We’re thrilled to share that Mya Frazier's article, “Power failure,” a collaboration between FERN and Switchyard Magazine, was the winner of a 2025 CCNow Journalism Award!

Ta-Nehisi Coates's piece on the thing is the best one I've seen. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/c...

This truth bears repeating, again and again. theintercept.com/2025/09/03/t...

"Among those detained were South Korean employees on business travel.... "The raid could raise concerns for South Korean companies that are sending personnel to the US and hiring locally." It comes weeks after Hyundai pledged $26 billion in US investments. Gift link ⬇️ www.wsj.com/us-news/u-s-...

The web changes quickly. The Wayback Machine remembers—preserving voices, stories & culture for future generations. 📝 Tell us why the #WaybackMachine is important to you ⤵️ forms.gle/c3XqotHUToKe... 🧵 #Wayback1T

Seizure medication, wheelchairs, Social Security cards, dentures, urns of ashes, work uniforms — just some of what's been thrown away during cruel, degrading, utterly counterproductive homeless sweeps. A good time to revisit this gutting @propublica.org story:

Profoundly grateful that my book continues to resonate with those in the trenches of this fight. @cafreema.bsky.social's reflections are powerful: "Our society and government must make housing available to ALL. We must destroy housing as a commodity and recognize it as the human right it is."

If you didn’t hear this story from Anas Baba on NPR today, you should take a listen. He walked 3 hours to find a working internet connection to file the story www.npr.org/2025/07/25/n...

“The expression ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do it justice. I saw the severity of malnutrition that I would not have thought possible in a civilized world. This is man-made starvation being used as a weapon of war..." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/w...

The images of children starved to death in Gaza should be the lead of every news program.

Pope condemns ‘barbarity’ of Israel’s war in Gaza

Soldiers opening fire on starving people who are trying to get food. This is genocide. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/w...

Roughly 12 million Americans are expected to lose their health insurance over the next decade—and now they'll get to watch their credit scores collapse too. This country is a machine for manufacturing needless suffering.

A lovely essay by @alecmac.bsky.social "At a time when the rush of events seems particularly frenzied and overwhelming, the magazines have come to seem the ideal medium—a medium, quite literally, in that they are mediating the crush." mailchi.mp/sundaylongre...

An estimated 47.4 million Americans suffered from hunger last year. 13.8 million were children. Now this country is set to strip SNAP benefits from *two million* more people—while allocating over $100 billion to "help squads of men in masks" terrorize immigrants. A searing essay by Tracy Kidder:

I don't subscribe to many newsletters. Andrea Pitzer's is among the best. Well worth your time.

This is genocide. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

The more I think about it, the more insane it is that the entire climate movement isn't mobilizing against data centers. They are clearly a way to continue, if not expand, fossil fuel use, they are extremely water intensive, they prey on desperate communities without creating many long-term jobs 1/

BREAKING: The City of Detroit is suing a cryptocurrency-based real estate company RealT for failing to maintain hundreds of rental properties across the city, following investigations by @outliermedia.org. outliermedia.org/realt-lawsui...

Incredible reporting from @outliermedia.org on how property speculators have undermined stable and safe housing for Detroit renters.

Worth putting it on the record here, though you probably already know it: “Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp.

I encourage everyone to actually read the dissent. The description of what this government is doing should shock anyone with a conscience. It is unfathomably cruel, indeed sadistic. And yes, *this* is being enabled by the highest court in the nation.

What’s the worst detail in this story? The mother forced to use unclean water to make formula for her baby? The child w/cancer now facing relapse symptoms? The 16-year-old trying to be strong for her 2 younger siblings and mom, all trapped in the camp together? This is America. Don’t look away.

“It’s amazing when you grow up and realize how redlining has allowed these industries to kill your family,” he said in an interview. “Elon Musk is a representation of the oligarchy we already knew was operating under Jim Crow. It’s a familiar evil.” www.eenews.net/articles/elo...

