Yana Kunichoff

Housing instability can be deeply interconnected with Nevada child welfare • Nevada Current This story is the first in a series on the connections between housing instability and child welfare. This project was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship...

The number of children in Nevada taken from their families due to housing has been rising since eviction moratoria and pandemic supports went away nevadacurrent.com/2025/12/03/h...

@nodesertdatacenter.com has been one of the most energetic and fast-growing organizing efforts I've covered - this summer it was a loose group of people opposed to a water-heavy development, and its closing out 2025 as a national model for fighting data centers

azluminaria.org/2025/07/21/t...

When jail becomes the mental health treatment plan - AZ Luminaria Arizona’s competency restoration system pushes people with mental illness into jail. Stacey Brooks’ case shows the dangerous consequences.

Nearly 1400 people have been ordered into Pima County’s Restoration to Competency program to see if they can stand trial

That can mean more than a year in jail, waiting. My colleague @jwashing.bsky.social writes about when jail becomes a mental health facility

azluminaria.org/2025/11/24/w...

Today, Tucson City Council is discussing a proposed ordinance that would create a new offense of "drug-related loitering". Indications that could trigger an arrest for this include officer knowledge of a prior drug conviction, or the so-called "fent fold." tucsonaz.hylandcloud.com/221agendaonl...

As Tucson drafts new drug-use law, a rare joint meeting points to multiple approaches  - AZ Luminaria As the Tucson City Council weighs whether to target public drug use through a new pathway to misdemeanor arrests, a rare city-county summit highlighted a central dilemma; how to address addiction as b...

A new ordinance under consideration in Tucson would allow police to arrest people who raise a “reasonable suspicion that they are about to engage” in public drug use

azluminaria.org/2025/11/18/a...

Contractor Paying Random People $300 to Physically Track Immigrants for ICE “The more I listened to it, the more I’m like, something doesn’t sound right,” a person who was briefed on the pilot plans told 404 Media.

NEW: a contractor is paying random people $300 to physically track immigrants for ICE. They're given addresses, vehicles, told to monitor the target. That information then goes back up to ICE. These are not licensed private investigators; members of the public

www.404media.co/contractor-p...

Sister JoAnn Persch, Trailblazing Immigrant Rights Activist, Dies At 91 Sister JoAnn Persch spent decades with the Sisters of Mercy, fighting for immigrant and refugee rights in Chicago and across the country. She prayed the rosary outside the Broadview ICE facility every...

Rest in power to Sister JoAnn Persch - I met her at the Broadview detention center circa 2010-ish, where she was among a group that lay down in front of a deportation bus

blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/18/s...

‘The city that draws the line’: one Arizona community’s fight against a huge datacenter Questions grow over water and energy costs of warehouse of computers in Sonoran desert – but will Project Blue be stopped?

Wrote about the contentious Project Blue — a massive proposed data center in Tucson AZ — for my first feature with @theguardian.com!

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Nice to see homies at national outlets running full features on this story.

Homies at local indie nonprofit outlet @azluminaria.org have been keeping a steady vigilance on this story, which has led to greater community engagement, which led to greater national significance.

A virtuous news cycle.

More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...

Extraordinary NEW story: We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. @nicolefoy.bsky.social w/ photos by @sbmaneyphoto.bsky.social

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador.

Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

Pima County NDA confirms Amazon is behind Project Blue data center  - AZ Luminaria Pima County agreed to keep Amazon Web Services’ role in Project Blue secret for five years, according to a non-disclosure agreement obtained by Arizona Luminaria. The deal, signed in 2023, sheds new l...

The non-disclosure agreement also says the county will not share the name of the final user for Project Blue with county personnel unless it is legally obligated.

Living without air conditioning in Tucson’s deadly heat  - AZ Luminaria Thousands in Tucson endure record-breaking heat without reliable air conditioning. Families share how they survive deadly summers with few resources.

From a mother evicted and grieving her brother, to a woman rotating between shelters and her car, to families in a mobile home park with failing power — Tucson residents show what it takes to survive in extreme heat

The latest on efforts to build a data center in the Sonoran Desert:

Pima County's jail healthcare provider has been in consistent violation of certain performance indicators over the past year, @jwashing.bsky.social reports

azluminaria.org/2025/09/11/s...

same, gonna do what I can to make it happen!

fall lookbook!

Court Temporarily Halts Land Transfer That Would Allow a Mine to Destroy Western Apache Sacred Land - Inside Climate News The Western Apache and a coalition of environmental groups have fought for years against the Resolution Copper mine, which would become one of the country’s largest at the cost of a site revered by th...

