Miranda Green

Inside the Largest Deregulatory Action in US History | Atmos Can the government simply decide emissions aren’t its problem?

There is an international scientific consensus that climate change is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels.

Still, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has decided it should no longer play any part in protecting the public from those emissions.

atmos.earth/political-la...

How Metric Media filed more than nine thousand public records requests last year. It used the data to target Democratic politicians and private citizens.

How ‘Pink Slime’ Publishers Are Weaponizing #FOIA

@mirandagreen.bsky.social reports for @columjournreview.bsky.social

#news #environment

EJ Today Headlines: sej.org/headlines/list

@sejorg.bsky.social

www.cjr.org/tow_center/p...

How Metric Media filed more than nine thousand public records requests last year. It used the data to target Democratic politicians and private citizens.

In the past year, Metric Media filed more than 9,000 FOIA requests across all 50 states, according to an investigation for the Tow Center by @mirandagreen.bsky.social

www.cjr.org/tow_center/p...

Thanks for the share!

Some have! But the Q is how to fund it? Do we sell ad revenue (that's a bust)? Do we try to fundraise (that's relying on a Bezos or small donors)? How do we sell this new org and win over paying readers when others have failed? Most reporters aren't business savvy & this is an issue cross industries

❤️

Where Do the Journalists Go Now? As media titans self-combust, what does that mean for reporters, their sources and the news we desperately need?

This week's Post layoffs hit a chord for me, so I wrote something personal, timed with the anniversary of my own layoff a year ago.

"What is it that they say, again? Journalism is the thing you love that doesn’t love you back."

mirandacgreen.substack.com/p/where-do-t...

Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Mingled With Silicon Valley Start-Ups

New: we dug into Epstein’s dealmaking in Silicon Valley. He used his connections with tech’s elite to get into hot startup deals, some of which paid off handsomely (coinbase) and others that did not (jawbone).

W/ @rmac.bsky.social + matt Goldstein

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...

How Metric Media filed more than nine thousand public records requests last year. It used the data to target Democratic politicians and private citizens.

Read the full piece here: www.cjr.org/tow_center/p...

Flynn said she intended to spark a reaction with the letter, but didn’t expect to be personally attacked for standing up for the school’s curriculum.

“I’m just a normal person living my life,” she said. “I’m not trying to be famous.”

One Metric paper filed a FOIA requesting any police reports on Flynn.

One local parent who objected to McCloy’s interventions was Andrea Flynn. She wrote a letter to the editor in a local paper and afterwards said she started seeing her named attacked online in McCloy's Facebook group

Metric papers have given McCloy and her group a large microphone. They published at least twenty-three articles about her and her group.

Her group been represented by Judicial Watch—the very same right-wing activist group Metric quoted in its stories chastising Chicago’s mayor

Metric papers zeroed in on a battle over school curricula waged primarily by Kristina McCloy, a former Trump surrogate.

McCloy started Concerned Parents of Hinsdale in 2024 to voice her objections to a book called Julian Is a Mermaid, which she said pushed “woke gender ideology on our children.”

It’s had impacts locally.

In the past year, two Metric papers—the DuPage Policy Journal and Prairie State News—have waded into a fiery war of words over the town’s school board and parks district, at times attacking local parents by name.

Metric does not disclose its backers, but its affiliated nonprofit, received $10m in donations in 2024. That’s up from $6m the previous year.

Metric’s strategy fits squarely within a growing effort by conservative think tanks and even the DOJ to use public records laws to gain access to voter information and school curricula under the auspices of transparency.

It filed requests to every sheriff’s office in Illinois—84—seeking details about county jail inmates with so-called immigration detainers.

A day later, Metric paper The Chicago City Wire published a story about Chicago’s democratic mayor:

For ex: Between Jan & Dec 2025, Metric requested the number of transgender and nonbinary inmates housed at an Illinois corrections center and arrest records from Chicago’s Pride parade.

Their requests have focused on the kind of hot-button topics that reinforce conservative talking points and turn school board meetings into screaming matches.

Most have also zeroed in on Metric’s home state of Illinois.

In January they asked 573 sheriffs’ departments across 14 states to release records of arrests, including: “name, sex, race, age, date of birth, and citizenship status of each arrestee.” They also asked for booking photos and names of arresting officers.

2 days after the 2024 elections, Metric Media sent letters to every city, town, and village in the state of Wisconsin—1114 requests in all asking for the same thing: Lists of voters who registered on Election Day

Last year Metric Media filed more than 9,000 public records, and it’s used the data to target Democratic politicians and private citizens.

Many of the requests are for data at the forefront of America’s culture-wars, from allegedly rigged elections to banned books to transgender inmates.

In my latest investigation for @columjournreview.bsky.social, I found that a network of 1,200 news-appearing websites isn’t just publishing slanted articles wrapped as journalism, it’s filing FOIAs to get personal data— 1,000s of them.

As real journalists from The Washington Post, the AP and elsewhere are getting laid off, pink-slime news sites are stepping in to fill the void.

🧵

My latest investigation, and first in a series for @towcenter.bsky.social
: How ‘Pink Slime’ Publishers Are Weaponizing FOIA

In the past year, we found a news-appearing network called Metric Media filed more than nine thousand Freedom of Information Act requests across all fifty states.

new newsletter out today around the state of the FOIA system today -- take a read, and check out @mirandagreen.bsky.social's look into partisan FOIAs, using data we collect at the Tow Center!

AI’s Energy Reckoning Has Arrived | Atmos Data centers are the new climate problem, as the growth of artificial intelligence causes electric bills to skyrocket.

My Understory piece here: atmos.earth/political-la...

AI’S Energy Reckoning Has Arrived

Americans got a collective reality check last year when electric bills soared across the United States.

Those rates are still climbing, and a central culprit is what’s driving AI, cloud storage and crypto mining: data centers.

$100 Million Gone in 27 Minutes After possibly the most expensive jewelry heist in U.S. history, Brink’s went after the victims.

I wrote about the heist when it first happened for New York Magazine.

Several of the victims haven’t gotten back the jewelry that was stolen from them.

You can read the piece here:

nymag.com/intelligence...