Chris McDaniel

My time with The Washington Post is up. I was laid off with hundreds of folks I am so honored to call my colleagues.

I covered it all at The Post (really), so now I'm looking for my next adventure.

➡️ kbellware [at] gmail dot com
Website update coming soon

@postguild.bsky.social
forever

Georgia Fort, an independent journalist and vice president of the Minnesota NABJ chapter, was also arrested by federal agents this morning

I was sent this video of agents at her door:

Update: In the evidence preservation lawsuit, the current Civil Chief at the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office (who appears to be Ana Voss, based on the letter), refused to accept email service of the lawsuit last night and then refused to accept in-person service until Monday.

Ridiculous behavior.

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved by Limiting Air Pollution In a reversal, the agency plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, and not the monetary value of saving human lives, documents show.

Breaking News: The EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses.

Bari Weiss does not seem to have a good understanding of what's been going on with the Alien Enemies Act, including that courts -- including SCOTUS -- have repeatedly faulted the administration for failing to give detainees a meaningful opportunity to challenge being sent to El Salvador.

After Carr’s threat, staffers involved in the story were summoned to meetings with lawyers hired by Audacy. The attorneys scoured employee social media posts and grilled some on whether they had any political bias, current and former staff said. The station’s news director, Jennifer Seelig, sits on the board of the Radio Television Digital News Association, which gives out a prominent First Amendment award. She told people that business considerations required the station to avoid angering the FCC, current and former staffers said. Seelig did not respond to requests for an interview.

Earlier this year, the FCC wrote to a local radio station in SF, unhappy with their coverage of an ICE raid. After Brendan Carr sent them a letter of inquiry, the station cut back on political reporting, and pushed reporters toward human interest stories. Very bleak. apnews.com/article/trum...

Read the full email Sharyn Alfonsi sent her team about CBS pulling their segment on the Trump admin’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants

Alabama Begs Supreme Court to Make It Easier to Execute People With Intellectual Disabilities The bizarre oral argument in Hamm v. Smith shows how decades of case law rooted in science is now under siege at the Supreme Court.

New @theintercept.com: I wrote about the oral argument in Hamm v. Smith, digging a bit deeper to trace how the case ended up at SCOTUS. It's another example of far-right conservatives leaning on the court to burn down its case law to advance their agenda (more executions, less 8th amendment).

An extraordinary admission: "The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record" #ksleg

How Cheney’s Presidential Power Push Paved the Way for Trump to Go Further

How Cheney’s Presidential Power Push Paved the Way for Trump to Go Further

Donald J. Trump and Dick Cheney became adversaries, but the former vice president set the stage for Mr. Trump’s bid to expand his executive authority.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...

NEW: Judge Gettleman just ordered ICE to improve "serious conditions" inside its Broadview facility in Chicago.

Yesterday, people testified in court that they were crammed into overcrowded and filthy cells for days, with little access to lawyers, and pressured into deportation.

After justices warned of prolonged suffocation, Alabama subjected Anthony Boyd to the longest nitrogen execution in U.S. history. Boyd was the chairman of Project Hope, a death row-led nonprofit. Its members are left reeling in the wake of their leader's suffocation execution.

Just over an hour after 3 Supreme Court justices warned that Alabamian Anthony Boyd would suffer psychological torture, he was subjected to the longest nitrogen gas execution in US history, gasping for air more than 225 times. Read my eyewitness account: www.treadbylee.com/p/after-just...

Unanimous First Circuit takes pains to emphasize that this was an incredibly easy case to decide, despite writing a very long opinion knocking down every ridiculous argument the Trump admin made.

Update: The Committee to Protect Journalists says Mario Guevara was deported from the United States early Friday.
www.democracynow.org/2025/10/3/ma...

feel free to DM me

"This Court has listened carefully to the reasons given by Öztürk’s captors for masking-up and has heard the same reasons advanced by ... ICE. It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable. ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence."

On trial for journalism in Kentucky. Two months after their arrests while covering a protest, a pair of local reporters face criminal charges.

Two journalists are set to be tried in Kentucky this week.

Their crime? Covering a protest of the immigration detainment of Ayman Soliman, who himself fled persecution for his journalism in Egypt. Soliman’s lawyer called it a “cruel irony.”

"If we go light on the Kissinger part, I wouldn't complain" is an instant hall-of-famer.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 25A264 (25-332) DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. U. REBECCA KELLY SLAUGHTER, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR STAY [September 22, 2025] The application for stay presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE and by him referred to the Court is granted. The July 17, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 25-cv-909, ECF Doc. 52, is stayed. The application is also treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, and the petition is granted. The parties are directed to brief and argue the following ques-tions: (1) Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled. (2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law. The Clerk is directed to establish a briefing schedule that will allow the case to be argued in the December 2025 argument session. The stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.

BREAKING: SCOTUS will hear a case over whether it should overrule Humphrey's Executor — in a shadow docket order that also allows Trump's firing of Rebecca Slaughter as an FTC commissioner to take effect while the appeal is considered, which should not be allowed under Humphrey's Executor.

#BREAKING: Over dissents from Justices Sotomayor, Kagan & Jackson, #SCOTUS grants a stay in the Slaughter case (allowing President Trump to remove the last Dem member of the FTC), *and* grants certiorari "before judgment" to decide whether to formally overrule its 1935 ruling in Humphrey's Executor.

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight Jimmy Kimmel & the FCC: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Here’s last night’s story about Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC, freedom of speech in the U.S., and why certain broadcast groups could learn a thing or two from Love Island. youtu.be/ohPToBog_-g

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight Jimmy Kimmel & the FCC: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Really grateful to work with my colleagues on this one. Even more grateful to work at a place that's not currently under FCC influence www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohPT...

Some news from me: I was laid off yesterday from Rolling Stone. Kind of in shock, but will be looking for a new gig. Here are Quincy and Lou

Multiple journalists killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza hospital A hospital strike in southern Gaza has killed at least eight people, including four journalists. The attack happened on Monday.

Four journalists were killed by an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital today, including Mariam Dagga, a freelancer with the @apnews.com. She has a 12-year-old son, who was evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war.

She was a true hero, like all of our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza.
tinyurl.com/3cn5c9vb

Federal district court blocks FTC investigation into Media Matters, finding the "expansive" investigation is "a retaliatory act" for Media Matters' criticism of Elon Musk. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

"prior behavior" being... journalism?

In court today, Kaplan heard about migrants sleeping in areas that reek of sewage and ICE agents “holding up a water bottle and spraying it into the mouths of the individuals who wanted water as if they were animals.”
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

New level of dystopia achieved: A state Supreme Court has announced a death sentence ruling via an AI spokesman