Beth Schwartzapfel

The Trans Woman Who Sued the Federal Prisons (and Won) Settles Her Remaining Cases Days before Trump’s inauguration, the Bureau of Prisons agreed to pay Grace Pinson $95,000 to drop more than a dozen pending lawsuits.

"I am continuing to give them hell and I will never stop for as long as I live," Grace wrote me recently. "I plan to get a license to practice law when I am free." Given her track record, I don't doubt she will. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/01/24/t...

Is Trump’s Gender Care Ban for Trans Prisoners Unconstitutional? A federal judge considers if the president’s executive order barring hormone treatment in the Bureau of Prisons is cruel and unusual punishment.

Last month she was supposed to be released to a halfway house after 20 years in federal prison, but they yanked her release date away from her just days before she was set to leave. She says this is in retaliation for her participation in this case: www.themarshallproject.org/2025/05/22/t...

The Ballad of Grace Pinson A trans woman’s legal battle reveals the failures of a landmark prison rape law.

Grace is the woman we wrote about last year, who is a skilled and effective jailhouse lawyer who's been fighting for some basic care and recognition as a transgender woman in federal prison for over a decade. www.themarshallproject.org/2024/10/09/t...

Breaking: Trans inmate's lawyers claim "egregious retaliation" in violation of court order Trans woman involved in a lawsuit challenging anti-trans policies says federal prison official told her on Feb. 22: “I don’t give a fuck what that judge says, I do what I want.”

“I don’t give a fuck what that judge says, I do what I want.” In a declaration in the ongoing case challenging the federal prison system's ban on gender-affirming care, Grace Pinson says that she's been targeted for speaking up. www.lawdork.com/p/trans-inma...

Arizona prison health care takeover comes after 14-year lawsuit In an 83-page order, Judge Roslyn Silver detailed complaints that go back 14 years about inadequate physical and mental health care at the 10 prison complexes across the state. That included a history...

The judge overseeing a federal lawsuit brought by prisoners in Arizona said Thursday she would appoint a receiver to take over the deeply dysfunctional healthcare system in the state prisons. This is a huge deal. It’s only been done a handful of times.
www.kjzz.org/politics/202...

Thanks so much for your support

Federal Prisons Bar Gender-Affirming Care for Trans People ‘People will die,’ an advocate warns, as standard treatments for gender dysphoria are replaced with therapy and antidepressants after Trump’s order.

BREAKING
www.themarshallproject.org/2026/02/19/t...

Democracy dies in darkness

4 paragraphs of a declaration. They describe that when the FBI took Natanson's devices, she was logged into Proton, Google, draft stories, and Slack.

Another paragraph of the declaration, describing that she had Signal messages with 1,200 people on her phone.

This declaration from WaPo journalist Hannah Natanson describing what the FBI took is utterly devastating.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Amid ‘Catastrophic’ Shortage, Psychologists Flee Federal Prisons in Droves With fewer and fewer employees to run the prisons, psychologists were repeatedly forced to act as guards.

"At some point it becomes unethical to continue to participate in that..Can we provide this group of humans the care they’re entitled to? The answer is no. One person cannot ethically do that.” My latest for @themarshallproject.org www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/26/m...

Uncovering Securus’ profits Securus exemplifies the industry's obscene penchant for squeezing profits by fleecing their customers and shorting their business partners.

Securus's customer is clearly not the people using their system, pouring more than $100M into the company's coffers each year. That's why they have no real interest in "servicing" us. It's DOCs, who don't give one single shit whether you get your $11 back or not. www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/06...

One of those recordings cheerfully informed me there are no refunds for stamps used to send a message that is rejected by the prison (a circumstance totally out of your control obvs) or when your loved one is released from prison.

Today's eg: I tried to buy $8 worth of "stamps," for which they charged a $3 fee. Then I got an error message that said the card charged successfully but the "stamps" didn't load. Call customer service. I called customer service, which was a labyrinthine series of choose-your-own canned recordings.

It is continually shocking to me how utterly awful is customer service at Securus, the prison email system (aka the only way this captive audience can readily communicate with the outside world).

OTOH, these people were actually held accountable

In case you are wondering things are going great in the Federal Bureau of Prisons

THE REDACTIONS

To celebrate, our Board Chair, Liz Simons, is triple matching all gifts given over the next 48 hours. Support independent criminal justice journalism that's been speaking truth to power since 2014. www.themarshallproject.org/donate?via=7...

