Meanwhile, on Earth, the president of the United States posts: “A whole civilization will die tonight.”

“Experts are dubious”

It’s not just Ms. Rachel. The biggest names in children’s educational programming are coming out in force to call for kids to be freed from ICE detention. Here’s “Reading Rainbow” host @mychal3ts.bsky.social outside the Dilley Immigration Processing Center.

NEW: The 9-year-old who begged Ms. Rachel for help getting out of ICE detention so he could attend his spelling bee has now also been released from Dilley. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Activist who pushed 2020 election fraud claims convicted of election fraud www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

Emerging GOP plan to end DHS shutdown might include funding for new election oversight, per my colleagues: “One idea is to provide financial incentives to states to implement voter ID laws; another idea is to send money to DHS to ‘monitor elections’ and conduct election security, the source said.”

“No child should be here, regardless of their condition,” Gael’s dad told me from Dilley last week. “Even for us as adults, it’s hard.” Now they’re on their way back to El Paso. Ms. Rachel had called for their release after meeting the family over zoom this month.

This morning at the Phoenix airport, ICE is scanning IDs and manning the TSA posts where the job is to tell you to take out your laptop, please keep your shoes on and ask “got any water in here?”

UPDATE: A 5-year-old nonverbal boy whose plight in a South Texas immigration detention center drew national attention after a video call with Ms. Rachel has been released with his family. Coms days after NBC News detailed the family’s experience.

My colleague @spettypi.bsky.social has a new project out this morning for @nbcnews.com documenting in clear, vivid, empirical detail how the wealthy are growing richer while most everyone else is struggling — a decades-long trend that has intensified under Trump.

NEW: For the first time, ProPublica has been able to quantify how many U.S. citizen children have been directly affected by Trump’s immigration crackdown: more than 11,000 kids had a parent detained — and that’s an undercount. 1/ 🧵 www.propublica.org/article/trum...

This DailyMail headline says my reporting on Ms. Rachel sparked a “firestorm.” The evidence: The article quotes three anonymous social media comments. 🤔

“I am political,” Ms. Rachel told me of her new effort to free kids from ICE detention. “It’s political to believe that children are worthy of love … and that our care shouldn’t stop at what we look like, our family, at our religion, at a border. Mr. Rogers was very political.”

I wrote about being dyslexic www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/o...

“It’s cruelty, it’s child abuse and neglect.” Listen to part of my conversation with Ms. Rachel as she discusses what it was like to speak to two children trapped at the ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, and her latest humanitarian cause: to help “close Dilley”

Here’s Ms. Rachel slipping into character while trying to comfort Gael, a non-verbal 5-year-old who’s being held in ICE detention with his parents. I spoke with the boy’s family yesterday. They say he’s been hitting himself. “No human being should ever go through this,” Gael’s dad told me.

“We’re trying to get a child out of a jail to do a spelling bee,” Ms. Rachel told me. “I just never thought those words would go together.” Read my story on Ms. Rachel’s new mission to help shut down Dilley and free kids trapped there — starting with two she met over Zoom last week.

THREAD: Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at the hospital when a tablet was brought to her bedside. On the screen was a Zoom call with a judge and several lawyers and doctors. She was in court, a nurse told her. The reason? For failing to agree to a C-section.

Local journos, this new feature will help you find all the habeas cases in your state and federal judicial district with one click. Track them over time. Huge public service!

Online betting has grown so prominent among teen boys, there are now scared straight-style speakers traveling to schools across the country to warn kids about the dangers of gambling addiction. (Free PSA idea: This is your brain on DraftKings.)

Someone has to build the detention centers. One major architecture firm faced an internal revolt after it signed on. The firm promised it would be the last. The Trump admin can't do this alone. They need the compliance of people in every sector to do it for them www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

NEW: The Dilley family detention facility disabled video calls on tablets after detainees’ call recordings were shared on social media, according to a document viewed by ProPublica. 1/

Wait until Amazon bosses learn how many thousands of dollars their competitor spent on this "story unit" www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/u...

He had children, a wife, DACA protections. “That doesn’t matter,” ICE said as they arrested him, taking him from his U.S.-citizen wife and three citizen children, the youngest of whom was in an isolation chamber at a neonatal intensive care unit. “I never got to hold her," he said from detention.