Utterly stunning @oilfieldwitness.bsky.social optical gas imaging video from the site of Musk's massive new fossil power station fuelling the Grok text generation engine on X @nickcunningham.bsky.social's full write-up here - must-read gasoutlook.com/analysis/xai... All this for a crappy chatbot.

It's hard to express what this review by @libbycwatson.com means to me — not just for its praise ("an incredible feat… the 21st-century equivalent of The Jungle") but for how precisely it captures the heart of my book: a system that cruelly exploits people's labor while denying them everything else.

If you want to understand what's happening with the concentration camp arc we're on—all this domestic and overseas detention, and the attempt to erase various groups from society—please join me (and others!) Wednesday June 11 @ noon to find out what can be done. Free, but registration required.

these visuals hardly do it justice, but just staggering to contemplate this scale of destruction. An estimated 60 percent of all buildings destroyed; 90 percent of housing gone. 90 percent of the population -- 1,900,000 people -- displaced www.bbc.com/news/world-m...

I've been lucky enough to hear about this book from the earliest days of @sho-walter.bsky.social's always thorough and brilliant reporting. This is an urgent and important work of journalism by one of the most compassionate and caring journalists working today.

my most Gen X coded belief is that cities and the culture at large suffer profoundly for the near-complete death of alt-weeklies

I just finished this book. In tears. The people's lives are narrated in beautiful, resonant detail, and the cruelty and indifference they encounter is staggering.

Check out CBS News' Scott Pelley's speech at Wake Forest. "Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power." www.readtpa.com/p/watch-cbs-...

Excited to share some upcoming West Coast book events. If you're in Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco, I'd love to see you! Seattle — Third Place Books June 5th at 7pm I'll be in conversation with Gregg Colburn, author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/brian-...

Get in, skeeters. We're going to save democracy. Seriiously. Join the extraordinary resistance researcher Erica Chenoweth, former Kamala Harris policy advisor Ami Fields-Meyer, and me. June 11 at noon. Registration is free. We're going to let you know what's happening and what you can do.

Trump's proposed HUD budget cuts should be treated "as a five-alarm fire. If it becomes law, the impact would be swift and devastating. Evictions would rise, shelters would overflow, and thousands would be pushed into homelessness. This is not theory. It is a proposal with real human consequences."

NEW: A Tennessee lender told legislators its new product, the Flex Loan, would help residents. In the 10 years since getting approval for it, the company has sued over 110,000 borrowers. With @tennesseelookout.com

At the top of my reading list: @calebgayle.bsky.social's forthcoming BLACK MOSES, about a 19th-century Black visionary who dreamed of a state governed by and for Black people. It's my favorite kind of story--a buried history of resistance and possibility. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717975...

Friendly reminder to support your local independent bookstore this weekend! A slightly less friendly reminder to just not buy books from Am*zon at all.

I spoke with @slate.com on my @themarshallproject.org reporting on hospital drug testing, from its origins in the crack epidemic, to the implications for pretty much every single person who gives birth in the US today. Please give it a listen. slate.com/podcasts/wha...

!!!! www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

You know the name José Cuervo—but do you know the story? In Tequila Wars, out May 6, Switchyard editor Ted Genoways tells the epic tale of how tequila became Mexico’s iconic spirit—built on resilience, revolution, and vision. Pre-order now: magiccitybooks.square.site/product/tequ...

In a new report, Sarah Stillman investigates deaths related to starvation, dehydration, and neglect in county jails across the U.S.—a crisis that at times has been covered up by private health companies and government officials. nyer.cm/hMT7u9R

Last night by chance I came across a bank statement from spring 1981, when my family got evicted from our house. I was 12. So much desperation on 1 page. Looks like a kited check, returned check and service charges, and repeating negative balances. My heart goes out to people on the edge right now.

For bombs and war and tanks and missiles, the DOD demands $850 billion. For words and thoughts, books and scholarship, the NEH requires only $200 million. It was a ratio that was always off, but has now become a profoundly dangerous imbalance.

Some thoughts on Trump's tariffs and the history of how trying to limit the importation of tequila a century ago only led to violence—and increased popularity for tequila.

Always follow the money