This is a really hard day and I want to just add as WIRED's politics editor -- WIRED's politics reporting isn't going anywhere. We are very much here and won't stop. Please continue to read and support us - canceling your subscription to WIRED is not standing in solidarity with our journalists.

Not the Onion: An Italian news agency fires a journalist for asking a question about Israel and Gaza to a European official.

“In an era of American politics that’s becoming more and more defined by trolling, shamelessness, and cheap propaganda, Mamdani proved himself to be the anti-slop candidate,” @cwarzel.bsky.social writes in @theatlantic.com.

"It’s becoming clearer to me that the government is attempting to lay a foundation for dissenting political beliefs as grounds for terrorism," Sam Judy writes in @thebarbedwire.com. This is SO infuriating! 😡 Free Ya’akub Vijandre NOW!

Tomorrow's frontpage

For months, Mohamed Khamis Douda shared accounts of what life was like under siege in El Fasher. He was killed when RSF fighters finally took the city in Darfur this Sunday, raising fears activists and civil society figures are being hunted down. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Condé Nast’s folding of Teen Vogue into Vogue is “clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most," Condé United, @nyguild.bsky.social say. Change throttles "staff diversity and [mutes] the magazine’s progressive political bent."

Help my colleagues at Dangerzone test their important app: dangerzone.rocks/news/2025-11... Dangerzone is @freedom.press' open-source tool that sanitizes attachments and removes any potential malware. Just download, install and report any errors. You’ll have good karma for the rest of the week. 😇

I love it when nonprofit advocates secure wins in tech policy battles. Today, the new Google Pixel 10 is implementing the C2PA standard natively in the smartphone camera chip.... www.linkedin.com/posts/samgre...

🔴 This International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists is the perfect time to call your lawmakers and tell them to stop cherry picking which countries to hold accountable and to stop bankrolling Israel’s wars in Gaza and beyond that have killed hundreds of journalists.

Had Hamdi’s arrest happened anywhere else in the world, it'd "spark a collective outcry," @aidaalami.bsky.social writes in @columjournreview.bsky.social. “But in this case, the person targeted is pro-Palestine. The muted reaction is a troubling public response to a troubling act of state power.”

Maybe you shouldn't pull stunts that validate frivolous legal theories. Maybe you should've passed legislation to protect journalism when you had the majority and Trump was ahead in the polls and broadcasting his plans to bully the press.

Spotify wants you to stay on the app even longer.

In the most recent episode of @status.news’ Power Lines, @passantino.bsky.social calls the demolition of the East Wing and the construction of Trump’s ballroom “the Mar-a-Lagoization of the White House.”

i feel like it's not getting enough attention that Fox News ran a *completely false story* based on AI-generated videos it thought were interviews with real people futurism.com/artificial-i...

@dropsitenews.com's @recolston.bsky.social recalls the "absurd" consular support he and other US citizens received after being detained by Israel from Gaza aid flotillas US diplomat in Jordan told them if they wanted to get a flight back home, they'd be offered a 5k loan & pay it back w/interests 🤯

Join us live now for this important conversation with US journalists abducted from international waters and detained by Israel while covering Gaza aid flotillas: www.youtube.com/watch?v=waqn... @dropsitenews.com @recolston.bsky.social @rightsdissent.bsky.social @chipgibbons.bsky.social

Listen to Noa Avishag Schnall describe the abuse she endured and witnessed as a U.S. journalist in Israeli custody. And RSVP for the discussion tomorrow to hear more from her and others. www.mediaite.com/media/news/a...

Join us tomorrow for a conversation w/ journalists abducted from Gaza aid flotillas, feat. @dropsitenews.com' @recolston.bsky.social, @jewishcurrents.bsky.social's Emily Wilder, & Noa Avishag Schnall, & moderated by @rightsdissent.bsky.social's @chipgibbons.bsky.social. freedom.press/gaza-flotillas

Started when Trump realized be could funnel half a billion dollars through his presidential library foundation. Wasn’t stopped when an anonymous donor paid the military. Now the ballroom. Nothing is off the table. Congress knows this and has exchanged real power with short term convenience.

🔔 Tomorrow: Join us for a conversation with journalists abducted by Israel from Gaza aid flotillas, featuring @recolston.bsky.social, Emily Wilder, and Noa Avishag Schnall, and moderated by @chipgibbons.bsky.social. 🗓️ Nov. 3, 12 p.m. EST/9 a.m. PST RSVP: freedom.press/gaza-flotillas

Here's Wilder's account for @jewishcurrents.bsky.social of what she went through and witnessed as a U.S. journalist in Israeli custody. RSVP for the discussion tomorrow to hear more from her and others. jewishcurrents.org/forty-eight-...

This is bad, of course, but were reporters really going to Karoline Leavitt's office? Why? Hopefully whoever was so unsatisfied with the lies she tells at press briefings that they knocked on her office door for more lies will seek out serious people as sources instead.

I asked ChatGPT to predict its own growth compared to Google queries and present it in a graph.

In normal times the State Department would have treated an abduction of U.S. journalists by a purported ally as an international crisis. Join this online event to hear how it was handled in these abnormal times.

