

Pietà Michelangelo, 1498-1499

The COVID argument is never “1m more deaths would’ve been worth it, i would’ve preferred if my kids had to grow up without their grandmother.” Pretty much always based on the assumption that it would’ve been the same amount of sickness and death, or even less, just with more money and more fun.

Less than 30 minutes after the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer resigned following a whistleblower complaint, recipients could no longer access the resignation email. www.wired.com/story/charle...

New: @juliannemcshane.bsky.social and I took a deep dive into how Trump (and RFK Jr) is undermining mental health research at @motherjones.com–which could lead to fewer breakthroughs in early intervention strategies. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Updates on the pharmacy vaccine situation today: CVS is now requiring a prescription in 13 states and not offering shots at all in three others; Walgreens appears to be requiring prescriptions in 16 states, but not all the same ones as CVS. The lists of states are in the article. Gift link:

I reflexively despaired reading this story, and I'm sure I'm not alone. One (maybe callow) coping strategy I use is reminding myself that the sense of responsibility I feel—to shore up my model of what is true, and to help others do the same—is a way I can enact love for specific people in my life.

"To blame the unnerving prevalence of mass shootings in America on the existence of trans people here isn’t just a dangerously stigmatizing, politically motivated take. It’s also bad math." - @abbyvesoulis.bsky.social

🚨Border Patrol arrested two firefighters who were actively fighting a wildfire at the time. When the other members of the crew asked for a chance to say goodbye, a Border Patrol agent told the crew member “you need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.”

Back in 2020, YouTube suspended OAN's channel, demonetized it, and noted it was not an "authoritative" source. Now, five years later, the Google-owned platform has inked a deal to put the MAGA propaganda network in millions of living rooms. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/youtube-oa...

One of those takes that seems intuitively wrong to everyone except for $TSLA investors, and is also flat out absurd to anyone who's taken even an undergraduate level course in sensors. Truly a Musk special.

area man beats sandwich crime charge, will not be sub-poenaed

It’s up to the discretion of RFK Jr to define what ”medically frail” is when it comes to potential Medicaid work requirement exemptions—which may play a huge role in deciding which chronically ill and disabled people could qualify. My latest for @motherjones.com. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The 137 seconds I spent watching this are the most exhilarating I can recall ever having spent online.