ICYMI

Religion reporters: @andreasuozzo.com also noted a brand new feature she built in @propublica.org's 990 explorer that shows which nonprofits are not required to submit tax filings because of their designation as a church. So, that's handy!

Inspired by ProPublica’s new database, I created a visualization of the nearly 400 LLCs that make up Trump’s business empire. That and more in this week’s newsletter. Read! Free! www.howtoreadthisch.art/where-trumps...

Quick H/T to @propublica.org's new financial disclosure search tool — which helped surface the ethics filing behind our DHS scoop. A former Anduril Industries insider is now overseeing Department of Homeland Security’s massive biometric surveillance dragnet.

Hey all, I decided to write up some of my thoughts in more detail about why I don't vibe code, in case it's interesting to any of you jacobharr.is/personal/i-d...

We did use lists of names from the excellent PLUM website (woo PLUM Act!), so doing something like this now is much easier than it was 10 years ago, but yes, we need legislation to finish the job.

THREAD: We just released a tool that allows you to search billions of dollars in wealth, ties to the most powerful companies in the country, and details of the personal finances of President Trump and over 1,500 of his appointees. Here’s how it works 1/

GREAT new resource from us: You can now flip through the financial disclosures of Trump officials. See what they own --and how much they're worth. See who's worked where-- and how much they banked. Want the folks connected to Palintir? Please enjoy. projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

Kristi Noem was asked during Senate testimony yesterday whether Corey Lewandowski had any role in approving DHS contracts. "No," Noem said. That's.....BS. And my colleagues have the goods. www.propublica.org/article/kris...

NEW: Over the past year, we've been collecting thousands of financial disclosure documents from across the Trump administration. Now we're making them searchable. Look up names, assets, former employers across 1,500+ Trump appointees and 3,000+ ethics documents.

“The A.I. industry is selling a dream of digital slavery—infinite human labor with no actual human involved. […] here’s Sam Altman encouraging us to compare the energy cost of training an L.L.M. to the energy cost of raising and educating a human child”

The folks behind Dark Sky spun themselves out of Apple and have built a new weather app: Acme Weather. “We missed those days as a small scrappy shop. So let’s try this again…” [acmeweather.com]

“Four new reservoirs ‘had to be constructed’ to supply vast amounts of snow for only a few days of competition for the Olympic ski runs, half-pipe, and snow park …the organisers started pumping as much water as their infrastructure allowed from the already drought-stricken alpine rivers.”

We're launching a news desk! And at the center of it is a weekly newsletter headed up by our News Director @joshnathankazis.bsky.social. First one is out—sign up at jewishcurrents.org/newsletter to read it.

This is a good essay, but sometimes as a thought experiment I think about how we defended the ubiquity of cars 100+ years ago. Sure, we can't really walk places anymore and they kill tens of thousands a year and gasoline makes the air toxic, but getting places fast in a personal bubble is cool!

Data labeling is notoriously brutal and underpaid work. Workers sometimes earn as little as a few dollars a day, work under algorithmic management, and, because they’re sometimes trying to train AI what not to do or show, they are often shown graphic, violent, or sexual content for hours at a time.

New drone footage from @floodlightnews.org - the fossil methane power plant Musk built specifically to create abusive and racist material on his social media website is still wildly breaching EPA regulations even after a ruling against using them -->>> floodlightnews.org/thermal-dron...

The Post was foolish enough to unleash a bevy of the world’s most talented multi-disciplinary journalists out there for their competition to scoop up. These are some of the most hard working and skilled people I know. Save this one and reshare it please! 📊

I watched two 16-year olds get abducted, I have not been able to get any organization to try to help them, I think about them every day, I read stuff like this and I want to puke

"To make a cheese soufflé is to drive a trusty Peugeot slowly but purposefully down a road signposted in French [...] You can't power your way through it as you would with its Italian cousin, the frittata—the Ferrari of egg cookery, built for speed and crowd-feeding efficiency."

Practice picketing with my NYC colleagues today for Just Cause and common sense AI protections. Let's get this contract done!

