Sarah Smith

As ICE descends on Charlotte, faith leaders draw on other cities' actions to aid immigrants (RNS) — As many as 500 people, a mix of clergy and other volunteers, have appeared at the training sessions on how to counter ICE.

NEW: Churches in Charlotte are hosting trainings on how to response to ICE agents — with *hundreds* filling pews.

At one training, a child led those gathered in "This Little Light of Mine" — but changed the words to “All around Border Patrol, I’m gonna let it shine" religionnews.com/2025/11/20/a...

Escape room where the thing you are trying to escape is reading about Olivia Nuzzi

I’m begging the media to bring ethics back

“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...

An absolute powerhouse of a @propublica.org team has done what U.S. officials refuse to do: identify the men and women swept up in that midnight raid in Chicago. Life in the building was not perfect, but reporters found little evidence to back up government claims: www.propublica.org/article/chic...

I'm really proud of this story and my colleagues --
@jodiscohen.bsky.social @tchristianmiller.bsky.social
Sebastian Rotella and @mariamelba.bsky.social ... best collab ever. We got help from A LOT of people
@propublica.org and beyond, including Ronna Risquez, and Andrea Morales from @mlk50.com

“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...

You probably saw videos of a nighttime raid in Chicago. Agents rappelling from a helicopter, bursting down doors, questioning brown-skinned immigrants.

We investigated -- and found little evidence to support the government’s claims about Tren de Aragua.

www.propublica.org/article/chic...

Essential Equipment Fund CHCF’s Essential Equipment Fund helps Chicago-area journalists stay safe while reporting protests and public events. Apply and support today.

The Chicago Headline Club Foundation has launched the Essential Equipment Fund to help independent and freelance journalists buy gear like respirators and helmets.

headlineclub.org/2025/10/11/e...

A Woman Asked 43 Churches If They'd Feed a Starving Baby. The Texas Ones Failed Her Test. Nikalie Monroe is going viral on TikTok for calling churches across the country to ask for baby formula for a fictional two-month-old.

“So, what would you like for me to say?” the woman asked.

“Honestly, my next question is, are you pro-life? Is your church pro-life?” Monroe asked. The church hung up.

thebarbedwire.com/2025/11/11/t...

"My father remained at the Texas detention center until October. During those six months, he went completely blind in one eye and lost most of the vision in the other, because he wasn’t receiving adequate medical care for his Type 2 diabetes."

I try

More Young People Will Go Hungry Without SNAP “We’re trying to make it, but it’s been hard.”

Nandy, a 22-year-old in Kentucky, has Type 1 Diabetes. Foods he's supposed to eat are more expensive, he said. He goes to Walmart and Kroger trying to find lowest prices. He's been eating one meal a day to stretch food out. It's impacting his health: “It’s like a death sentence for people like me”

More on this moment, as described by Rev. Black himself, here: religionnews.com/2025/10/07/i...

More Young People Will Go Hungry Without SNAP “We’re trying to make it, but it’s been hard.”

It feels a bit weird to post right now in light of what has happened to @teenvogue.com and so much of the incredible team there. What sources shared here is important, & I’m grateful I got to work on this. I reported on how young people are being impacted by delays to SNAP: “It’s about survival.”

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out o...

PSA from 404 Media: you can opt-out of a data broker selling your flight travel data to the government to be searched without a warrant. Here's how I did it. This is ARC, the data broker owned by major U.S. airlines like United, Delta, American, etc

www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

ICE arrests Chicago man whose teenage daughter is fighting cancer: ‘He belongs with her’ Ofelia Torres has spent almost every day of the past month at Lurie Children’s Hospital, where the 16-year-old Lake View High School student is fighting cancer.

NEWS: ICE arrests Chicago man whose teenage daughter is fighting cancer: “He belongs with her.” I spent yesterday afternoon with Ofelia Torres and her mother, Sandibell, talking about Ruben Torres. Here’s the story www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/21/i...

thank you!

BREAKING: A unanimous appeals court panel rules that reporter Catherine Herridge must testify about her source for a story that has become the subject of a leak investigation. media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/doc...

Cheating the Dead: The Undertaker and the Families Who Say He Scammed Them in Their Hour of Grief A man stands accused of desecrating bodies at a funeral home. A bereaved mother will stop at nothing to get justice for her son. And the police trail on the case has gone cold. A requiem for the livin...

Every culture’s death rituals are different, but they're all meant to allow us to live our lives even as we carry our dead. This is what happens when those rituals go awry.

Belatedly, my latest story (& first @esquiremag.bsky.social / @houstonchronicle.com collab!)

www.esquire.com/news-politic...

man rolling rock up hill how it started how its going

The Judicial Learning Curve by Anna Bower on Lawfare "District Court judges watch each other struggle with the Trump administration--and adapt."

NEW: The law is supposed to protect unaccompanied migrant children from being summarily whisked out of the country by ICE in the dead of night.

But that didn't seem to matter on Labor Day weekend, when the Trump administration tried to do just that.

My latest: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

You Really Need to See Epstein’s Birthday Book for Yourself This time, the conspiracy theorists were right.

I wrote about what I think is a genuinely revealing document of elite depravity and impunity. It is shocking and sickening. But it's also a crucial moment. We're about to see what happens when conspiracy theorists actually get what they asked for but it turns out not to be what they want.

it was the stupidest of times; it was the worst of times

And wildly misaligned with my salary but thanks, I guess

current writing stage

RFK Jr just buried a big report on the link between alcohol and cancer. Luckily, @smencimer.bsky.social had written this a few years back:

I respect it

this is SUCH a pro tip omg

Thank you for the intervention