"Foxx’s prosecutors usually took no position, objecting to only 1 out of every 4 certificates sought by people exonerated in her second term. Burke is almost the opposite: Her office has objected in 4 out of 5." Great reporting by @danhinkel.bsky.social boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

WaPo reports Louisiana’s governor will announce on Friday that he is suspending the House primaries where people have already started voting and redraw the map; I’d expect them to go for an all-Republican map and eliminate both majority-Black districts, not just one.

NEW in Bolts: We're watching primaries and special elections in 14 states in May, including heated U.S. Senate races, contests for five supreme court seats, and Trump’s bid for revenge against state and federal lawmakers.

Residents of Dunwoody, Georgia are furious about the city's surveillance contract with Flock. Do their elected officials care?

the opportunity is presenting itself again

The biggest Flock surveillance network in the area around Madison, Wisconsin's capital, is coming down. The Dane County Board pulled funding for Flock, which snowballed from the efforts of a small town to quit Flock due to repeated data breaches & ICE accessing cameras: boltsmag.org/verona-wisco...

“Their attorney told them it was illegal discrimination against Black voters. And they did it anyway. So if the opportunity presents itself again—why wouldn’t they go back to it?” boltsmag.org/voting-right...

Today's ruling on the VRA isn't just about Congress. VRA protections applied to countless local elections. In Western TN, Black residents used the VRA to defeat election maps that weakened Black voting power and had kept the 19-seat Fayette County Board entirely White: boltsmag.org/voting-right...

NEW — After years of advocacy and organizing, GoodKids MadCity is seeing the fruits of its labor come to fruition. On April 25, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed the Peacebook Executive Order creating the city’s first permanent year-round Peacekeeping program. thetriibe.com/2026/04/mayo...

Across the country, ICE is converting warehouses into immigrant detention centers. This story is a great look at how locals are using environmental regulations and land use restrictions to stop them. boltsmag.org/ice-warehous...

A ban on ballot grace periods would be devastating for the huge majority of Alaska that is unreachable by road, where harsh climate & geography make mail delays inevitable. That could disenfranchise many Alaska Natives, who make up a fifth of the state's population www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

Wisconsin liberals haven’t had more than 4 seats on the state supreme court since at least the 1970s. They’re about to hold 5 seats, following tonight’s win. *And* liberals could grow their majority to 6-1 a year from now. A remarkable turnaround in just a few cycles.

Liberals now have significant majorities on all three "Blue Wall" state supreme courts: 5-2 in Wisconsin, 5-2 in Pennsylvania, 6-1 in Michigan. Their latest win, tonight in Wisconsin, is a romp: Chris Taylor leads by about 20 points, having so far flipped 15+ counties that went for Trump in 2024.

it's crucial to understand how systematically surveillance companies like Flock just ignore the requests and demands of local governments they contract with; once you've signed that contract, you lose so much control

Liberal candidates swept the 6 school board seats on the ballot in Elmbrook & Menomonee Falls—two school districts within Wisconsin's Waukesha County. This includes ousting 2 conservative incumbents. Why these in particular? They were part of this action by the ACLU: www.wpr.org/books/aclu-w...

“There are many transgender people in Kansas … who won’t vote at all. They will just abstain from voting,” said Matthew Neumann, who directs the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas boltsmag.org/kansas-trans...

Thank you to @pascalsabino.bsky.social and @boltsmag.org for covering this issue. I'm happy that Verona can be one point of push back on the surveillance state and the repeated 4th amendment violations enabled by Flock.

Once surveillance data is shared, there’s really no way to control how it is circulated. The Verona Police Department forbade ICE from accessing their Flock cameras. But logs show officers from other police departments searched Verona’s cameras thousands of times on behalf of ICE agents.

Since its founding in 2017, Flock Safety has seen massive growth in its network of surveillance cameras across the country. This proliferation has sparked outcry among advocates fearful of how the footage could be used—especially by the federal government.

With personal help from some South Tucson city council members, a local community organization purchased two motels in 2023 and converted them to affordable housing aimed at combating rising property taxes and rent costs.

A Wisconsin town covered several surveillance cameras with black plastic bags after the company that runs them, Flock Safety, ignored requests to take them down for months. Officials worried the cameras kept rolling even after the town ended its Flock contract: boltsmag.org/verona-wisco...

NEW in Bolts: Some cities are opting out of camera networks like Flock’s, concerned about abuse by police and immigration authorities. Organizers hope Dane County, Wisconsin, is the “next big domino” to fall.

If you leave the infrastructure of surveillance in place, people in power will inevitably find an excuse to resume using it. You have to take that shit down.

Multiple Bay Area sheriffs have quit the SCAAP program that offered federal funds in exchange for personal info on immigrants held in custody. Critics have said the funds conflict with state protections on sharing data with immigration enforcement www.dailycal.org/news/alameda...

Alaska officials gave false info to American Samoans, telling them they can vote. (They can’t, due to having a unique status among anyone born in a US state or territory.) Now the state is threatening them with years in prison, part of GOP’s voting fraud panic. Months of reporting in this story:

New Jersey’s supreme court barred civilian oversight boards from mounting an independent investigation of police if the police have already launched an internal inquiry. Officials in many NJ cities are demanding more authority for civilian boards.

New Jersey’s largest cities have been pushing for stronger police oversight for years. But state law currently forbids civilian boards from having any real power over police. Read my latest on where recent elections have left this impasse between cities and the state: boltsmag.org/new-jersey-c...