Today we’re launching Open Climate Risk, a fully open option for U.S. building-level climate risk data. It’s unique because it allows you to see not only risk scores, starting with wildfire, but also the complete underlying dataset, methods, and codebase. carbonplan.org/research/cli...

We’re keeping tabs this rise and will be updating a tracker regularly with new case data: projects.propublica.org/habeas-track...

Habeas cases filed by immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have taken off to levels we have never seen before. Just look at that chart. www.propublica.org/article/habe...

The Guardian redesigned our ICE trackers this week, see the new graphs here: www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i... The number of people in detention continues to rise. With each data release, there is a new record high number of people in immigration detention

Our members joined the #SaveThePost rally in D.C. today to protest the mass layoffs at the Washington Post. We stand in solidarity with @postguild.bsky.social. Support laid off workers: www.gofundme.com/f/standing-t... + www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo... ✊

It's 2026, an election year (💀). That means its time to update ProPublica's 527 Explorer! This latest update brings us current through 2025, adding 460k new records. I'll be updating more frequently this year. Follow for updates & LMK what you do w/ it projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/

Our founders, though deeply flawed, understood that democracy requires an informed citizenry and a government accountable to it people. That’s why the press is the only profession protected by the Constitution. It’s also why autocrats and oligarchs seek to control and destroy it.

The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023. The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets. https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3

1/ READY TO STRIKE: More than 80% of our members signed a pledge saying we are prepared to strike unless @propublica.org agrees to a fair contract. www.propublicaguild.org/updates/the-...

The Washington-Baltimore News Guild strongly condemns the layoffs announced today at The Washington Post. These cuts represent yet another blow to a newsroom that has already been pushed to its limits and a disservice to the readers who rely on The Post for rigorous, independent journalism.

DEAD WOOD

BREAKING: The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

The app features gamified neighborhood maps, like Pokémon Go for hunting immigrants. Palantir warns the software is "not for mass prioritization of locations where lots of people it [ICE] might detain could be based." But this is what actually happens when you give ICE a map and a quota:

NEW: ICE has spent at least $172 million this month on warehouses that it plans to convert into immigration jails www.bloomberg.com/news/feature... W/ @sooophie.bsky.social

Following I and @shaw.al's investigation, an ethics watchdog group is seeking an investigation into whether Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche broke federal conflict-of-interest law. www.propublica.org/article/todd...

If 3,000 federal agents land in Minnesota, their footprint will be bigger than the 10 largest metro police departments combined.

Condé Nast forgot to renew the trademark for Gourmet and so a group of journalists grabbed it and are relaunching the food magazine as a worker-owned co-op. Love it. [gourmetmagazine.net]

NEW: The FDA won’t tell Americans where their generic drugs are made, so ProPublica did it instead. Use information from your prescription label to locate the factory and see if the plant has a history of inspection violations.

1/ At bargaining yesterday, @propublica.org management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.

Okay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!

The least realistic part of OBAA was the travel time between Eureka and Anza-Borrego

This week I learned I’m the first woman and person of color from the University of Texas at Austin to have ever received the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for Public Service reporting. When I realized that in UT’s Pulitzer Hall of Fame, I got chills.

A good ad on the DC Metro

This is horrific and feels like it should be a bigger deal. Business Insider reports that people who have worked at xAI have seen Grok create images and written material with child sex abuse material. www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-gr...

Yesterday, hundreds of WGA members and allies rallied outside Disney/ABC's offices to demand Jimmy Kimmel Live! be reinstated. Thank you to everyone who showed up in the name of protecting free speech and union jobs ✊

Interviews with 40+ current or recent employees throughout NIOSH, and dozens of others, detail how Trump’s cuts have upended safety research on everything from fracking to opioids, along with chemical risks in nail salons, electric-vehicle fires and terror attacks www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Software should come in a box that I get from a physical store. It only updates or charges me when I go out to buy the next version.

Just now, 11 state and city lawmakers were arrested by DHS police on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza after a hour of demanding access to the ICE lock up on the same floor. @thecity.nyc