“Dilley is a hellhole. It’s a prison for babies, toddlers and children.” Elora Mukherjee of Columbia Law School shares the stories of several families detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas — including several featured in our reporting for @nbcnews. 1/

Abused youth were granted special immigration protection. Now some are being detained and deported. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch by @jonschuppe.bsky.social and me: www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news... At least 10 women and girls say they were groomed, and that’s just what’s publicly documented.

The U.S. must restore faith in America’s independent press by allowing the federal government to decide what news is acceptable to report, FCC chairman declares

Ms. Rachel met over zoom with a 5-year-old boy with autism detained at Dilley whose mother says he hasn’t been able to poop in nine days. After trying to cheer him up on the call, she’s calling for his release this morning.

The federal government isn't supposed to detain immigrant children for longer than 20 days. But when a Russian asylum seeker with 5-year-old twins asked why they'd been held for longer, an ICE officer falsely claimed the 20-day rule had been voided. Says who? he asked. "Trump," ICE responded.

ICE detained a 9-year-old with severe autism and his mom for more than 80 days. The boy depends on daily therapy, but at Dilley, those supports vanished. Unable to understand why they couldn’t go home, he would cry through the night and hit himself, his mother told me. My latest for @nbcnews.com

Ms Rachel talking to Deiver Henao, a 9yo in an immigration detention center www.instagram.com/reel/DVzUzoz... What a world

This is best argument I've seen against sports betting. As a Cleveland guy, I've already suffered enough: “For 200 bucks, I had purchased an artificial rooting interest in a game I had no reason to care about.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

"Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, reversed himself on the Senate filibuster Wednesday after years of unflinching support for the 60-vote threshold."

Wayback link (Virginian-Pilot nuked the original) web.archive.org/web/20160929...

I wrote this a decade ago after traveling to Bahrain while investigating the U.S. Navy's aging minesweeping systems, which had fallen into disrepair: "One potential nightmare scenario: A few mines in the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East could shut down the key shipping channel for days or weeks"

Put this one in the 2026 time capsule

This fact is not in dispute: Charles “Sonny” Burton, 75, has never killed anyone. But on Thursday, Alabama is set to execute him.

Reuters Exclusive "U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school." "The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the ​Middle East."

New NY Times ’visual investigation’ strongly suggests that the US fired the missile that hit the Minab school Saturday. (Though is very careful with its language to not say it conclusively.) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...

Since last year, I and Al Shaw & @bxroberts.org have investigated the linkages between Trump appointees and the industries they oversee. Today we published a searchable database containing approximately 3,200 financial disclosure forms of roughly 1500 officials. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there. They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

An ICE detainee in Arizona has died of a TOOTH INFECTION after it went untreated for weeks, a local official says. He was a Haitian asylum seeker imprisoned in Florence, Arizona. @emilybregel.bsky.social reports. tucson.com/news/local/b...

$1.2 billion contract to open and run the Camp East Montana immigrant tent facility in El Paso. Opened in August 2025. Six months (and three detainee deaths) later: reports of its looming closure.

In Springfield, Ohio, some Americans have converted their basements and spare bedrooms into shelters for immigrant families who could be targeted in raids.

It’s interesting that Talarico’s religious appeals are framed primarily as a reach across the aisle here. In his particular case, I think that’s *part* of the effort come the general. But his slogan was “let’s flip some tables” — a theological argument aimed at the Democratic base, not Republicans.

“She was almost home." Nicole Amor's grieving husband said he last spoke to her about two hours before she was killed.

The cost of Trump’s election lies in action in the Texas Hill Country

“In Dallas County, the confusion is rooted in election conspiracy theories about voting machines, which propelled the Dallas County GOP to abandon countywide voting in favor of precinct-level voting and led, Democrats say, thousands of voters to show up at the wrong polling site.”

Bo French - who has called to deport Native Americans, frequently uses the R-word, pals around with Jack Posobiec, recently asked his followers if Jews or Muslims pose a bigger threat to America, and gleefully called the day SNAP benefits lapsed "National Chimp out Day" - currently leads with 41%