Venuri Siriwardane

Building the camps The warehouseification of detention and initial thoughts on stopping it.

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save.

Turn-signal stop prompts ICE detention for father of two in Springdale The Peruvian national’s family said he was legally in the country and complying with asylum processes when local police pulled him over and turned him over to ICE. The borough has an agreement with th...

New from @jamiewiggan.bsky.social and @stephstrasburg.bsky.social : Turn-signal stop prompts ICE detention for father of two in Springdale www.publicsource.org/ice-detains-...

A wake-up call for white Americans The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are forcing white people to face hard truths about state power and violence

Great piece that draws parallels between what it took to activate white moderates during the Civil Rights Movement and the impact that Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s tragic deaths are having now. www.salon.com/2026/02/01/a...

We shouldn't have to carry around our passports while running errands, but so many of us are.

Most newsroom leaders come from families who've been in this country for generations. Many aren't capable of empathizing with those who endure the most brutal aspects of the immigration system. Some don't even try. These are the people who are shaping coverage of what's happening right now.

Just say the government is lying. The goal of journalism should be to inform, not gaslight.

If you have seen your favorite sex subreddit become abolish ICE overnight please DM me so I can write about it for The Verge dot com ✨

Wow, yeah, reddit.com/r/all is a remarkable tapestry of fuck ICE posts

German media likens US border patrol official’s coat to ‘Nazi look’ Gregory Bovino’s outwear choice prompts German commentators to compare it to fascist aesthetic

is it good that the guardian’s Berlin correspondent is reporting on a US paramilitary leader?

ICE pulls over Texas Monthly’s senior taco editor while reporting in West Texas 'They wanted us to get anxious. It worked,' the award-winning food journalist said of his encounter with ICE agents.

They messed with Texas Monthly’s James Beard Award-winning senior taco editor (truly one of the best job titles in journalism) www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-n...

HHS Gave a $1.6 Million Grant to a Controversial Vaccine Study. These Emails Show How That Happened Two Danish researchers faced accusations of “questionable research practices” as RFK Jr.’s top appointees made their study a “funding priority.”

How sad is this? The CDC closed its FOIA office, so this story could only be published because a Danish journalist provided Rolling Stone with the documents, after obtaining them through a freedom of information request to the University of Southern Denmark

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

ICE killed a Black man, Keith Porter, 7 days before Renee Good, and I hadn't heard about it until today. His vigils went unnoticed. His life came and gone and America forgot to blink.

Two Americas.

Distraught woman says ICE killed her wife in video after deadly Minneapolis shooting “They killed my wife,” the distraught woman says, adding, “They shot her in the head.”

NEWS: In a heartbreaking video, after ICE shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, a woman who was in the same SUV cries out: “They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do."

“We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head,” the distraught woman sobs.

www.advocate.com/news/minneso...

I still haven't totally wrapped my head around what losing the CP means, because it's hard to believe that all of that reporting and writing—especially on the arts, small businesses, and marginalized neighborhoods—just won't happen regularly anymore. Support its staff who made all that possible.

Well folks, some news. Ownership is folding @pghcitypaper.com. I wish I could say this was more surprising. I'll be on the lookout for new roles while I continue to teach and hopefully find places to publish some stories I haven't finished. In the meantime, I'm all ears for opportunities.

Q&A: As vaccination rates dip, how are Allegheny County leaders responding? As the Trump administration tries to upend vaccination practices, Allegheny County's top immunization official and a key advocacy group counter with research.

As we enter the fall and winter respiratory virus season, @venuri.bsky.social interviewed local public health experts to learn how Allegheny County is navigating the shifting landscape of federal vaccine policy.

Actually I think more media unions should work some kind of right to expression into their contracts. It’s ridiculous that every major newspaper chain plus NYT and WaPo restricts journalists from expressing any meaningful opinion for the entirety of their careers.

Treble NLS suggested we return to the place where he was handcuffed in the midst of a mental health crisis for portraits for @venuri.bsky.social's story on how involuntary ‘302’ hospitalizations fall more heavily on Black patients. Trusting his vision, I met him at the edge of the Mon Wharf. 🧵

Do you live in Allegheny County and have you or a loved one experienced involuntary mental health commitment? Public Source would like to learn from you for our ongoing series When Care is Compulsory. Please email venuri@publicsource.org if you are in a position to share.

And experts are very clear: these people are fringe.
Scientific consensus is that race and IQ studies are shoddy.

But journalism has trouble saying that; it’s nearly impossible for them to figure out what whole fields believe. That’s why “Merchants of Doubt” work.

Magee is the latest hospital to push for a union amid anger at UPMC executives Nurses say executives' jetsetting stands in contrast to low staffing levels and employee burnout.

Magee nurses say executives' jetsetting stands in contrast to low staffing levels and employee burnout:

political journalists obsess over the public’s lack of trust in our profession but strangely see that as downstream of things like “we didn’t talk enough about how biden was old” and not “many of us appear to be indifferent to a nihilistic attack on the constitution”

This kid is 15, and so has a moral clarity and uprightness that no adult elected official would or could ever have. There aren't really and never have been two sides of this issue, but if it has to be argued as a binary thing I don't see how anything less than this could seem like the side to be on.

Emerging journalists/photojournalists– come join our independent, nonprofit newsroom in Pittsburgh! Delight in the joys of holding power to account & Pittsburgh's fries on salad habit. @publicsource.org interns get to work across their interests from reporting to fact checking to engagement & more.

Pitt faculty, students and staff sent an open letter to university officials this morning. It's got 902 signatures and counting. Among their demands:

1) Protect the campus from immigration raids
2) Fight "unjust federal grant termination"
3) Avoid layoffs
4) Create a crisis task force

The Trump administration is cutting staff and grant funding at Health and Human Services including the NIH. Those agencies fund much of Pittsburgh’s research. Are you an affected researcher? Please consider emailing PublicSource at encrypted publicsource412@proton.me or Signal at PublicSource.412

'Democrats Lost Them': Here's Why 2020 Biden Voters Sat Out The 2024 Election Dems staying home fueled Donald Trump’s 2024 win and cost Kamala Harris, according to research from Way to Win, Catalist, and Lake Research Partners.

New from @tessastuart.bsky.social

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

My uncle is a big time IP lawyer in NYC. I cannot stress enough how taking away IP laws would benefit the wealthy who would steal and then out produce any ideas they find useful. Thus destroying all creatives and their livelihoods.

Follow a buncha local journalists and news outlets here: go.bsky.app/FzSc9z

They're way better than our substandard national press.