I've been tracking the spread of nonconsensual deepfakes on X for more than two years. Here's a timeline of how Musk's leadership allowed the practice to flourish from a once-underground market to a viral trend, with little recourse for victims or legal enforcement. spitfirenews.com/p/grok-csam-...

NEW: 4 months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing black sludge across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away. Yet the black goo still clings to walls, roofs, and soil of more than half of the majority-Black town’s properties capitalbnews.org/roseland-lou...

Calls are growing to release Palestinian protester Leqaa Kordia, who has been detained by ICE for nearly ten months.

The judge also ordered that teachers have a right to misgender trans youth even when the parents know of and are supportive of their trans child. Just in case you thought this was actually about parental rights.

“We’ve gotten through some crazy things. Pulse was not that long ago,” said Jenda Envy, a drag queen from Orlando. “It would have to take a lot. Ron DeSantis? Ooh girl, you’d have to show up to my house.”

my first @theguardian.com: I wrote about this year's "Drag Queen Christmas" tour stop in Pensacola, FL, which from the 1950s-70s hosted America's biggest LGBTQ event; the state AG tried to get the "demonic" show canceled. I talked to Florida drag queens and supporters that refuse to go underground:

we, in the United States, through Trump’s mass deportation scheme, have engaged in abductions and torture for the past year, none of it in secret, much of it attested to in legal documents. there is nothing to expose, only to face.

In this sense, she really is the second coming of Bill Buckley! First as tragedy, then as farce

so much of what's been "newly" released re: Epstein is just confirming past credible assertions made by his victims. I've been re-reading 2019 stories while reading the new coverage and so little has changed about what we know. meanwhile Andrew Tate walks free. people only care about the spectacle

oh, thank god. no one has asked this before in the last 50 years

missed this the other day because been offline (preparing to share some 2026 ~updates~) — thank you @evanurquhart.bsky.social and the team @assignedmedia.org for including my story on how LGBTQ and Native Oklahomans healed in the year after Nex Benedict's death in their best trans stories of 2025 ❤️

The House passed legislation today that would charge doctors with a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for providing transition-related care to minors. Rep. Sarah McBride strongly condemned the legislation in rare personal remarks ahead of the vote. www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

For a brief time American workers had a lot of leverage over employers. That power has now evaporated.

Read the story by @vic-parsons.bsky.social here: www.wearequeeraf.com/queer-activi...

truly terrifying

"Our analysis shows that in the aftermath of extreme weather events, lower-income neighbourhoods are less likely to rebuild and do not return to their pre-disaster state, whereas higher-income areas rebuild and tend to improve...highlighting increasing disparities in their built environments."

Twenty years ago, over 90% of revenue from recorded music came from physical album sales. Now, streaming accounts for 84% of that money. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

This year, I set out to chronicle free speech under the Trump admin. No small feat. Trump attacks dissent & leverages the White House to go after critics constantly. But how? Read our bombshell new @freepress.bsky.social report. I'm proud & horrified: www.freepress.net/attack-on-fr...

Folks, this redistricting landscape is as confusing as it is outrageous. The VRA case. CA. TX. UT. FL. VA. IN. NC. MD... So, at Bolts we're doing a reader Q&A to answer some of your questions. But to do that, we need to know what's perplexing you most, what you're left wondering. Let me know! (↓)

i'm available for freelance work, bio writing, consulting, anything! for now going to start writing a newsletter over on substack best way to support me right now is to subscribe! brittanyspanos.substack.com

Good morning! I’m currently at Beaverton High School in OR where a mass student walk out has just started to demand a proactive ICE protocol for their school and district. Students say that similar walkouts were planned at multiple other high schools, including Aloha, Sunset, Southridge & more.

404 Media is making a print zine! About the surveillance technologies used by ICE. 16 pages, riso printed. Shipping early January. Features reworked versions of our best reporting and a few new things. We're very excited! And hope to do more if people like it: www.404media.co/404-media-is...

Pre-trial hearings are usually empty for most cases. The Luigi Mangione hearings, on the other hand, are happening in a packed courtroom — and not everyone is happy about the coverage. Read more from @miasato.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/policy/83905...

Zohran Mamdani has an ambitious agenda. What does he need to do immediately during his first 100 days in office to make his promises real? We're kicking off our "First 100 Days" series with a look at his plans for universal child care, via @brycecovert.bsky.social: hellgatenyc.com/zohran-mamda...

