Meghan Leonard

Opinion | Cancer Patients Like Me Are Casualties of MAHA’s Hypocrisy

A good friend of mine (and an amazing photojournalist) is going through something similar. He has stage IV cancer, and was diagnosed at 30. It’s a nightmare.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/o...

A Battle with My Blood When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family.

Devastating essay about living with a terminal cancer diagnosis at 35, made more devastating by the author's relation to the health and human services secretary who's spent the past year cutting cancer research.

She’s resigning to spend more time yelling racial and ethnic slurs at cashiers

Months into ICE raids, Chicago teachers and community members are finding ways to help students cope with trauma inflicted on their communities.

Borderless reports: blockclubchi.co/49ynB5s

Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump (who's got his hand giving a thumbs up) in front of the portrait of FDR at the White House

Put it in The Louvre of US political history. The look on Mamdani's face is priceless.

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com.

We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans.

washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

There's gonna be (hell, there already is) a body count for the second Trump administration. We'll never know the exact number, and we may not even have a rough estimate for decades. But it will be real and measurable.

Thinking a lot lately about the simple fact that college allows people to spend about 15 weeks immersed in a disciplinary conversation with an expert in that field. And what a special thing that is.

This is one of those points as an academic and researcher who focuses on authoritarianism and fascism I don’t like to make but:when the leader of the fascist movement that holds the government starts posting about murdering their opposition specifically political opposition you are in massive danger

DISSENT FROM THE MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge, dissenting: "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night!''

Uhhh, this belated dissent in the Texas districting case—written by a 79-year-old Reagan appointee—is quite a ride storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The Eric Schickler essay in Larry Bartel's symposium on "What Trump Has Taught Us About Political Science" is one of the most insightful pieces I've read in 2025.

US institutions turned out to be weak, and we have to rethink conventional wisdom.

open access: academic.oup.com/psq/advance-...

CPD use-of-force incidents still climbing at ‘crucial moment’ in reform effort For the fourth year in a row, use-of-force incidents involving Chicago Police officers are increasing, with advocates and officials saying the trend is helping to bring the reform process to a key …

For the fourth year in a row, use-of-force incidents involving Chicago Police officers are increasing, with advocates and officials saying the trend is helping to bring the reform process to a key point.

Chat, is this good

" A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about."

Sending a message to journalists in the room and all around the world ...

Might as well have complimented his saw collection.

Mo’ne Davis Is Finally Ready to Play Baseball Again More than a decade after becoming a Little League sensation at age 13, Mo’ne Davis is set to make more history as the face of the Women’s Pro Baseball League.

Mo'ne Davis spent years telling people that she was done playing baseball. She did not want to be forever defined by what she did as a 13-year-old in Little League, a decade ago, and she did not feel like there was space for her to do much else. And then she felt differently. On Davis and the WPBL:

this would have been a month-long scandal in 2011

Sanford grandfather, born in refugee camp, nabbed by ICE after 70 years in U.S. Paul Bojerski never gained official residency, but he checked in regularly with ICE for years. Then in July, at age 79, he was detained and sent to Alligator Alcatraz.

79-year-old Paul Bojerski was born to Polish parents in a WWII German refugee camp. His family legally emigrated to the U.S. when he was 5.

He’s been taken by ICE in Florida.

www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/11/16/s...

This is a very good thing in my book. Ambitious Republicans want there to be democracy in 2028 and not just anoint a third Trump term or Rubio/Vance/whomever as a successor.

They'll need to create some distance between themselves and the Trump Administration and alternative power bases.

This relative advantage means that, even if they are relying on government programs like welfare or Medicaid, Trump supporters can see themselves as the "deserving" poor while disparaging others who are worse off than they are for being "lazy" and making "bad choices." 1/

Prosecutor, D.C. metro area: The D.C. office is hemorrhaging bodies, and they will probably get rid of two competent people for stating relevant facts that were on the record. I don’t think people will truly understand what’s happening to justice in America until it impacts them. Even my family: My parents voted for Trump. I don’t think they see it as a priority. I mean, they’re not going to be criminally indicted anytime soon. When I tell them what’s happening, I don’t think they really believe me. It would take a lot of restraint not to retaliate in the next administration. A lot of career people are helping the administration now. I have a list in my head, and if we get out of this, some of them I’m holding to account. A lot could be validly criminally probed. But the back-and-forth will not be good.

This whole piece is all the actual horribles on parade, and this one is just infuriating

60 Attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump’s Justice Department (Gift Article) Sixty former staffers describe an environment of suspicion and intimidation within the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.

Absolutely no way to read this and not conclude that the Department of Justice has been deeply corrupted. And this is from a time when career lawyers were in place, pushing back against illegality. With firings and resignations, the politicization will just get worse.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is some horrifying predatory shit.

Calvin Duncan wins Orleans clerk of court race - Verite News New Orleans Duncan, a political newcomer and former prisoner, defeated incumbent Darren Lombard by a wide margin in Saturday's runoff.

a big runoff last night, in New Orleans:

Calvin Duncan was exonerated after spending *28 years* in prison; he tried to get his own case records from the New Orleans city clerk—but the office dragged its feet.

So Duncan ran to become city clerk himself, and yesterday ousted the incumbent.

“I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime Authorities said Tren de Aragua “terrorists” had taken over the building. A ProPublica investigation found little evidence to back up the government’s claims. For the first time, the Venezuelans arres...

"ProPublica’s reporting debunks the idea of a ’Tren de Aragua complex' taken over by a horde of terrorists. We found no criminal convictions for 18 of the 21 Venezuelans we identified. Three of the men had been charged with offenses ... but in each case the charges were dropped."

Remember the recent middle-of-the-night apartment building raid where children were dragged outside naked & zip-tied in the street while black & Latino residents were _sorted by race_ and piled into separate vans while their apartments were ransacked & robbed? That raid? So it resulted in 0 arrests.

The Christian right for decades has fear-mongered that federal agents (under Dem presidents) would "criminalize" Christianity and literally prevent them from worshipping.

Now that Trump's stormtroopers are doing it ... crickets

People getting mad here about anyone saying it's good that MTG and Trump are fighting. I teach democratization every semester. The first slide says 'elite fracture.' That's always where it starts. It's good when people with bad politics are fighting one another.

If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.