🔔 Join us for a conversation with journalists abducted from Gaza aid flotillas, featuring @recolston.bsky.social, Emily Wilder, and Noa Avishag Schnall, moderated by @chipgibbons.bsky.social. 🗓️ Monday, Nov. 3, 12 p.m. EST/9 a.m. PST RSVP: freedom.press/gaza-flotillas

This is a must-read essay by @recolston.bsky.social, who was one of the journalists aboard one of the ships of the Global Sumud Flotilla and was detained by the Israeli military for five days last month, in @thenation.com. A Reflection on “Objective” Journalism From the Global Sumud Flotilla

let's get stupider

Will Trump’s White House ballroom really be built only with private funds? And have donors, which the president called his “friends,” been promised any favors? These are just two of the big questions we’re asking. Watch @laurenleharper.bsky.social explain.

📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms). It’s also concerning. 1/

So far in 2025, @pressfreedomtracker.us has documented >140 assaults on journalists — more than last two years combined A whopping 76 of those assaults this year have been in LA alone. Read about this and the Tracker's interview with Mario Guevara in @kamccudden.bsky.social's monthly newsletter.

Wired and 404 Media make FOIA reporting free. Other news outlets should too

This is dystopian and outrageous. If you are a FOIA attorney interested in taking on a pro bono case about ICE ERO's use of the Mobile Fortify facial recognition app (emails to and from ERO head Marcos Charles about the app since May 1, specifically) you know where to find me.

Israel demanded Google, Amazon use secret "wink" to sidestep legal orders: Tech giants agreed to adapt internal processes & “subordinate” their standard contractual terms in favor of Israel’s demands, in order to win Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli govt: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A witness in our case had ICE reject all her documents after using facial rec on her. For her, tho, it seemed like nothing could make them accept that she has a right to be here. Either way, a gov policy of not trusting gov-issued docs is going to violate lots of people's rights.

“I thought we had a bonding moment. We didn’t.” 🤣🤣 It’d have been kinda funny, tongue-in-cheekish if the audio was narrated by an automated. Kudos to @ajjacobs.bsky.social and his editor. 👏 👏

The current U.S. administration’s pettiness, thin-skinnedness, and crassness are beyond the pale. And quite frankly, its authoritarian behavior is almost comical.

“We made a calculated a bet that our audience would show up for us,” @wired.com’s @katie-drummond.bsky.social says at @freedom.press’ webinar on the magazine’s decision to unpaywall FOIA-based reporting in March. “That bet paid off above and beyond what I could possibly imagine.” Watch live 👇🏽

Doing this now, on why 404 Media doesn't paywall our FOIA based coverage bsky.app/profile/free...

🔴 LIVE NOW: Join us for this timely discussion about making FOIA-based reporting free at this defining moment in our history. Featuring @404media.co’s @josephcox.bsky.social, @wired.com’s @katie-drummond.bsky.social, and FPF’s @caitlinvogus.bsky.social and @laurenleharper.bsky.social.

📣TODAY, 2 pm ET: RSVP to our webinar on unpaywalling FOIA-based reporting: freedom.press/unpaywalled Feat. a star-studded panel: @wired.com's @katie-drummond.bsky.social; @404media.co's @josephcox.bsky.social; @laurenleharper.bsky.social; @caitlinvogus.bsky.social Intro by @johncusack.bsky.social

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

We aren't letting ICE's targeting of journalists go unchallenged. FPF has filed FOIA requests with ICE and the State Department over Sami Hamdi's detainment, apparently for no other reason than saying something the administration doesn't like.

🔔 First, listen to this PSA from @johncusack.bsky.social on the need to unpaywall public records reporting. Then, RSVP to our webinar and hear @josephcox.bsky.social and @katie-drummond.bsky.social discuss why this is so essential. 🗓️ Oct. 29, 2 p.m. EDT freedom.press/unpaywalled

Excessive government secrecy literally makes you sick. Great FOIA reporting from ProPublica.

New from 404 Media: DHS is trying to unmask an anonymous Instagram/Facebook account that tracks ICE activity by claiming the accounts are importing merchandise. Zero evidence for that, lawyers say demand is wildly out of scope. It's a tactic to unmask critics www.404media.co/dhs-tries-to...

Listen to this important conversation @pressfreedomtracker.us had with journalist Mario Guevara--who was in the US legally for >2 decades--as he discussed his ICE detention for >100 days and deportation to El Salvador. He was arrested in June while covering a #NoKings protest in the Atlanta area.

Egyptian former journalist and Cincinnati chaplain Ayman Soliman recounts harrowing details at an Ohio ICE detention, where he was held for 73 days. At Butler County Jail, he was held in "a freezing room," which was very much colder than the corridor. There was an "intent to dehumanize people."

So fishy!!! I actually made a separate public records request just to learn what was the special technology they claimed to use to recover the deleted messages. I even asked for the user manual, because that’s obviously not exempt. They refuse to provide any info.

Four Palestinian reporters share with @reutersinstitute.bsky.social how military repression, settler attacks, assaults, threats, and restrictions on movement create extreme challenges to journalism in the territory.