Odette Yousef

I was asked to speak at the Journalism Is Not A Crime rally yesterday to share some of what journalists have experienced in Chicago while covering the Broadview ICE processing facility.

To be honest, I am pretty uneasy with all the attention! 1/

photo of paulina borsook

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Sure! We should be able to Dm now

How some online networks target and radicalize kids Podcast Episode · Consider This from NPR · 08/07/2025 · 13m

"When I talk about it, I get one of two reactions. One is, 'That can never happen to us because we have parental controls, the screen time [limits]... Or two, 'I had no idea that something like this could happen. Please tell me more.’”

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Today, Brandon Russell was sentenced to 20 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for his involvement in a plot to destroy Baltimore area power plants. He encouraged others to do the same through a loose, violent neo-Nazi network, Terrorgram

Read my coverage of his trial from earlier:

Thank you. Yes, we were aware and Dana is comfortable with her depictions in this story.

Nihilistic online networks groom minors to commit harm. Her son was one of them When Dana's son was hospitalized last year, it led her to a path of discovery about predatory online networks that groom children into harming themselves and others. Their reach is global and growing.

"The whole time period that he was into these things online, it was like he was taken hostage and brainwashed," she said.

www.npr.org/2025/08/06/n...

State Department seeking to create an "Office of Remigration" in wide restructuring Critics note that the term "remigration" has been used by far-right groups in Europe.

That was what he believed when he went to the Unite the Right rally in 2017. Eight years later, the State Department is considering an Office of Remigration. www.axios.com/2025/05/30/s...

When interviewed a regional leader of Identity Evropa a few years ago, I asked how he thought the U.S. would become a white ethnostate without violence. He said he figured non-whites would "remigrate."

“The Federal Government Is Gone”: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States As the White House redirects counterterrorism personnel and funds toward mass deportations, a state-level scramble is on to preserve efforts once supported by Washington. The result is a patchwork app...

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Wow - this is so insightful! Thank you!

The Gender Ideology Behind Christian Nationalism and the Anti-Abortion Movement By Paul A. Djupe and Brooklyn Walker [Image credit: Tennessee Lookout] A recent story from NPR helps make the connections between extraordinarily restrictive anti-abortion policies and a broader mo…

After reading excellent reporting from @oyousef.bsky.social on NPR about the violent gender ideology behind the anti-abortion movement, we (@brooklynwalker.bsky.social + I) had to dig into our data to see whether this exists in the mass (Christian) public. 1/2

religioninpublic.blog/2025/05/16/t...

Hardline anti-abortion movement leans into 'manhood' debate to broaden appeal A small network of anti-abortion rights activists has been making progress pushing for bills that would classify people who get abortions as criminals.

Hardline anti-abortion movement leans into 'manhood' debate to broaden appeal.

www.npr.org/2025/05/14/n...

Once-fringe activists are fighting to be the voice of the anti-abortion movement Most Americans balk at the idea of charging women who get abortions with homicide, but post-Roe, militant anti-abortion activists are finding state lawmakers are increasingly open to it.

Most Americans balk at the idea of charging women who get abortions with homicide, but post-Roe, militant anti-abortion activists are finding state lawmakers are increasingly open to it.
By @oyousef.bsky.social

The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights The agency's annual human rights reports are being purged of references to prison conditions, political corruption and other abuses.

The State Department is changing its mind about human rights

www.npr.org/2025/04/18/n...

🚨A U.S. born citizen was arrested in Florida for entering the state as an “unauthorized alien.” His mother and a community advocate showed his birth certificate during a hearing in Leon County. The judge said she had no authority to release him.

Before press came in — but while live feed was running on Bukele’s feed — Trump said to him: “home-growns are next. … You’re gonna need to build about 5 more places.”

x.com/nayibbukele/...

One can only imagine what the experience of people within the Springfield Haitian community must have been. This complaint details how a campaign, purportedly against one minority group, ended up terrorizing a whole city.

It's illuminating to see that none of the plaintiffs named here are, themselves, from the Haitian community. All of them are just residents of Springfield who publicly stood against the vitriol that was directed at immigrants.

Some of this was already well-reported at the time. But some details are chilling. One that jumped out: plaintiffs' homes were visited in the middle of the night by strangers who appeared, expecting sex and drugs. In one case, they'd been told to enter the house without knocking.

The complaint includes a detailed tick-tock of when BT first showed up in Springfield, in Aug 2024, and how it ramped up its activities in the weeks following.

Springfield, OH is suing the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe for its alleged role in intimidating, harassing and inciting violence in that city during the run-up to the presidential election.

Elon Musk tried to turn the salute controversy into a joke The incident only lasted seconds, but it sparked what has become a global debate about how to interpret what Musk did. Then Musk started posting Nazi-themed jokes.

www.npr.org/2025/01/23/n...

Fun fact to bring to your next cocktail party: The Minnesota state capitol building prohibits the carrying of signs on sticks. But fine to bring in a firearm.

They feature four main (fictional) characters - three who were present on J6 (a journalist, a hill staffer and the father of a Trump supporter), and a widow of a Capitol Police officer.

Just fascinating. I'm looking forward to the remaining books in the series to come out.

Really fascinating and effective when it comes to playing out a sort of worst-case scenario. Like, I alternated between pit-in-my-stomach and nausea at points. Definitely have questions/quibbles with some of the decisions of what was emphasized, what was less emphasized. But amazing work.

The work is varied, and sometimes involves the reading of graphic novels.

Caffeinated from a late night drive and freaked out by *how* bad the coverage of Trump Sec Def Pete Hegseth is, I decided to start reading his new book, The War on Warriors. A thread. The new Pentagon chief begins by bragging he was pushed out for being an "extremist"... 1/