While President Trump calls opposition to the Resolution Copper mine that would destroy a sacred site for Western Apache people “anti-American,” I have the actual details on what’s happening and why the mine is so controversial.

insideclimatenews.org/news/1908202...

Taken: What happens after an LA immigration raid Their families won’t know what happened to them. They’ll be shackled, whisked away to another state, forced to subsist for days on potato chips, apples, water, and the occasional cold sandwich.

Immigration enforcement in America's second largest city:

"The masked agents pull up quickly. They jump out of unmarked vans or trucks. They wear blue jeans or battle fatigues. They approach Latino men, at times yelling and carrying assault rifles."

calmatters.org/investigatio...

The West's data centers suck (water and power) - High Country News From simple searches to chatGPT, the big digital buildup threatens the grid and water supplies.

AI-processing data centers require massive amounts of energy and water, and relatively low power prices, state tax incentives, and lax regulations are attracting them to the West, threatening water supplies and straining the grid.

Local reporting uncovered Amazon was behind the water-guzzling data center slated for the desert. Residents fought against the data center. Today, the city council unanimously voted against Project Blue.

If you care about local journalism that drives impact, consider donating to @azluminaria.org!

Tucson City Council rejects Project Blue data center amid intense community pressure - AZ Luminaria The Tucson city council voted unanimously Wednesday against bringing the massive and water-devouring Project Blue data center — tied to tech giant Amazon — into city limits. After weeks of escalating ...

Responding to vehement opposition and public service journalism, Tucson's mayor/council unanimously vote to reject a mega data center project from Amazon.

Tucson ain't Eddington.

Read @yanak.bsky.social‬'s latest from city hall.
azluminaria.org/2025/08/06/t...

Tucson City Council rejects Project Blue data center amid intense community pressure - AZ Luminaria The Tucson city council voted unanimously Wednesday against bringing the massive and water-devouring Project Blue data center — tied to tech giant Amazon — into city limits. After weeks of escalating ...

The Tucson city council unanimously rejected the Project Blue data center today.

That comes after weeks of dogged organizing plus our little team @azluminaria.org going hard on helping Tucson understand who was behind this project and its impact on our community

azluminaria.org/2025/08/06/t...

Pima County Supervisors vote to lobby against AZ sales tax exemptions for data centers - AZ Luminaria Just steps outside the Aug. 5 Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting in downtown Tucson, protesters held signs, hung banners, and made clear to passing motorists and county officials they were again...

And earlier today, Pima County supervisors voted to release a memo on NDAs and push to revoke tax exemptions, @jwashing.bsky.social reports

azluminaria.org/2025/08/05/p...

Project Blue data center inevitable says Tucson council member Nikki Lee - AZ Luminaria Council member Nikki Lee said Tuesday that the Project Blue data center may be built no matter what the Tucson City Council decides.

My latest on Project Blue: The mega data center has more site options and will be built “regardless of what the City of Tucson decides,” said one council member Tuesday

azluminaria.org/2025/08/05/t...

5 Ways that Trump Rapidly Ramped Up Immigration Detention Through threats and incentives, the administration conscripted local jails, federal prisons and private companies to detain immigrants.

The Trump administration is using federal jails and facilities as well as reopening shuttered facilities to detain a historic number of immigrants, the Marshall Project team reports

www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/01/t...

The People Being Arrested By ICE That No One’s Talking About The Trump administration’s deportation machine is detaining immigrant women at record numbers — and they've become invisible targets.

The Trump administration’s deportation machine has made women invisible targets.

If you’ve ever wondered, like me, what happens to all the women ICE detains:

NEW: I spoke with a woman named Andrea about her experience being detained by ICE after calling the cops for help during a domestic violence incident.

She was recently postpartum, breastfeeding & put in an all-male facility. She was detained for 2.5 months.

City annexation filing reveals next steps for Project Blue data center - AZ Luminaria Even before its first public meeting on a controversial and long-secretive 290-acre data center project, the city of Tucson had already filed a petition with the Pima County Recorder’s Office to begin...

More on Tucson's Project Blue, the Amazon data center project cloaked in secrecy for years.

@yanak.bsky.social and I pieced together more of the timeline, finding that City of Tucson officials moved to annex the land BEFORE the first public hearing on the project.

azluminaria.org/2025/07/28/c...

Averaged out, a journalist has been killed every 3 days since the conflict began.