Death by Deadline, Part One How bad lawyering and an unforgiving law cost condemned men their last appeal.

11 yrs ago, @themarshallproject.org launched our brand-new website with part 1 of a @bykenarmstrong.bsky.social investigation & our first Life Inside piece, by John J. Lennon. Since then, we've published >2,600 pieces. And still, so much work to do. www.themarshallproject.org/2014/11/15/d...

Orleans sheriff says she missed campaign report deadline because her attorney was incarcerated • Louisiana Illuminator Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson successfully argued Friday that she shouldn’t have to pay the full fine for missing a campaign reporting deadline because her attorney was incarcerated at the time.

OK Louisiana, you do you. lailluminator.com/briefs/orlea...

NYC casts away floating jail, scorned by critics as 'modern-day slave ship' For three decades, the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center was moored to the banks of Hunts Point, serving as an overflow facility for Rikers Island.

A “modern-day slave ship” was tugged off towards LA today, sold as scrap. The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center—a floating jail—"caged tens of thousands of people unable to afford bail—mostly Black and brown men—for months and sometimes years while awaiting trial.” gothamist.com/news/nyc-cas...

Hotels that don’t have carpet are making good choices

PARTE APPLICATION PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that, in accordance with Local Rule 7-19 and this Court's Civil Standing Order Section XIII, Defendants City of Los Angeles and Chief Jim McDonnell ("City" or "Defendants"), by and through their counsel of record, respectfully apply to this Court on an ex parte basis for an order staying the Preliminary Injunction entered on September 10, 2025 (ECF No. 83) pending appeal. This Application is based on Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 62 and Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, Rule 8(a)(1)(A), the accompanying Memorandum of Points and Authorities, the Declarations of Lt. Joseph Dunster, the Declaration of Richard Egger, other supporting declarations and exhibits, the record, and any further evidence or argument the Court may permit. Good Cause and Urgency Good cause and urgency exist for the relief requested. The City has filed a Notice of Appeal of the Preliminary Injunction. In addition, the City faces imminent enforcement obligations under the Court's September 10, 2025, Preliminary Injunction Order ("Order") because there is an upcoming "No Kings" protest scheduled for Saturday, October 18, 2025, which requires it to deploy officers subject to the constraints of the Order. The Order enjoins the Los Angeles Police Department ("LAPD") from a broad range of actions relating to its handling of "journalists" during protests, and requires LAPD to take a number of affirmative actions, described in the accompanying Memorandum of Points and Authorities below. Although the Court described the injunction as "mirror[ing] the Defendants' own policies" (Order at p. 27), it imposes ambiguous mandates that create serious operational uncertainty and a substantial risk of contempt for good-faith conduct to preserve public safety. Given the immediate and concrete risk to officer and public safety posed by these uncertainties-and the fact that the City has

The city of LA and the LAPD are asking the court to lift the injunction that prevents the dept from assaulting and arresting journalists ahead of tomorrow’s No Kings protests due to officer and public safety risks.

The scenario you describe would require a not-insignificant amount of law enforcement resources, so they would have to be VERY motivated to undertake that degree of investigation.

Nothing is zero risk, of course, it is important to be aware of that. We can (and do) take as many precautions as possible to keep the risk as low as possible but yes there is always some vulnerability. The q is how sensitive is the leak and what lengths will they go to to identify the leaker.

"Its a good time to be an American born criminal."

28,000 federal law enforcement agents have been detailed to ICE for immigration efforts (including almost 1/2 of DEA agents and 1/3 of ATF agents). I spoke to @themarshallproject.org @journo-beth.bsky.social about the impact.

t.co/xZieyefxc8

OK I often get weird press releases that are entirely unrelated to the journalism I do but this...is an entirely new level of WTAF.

Annals of "who wrote this press release and why did they send it to me": what is a "cozy mystery heroine"?

This is the second time a federal prison warden has denied my request to interview an incarcerated person because “the interview would probably cause serious unrest or disturb the good order of the institution.” How exactly a PHONE INTERVIEW would do this is bewildering to me.

Shoshana Walter’s ‘Rehab’ Finds Corruption, Profiteering and Dismal Rates of Recovery In America’s Drug Treatment System | KQED We talk about the dark side of the rehab industry, the ways patients are exploited for profit and who actually has a chance at recovery in America.

So proud of my colleague @sho-walter.bsky.social on the publication today of her book, REHAB: AN AMERICAN SCANDAL, which the NY Times called "a remarkable journalistic feat." www.kqed.org/forum/201010...