This is exactly why this piece is so important. The national conversation has largely flattened the effects of the VRA -- and it's potential demise -- to which party controls Congress. There's so much more to the VRA than that, and so much more on the line

Congressional redistricting is monumentally important. But for Black people in places like Fayette County, TN, it is the County Commn where the stakes are highest. What SCOTUS does in Louisiana v Calláis may threaten Black representation across the rural South. boltsmag.org/voting-right...

1️⃣ You've heard a lot about the troubles the VRA is in as it's attacked by the right. This summer, @pascalsabino.bsky.social reported on what that means, concretely, for just Native communities in North Dakota who've gained representation thanks to the VRA. boltsmag.org/voting-right...

Fayette County, Tennessee, is more than 1/4 Black, but all 19 of its county commissioners are white. Important @pascalsabino.bsky.social piece here about representation and fair maps: boltsmag.org/voting-right...

a beautifully-done but distressing article here it tells you about the future SCOTUS might plunge us under in just a mere few months, if not less — be sure to read it

If SCOTUS conservatives gut VRA protections from election discrimination, it won't just threaten POC seats in Congress. It is more often used to protect local elections — like in Fayette, TN, where officials used racist voting maps to ensure an all-white county board: boltsmag.org/voting-right...

Oh! We at Bolts just wrote about Roxanna Valenzuela, and South Tucson, a few months ago. You may remember her as the mayor of the Arizona city who faced a recall (and survived) because she helped a soup kitchen and help housed homeless people: boltsmag.org/arizona-enfo...

Mientras la crisis de personas sin hogar en Arizona se agrava, ciudades como South Tucson se debaten entre la compasión y el control, algunos líderes piden empatía, otros más mano dura. www.palabranahj.org/archive/ante... @pascalsabino.bsky.social @camillesquires.bsky.social

This has not gotten much attention, but it should. Virginia under Youngkin returned to an insanely harsh system where people convicted of any felony lose their voting rights FOR LIFE. Dems' win this week mean they'll get to advance a constitutional amendment to end lifetime disenfranchisement.

JUST IN: Soren Stevenson, who lost an eye due to a projectile fired by the police during the BLM protests of 2020 in Minneapolis, has won a seat on city council. @pascalsabino.bsky.social reported on his candidacy last month in a must-read: boltsmag.org/minneapolis-...

RESULT: Soren Stevenson is elected to the Minneapolis City Council in the Eighth Ward. Stevenson lost an eye during a 2020 BLM protest after he was shot by police with a foam projectile.

In Minneapolis, the mayor & entire city council are on the ballot. On police reform, the incumbent mayor & his allies insist the city is on the right track. But a more progressive bloc is pushing for bolder solutions to ongoing patterns of police abuse: boltsmag.org/minneapolis-...

Five years after the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis Police Department remains troubled by officer misconduct. Mayor Jacob Frey has insisted the cify is on track to reform. But some candidates in coming election say the city has failed to meet its promises of change boltsmag.org/minneapolis-...

Missourians have repeatedly used ballot initiatives to adopt policies that lawmakers in the GOP supermajority refuse to move on: abortion rights, paid sick leave, Medicaid expansion. In response, Missouri Republicans are attempting to make direct democracy impossible: boltsmag.org/missouri-ame...

NEW — Black organizers and elected leaders gathered today to denounce Trump’s threats to send military forces to Chicago. They are developing a 30-day emergency response plan, which includes establishing mutual aid hubs and Know Your Rights training sessions. thetriibe.com/2025/08/blac...

NEW — As President Donald Trump tries to punish jurisdictions with bail reform, Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell explains why Illinois ended cash bail—and what he hopes to see next. “What is scary is that this is tyranny 101.” thetriibe.com/2025/08/chic...

I talked to Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell about Trump's order to defund governments that have moved away from cash bail. IL abolished cash bail so people wouldn't be jailed just because they are poor — Mitchell told me Trump's intervention is "Tyranny 101" boltsmag.org/chicago-publ...

Tucson enacted a series of camping bans in response to a state law that pushes cities to criminalize homelessness & punishes those that don't. That pressure also came to the fore South Tucson: leaders were targeted in a failed recall attempt for their work with a local soup kitchen

Tucson enacted a series of camping bans in response to a state law that pushes cities to criminalize homelessness & punishes those that don't. That pressure also came to the fore South Tucson: leaders were targeted in a failed recall attempt for their work with a local soup kitchen

NEW: Leaders of a small Arizona city ramped up affordable housing & services like soup kitchens for homeless people. In response, a former mayor got angry & tried to recall them. But they survived the recalls this month. Bolts reports on what's happening—& the warring responses to homelessness:

A federal judge struck down part of Florida's new crackdown on ballot initiatives. The ruling allows noncitizens to collect signatures for measures like weed legalization & medicaid expansion. But the law still criminalizes other typical petition activity: boltsmag.org/florida-new-...

The U.S. Supreme Court just said Florida's new immigration law will remain BLOCKED while litigation on the law continues. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/u... How aggressive is the law? @pascalsabino.bsky.social broke it down in February: boltsmag.org/florida-repu...

A federal judge struck down part of Florida's new crackdown on ballot initiatives. The ruling allows noncitizens to collect signatures for measures like weed legalization & medicaid expansion. But the law still criminalizes other typical petition activity: boltsmag.org/florida-new-...