Have you heard the good news? Black Zine Fair is coming back to NYC on May 9, 2026—and we need your help to have a successful event. gogetfunding.com/black-zine-f... We’re raising $20,000 to keep the fair free and accessible. If you can, please give $5, $15, $50, or more.

i'm grateful there's a fervor to launch new projects and publications right now, because the times are as dire as they appear to be, and a generation of young writers is looking out at a landscape that appears to be all ash and dust

When young people learn people's history, including stories posted here, they make more informed decisions, ask questions, & take collective action to shape a just future. That's why the right suppresses education. Join us. Provide free lessons & classes, & defend teachers right to use them. ⬇️

My newsletter was fire in 2025 if I may say so myself, lol. It really was though. Proud of the work and those who helped me make it happen.

I was on A Life Creative, hosted by my dear friends and former neighbors who I have known since I was 15! www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoem...

"I believe that to have interfered as I have done — as I have always freely admitted I have done — in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right." -- abolitionist John Brown, executed #tdih 1859 Read about Brown + the other Harpers Ferry Raiders ⬇️ www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/jo...

thank you to everyone who contributed to our gofundme ❤️ more fundraisers! — @condeunion.bsky.social Fired Four were illegally fired for protected action, asking Conde to explain folding Teen Vogue into Vogue — In Oct, the majority of VIBE Magazine was laid off; they’ve struggled to meet their goal

For at least a year, I've been returning to the question, how would you know when it's time to leave the US? For this piece, I asked trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer Americans who, with their families and partners, have recently fled the country, about how they made this decision and how they left.

I’m still thinking about Bari Weiss saying that Hasan Piker (extremely popular influencer) is less of a measure of where Americans are than Alan Dershowitz (extremely unpopular Epstein associate, his own neighbors won’t sell him a pierogi)

Savannah Standing Bear’s family and friends have heard plenty of rumors, but not many answers. It’s been eight months since she disappeared from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. The latest from an #MMIP series in collaboration with @ict-news.bsky.social ⬇️ buff.ly/uyIDKr8

1/5 My 2020 interview with Alice Wong is now out and ready to be shared! You can download it here: tinyurl.com/2wke8tk6 (Note that you may not be able to view it online if you’re not signed into Google, but anyone can download it.)

in the last 1.5 years journalistic fact-checking has become significantly harder specifically bc of this, without touching all the other ways education and knowledge-sharing are under attack rn (book bans, censorship, media industry crumbling, etc etc)

"People — including real-life radicals — are messy. The boundaries of their politics, personal lives, and morality are porous. This is most obvious in the image of Perfidia, a tornado of energetic reappraisal and erotic possibility. A reminder that the representation conversation can be a trap."

could’ve also tried to say they were for “they/them”’ period but apparently didn’t qualify as “we” then

for context Alex Vitale is the author of the much-cited (including by me) book The End of Policing

and Comrade Arca! hell yeah

this is not a drag of the writer of this particular piece, which is largely sympathetic, but this line of argument makes me nuts young people are involved in protest and organizing at several levers of power—but they're not able to show up to photo op street rallies at the same rates as retirees

National news coverage framed November’s elections as proof that anti-trans messaging wasn't effective this cycle. @lookoutnews.bsky.social found the opposite in Mesa, where that rhetoric helped power a recall against District 2 Council Member Julie Spilsbury. www.lookoutnews.org/mesa-recall-...

thrilled and honored for SIMPLICITY to be on here. thank you NPR~

maybe journalism is done, actually

Since February, according to my latest analysis, almost 600,000 Black women have been economically sidelined. The November 20, 2025, Jobs Report makes clear this isn’t a blip. It’s a structural crisis. That is not a recovery. It is a redistribution of opportunity.

redid my personal site post-layoff :) my contact form is open! if you're looking to talk to or commission someone with expertise in covering and analyzing social movements, prison and police abolition, trans politics, climate organizing, cultural criticism... reach out! (my DMs are cursed rn, lol)

I spoke with people role-playing ICE raids in video games to help educate people on their rights and what to do in real-life situations. Tonight, they're holding an event in Fortnite www.wired.com/story/activi...

This is a nuts story. An AI chatbot and image platform left millions of images exposed. They show what people are actually using the AI for: taking random women's yearbook, graduation, and social media photos and making super realistic hardcore porn with them www.404media.co/ai-porn-secr...

Big news... WE'RE MOVING! Our landlord raised the rent by 50%, so we're moving 4 blocks down the street. We’re sad to leave this space, but there are a few big things we’re pumped about in the new spot including: