Lex McMenamin (they/them)
@lexmcmenamin.com
movement building reporter @us.theguardian.com forever philly, longtime nyc member @transjournalists.org TIPS: lex_mcmenamin.68 on Signal linktr.ee/lexmcmenamin
you can tell he’s cooked by how often he willingly wears a suit these days
Wolf Blitzer: Why is Israel, another country, your red line right now, this is what your critics are saying, rather than a domestic issue that impacts Americans' everyday lives? John Fetterman, visibly confused throughout the entire interview: Yeah, absolutely.
My colleague José Olivares's series 'Force-fed by ICE' is revelatory and horrifying
Exclusive: cases of Afghan man, Ukrainian man and Saudi woman show repeated nasogastric tube insertions and lack of legal representation
Content warning: suicide After May Pollard died on a late-January morning, a detective asked her parents a question: Had anyone wanted to hurt her? “A lot of America,” her mother answered. 1/ www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
Idaho pushed anti-trans laws for years. Then a teen died.
The life and death of May Pollard, 16, provides a window into the tragic effect that legislation and political rhetoric have had on trans people in America.
nbcnews.com
I’ve been writing a counter narrative of shutdowns that has me revisiting media from that time. And let me tell you, the only other option was everybody die. So yeah.
it’s pretty obvious that a lot of people remember that COVID lockdowns were unpleasant and from there just extrapolate that they were therefore bad policy
a horrifying new story from my colleague José Olivares
‘Stark example of brutality’: Trump’s ICE used court orders in plan to force-feed at least 10 hunger strikers in detention
Exclusive: court records reviewed by the Guardian show that procedures included force-feeding, intravenous forced hydration and involuntary blood draws
theguardian.com
An initiative on the ballot in Washington state in November would require all athletes seeking to play girl's sports from kindergarten to high school to undergo "genetic screening, a testosterone-levels test, or an examination of their reproductive anatomy" before they can play
this is incredibly abnormal and scary. always a possibility this decade, extremely bizarre to experience in real time. we’ve got important stuff loaded in the car, not going anywhere at the moment because by all accounts traffic is already very bad www.spokesman.com/stories/2026...
Thousands evacuated in north Spokane as wildfire crosses river into city
A wildfire driven by high winds has jumped the Spokane River and is threatening neighborhoods near and within the city of Spokane.
spokesman.com
Spokane, Washington is the second largest city in the state. This is a major suburban area where the majority of the population lives.
I have countless loved ones are on the northside of Spokane. Not only is it NOT normal for the west to burn, this is actually fucking insane.
Holy crap. Level 3 (GO NOW!) zone now includes urban Spokane, south of Francis to Wellesley. Level 2 (GET SET!) zone now extends east of Division. Not to be alarmist, but at this rate, it’s not inconceivable that the Old Trails Fire merges with the Fairview Fire.
I hope you read this vital, powerful writing from @reproutopia.bsky.social in today's edition of The Key: "This is what it looks like when a society has settled the question of who counts as rapeable – which is to say, who counts as human." www.thekeymagazine.com/p/israel-rap...
“Everything Is Legitimate”: How Israel Uses Rape as a Tool of Genocide
The rape of Palestinian detainees is so commonplace that it’s no longer hidden. It’s filmed, joked about, and celebrated in parliament. This is no mistake; it’s core to Israel’s colonial project.
thekeymagazine.com
A lot of “taking the prosecutors’ word for it” here to make an argument that requires being inside the heads of a disparate group of people who we only think of as a group with concerted strategies because prosecutors said so
"Their actions ensured that they struggled to achieve sympathetic media coverage outside of a few left-wing outlets, struggled to attract material or legal support (the ACLU, for instance, refused to touch the case), and failed to achieve positive virality in the larger culture."
There are a lot of important things going on. Maybe this isn’t a top twenty concern. But, this is actually workplace harassment, the kind that can get people killed.
The Koch Nazis are back “A shadowy network of conservative activist groups, backed by Koch-linked dark money, is deploying hidden cameras and mass public-records requests to hunt down and destroy the careers of college professors and administrators — and it's working.”
Being a onetime MySpace or LiveJournal user is watching the careers of abusers, groomers and other capital B bad men's careers outlast the online spaces we whisper networked within (or in a lot of cases, were teens who navigated accusations and allusions with trepidation)
like i knew about this from being on livejournal in middle school idk man
I study sexual violence and I think people would be surprised by how often people still bring up COVID once they know they’re talking to someone who is willing to hear about trauma.
One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.
This is foul. I have also had these companies steal t-shirt designs in the past. newsone.com/6867569/drea...
Dream Defenders Calls Out SHEIN For Stealing Assata Shakur Image
Dream Defenders is a Black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation fighting for a world without prisons, police, capitalism and imperialism.
newsone.com
I am so tired of witnessing media layoffs and publications just throwing away amazing talent as this career becomes less and less sustainable and growing numbers of people are pushed out. All for shareholder profits.
like i knew about this from being on livejournal in middle school idk man
jared leto being accused of sexual abuse is the type of headline where you mostly wonder how many people are complicit in stopping this story from coming out ten years ago
This is grift final jeopardy, the singularity is theoretically the end of history and/ or the human world, this is a suitcase full of cash and a one way plane ticket type discourse
The 'singularity' refers to the point at which AI outpaces human intelligence and becomes difficult to control.
Exclusive from me — Daniel Moraff, one of the political operatives behind Graham Platner's rise and fall, has been accused of sexual assault. Full story here:
Exclusive: Political operative behind Graham Platner's rise accused of sexual assault
A spokesperson for Daniel Moraff said: “Any suggestion that he committed a criminal offence is false and without foundation."
thehandbasket.co
World on fire and the billionaires want all of the water to destroy more of the earth and cause more fires.
Some of you have heard me musing on here about wanting to take over an old newsstand to turn it into a local zine distro. Apparently people are doing this in the city. I want to do this too!!! www.instagram.com/reel/DbLfvL5...
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
instagram.com
For NBC News, I spoke with the mother of Corey Ruiz's 13-year-old daughter, Marjorie Ann Aliomar.
I’m excited to share that my debut book is on the way! 'Long Distance Runners: Black Women Radicals and the Struggle for Liberation' coming 2027! Bloomsbury UK/US is running a 10% discount right now, so please consider ordering directly to save some coins bloomsbury.com/uk/long-dist...
Madison, WI - Fairly large group of several hundred marching down Williamson Street. Chants in support of Black Lives Matter and for the arrest of police involved in the fatal shooting of Corey Ruiz.
nooooo Tramell Tillman don't work with Johnny Depp you're so talented
OFFICIAL POSTER - Johnny Depp is Scrooge in director Ti West's A Christmas Carol movie EBENEZER, in theaters November 13, 2026 from Paramount. Andrea Riseborough, Ian McKellen, Sam Claflin, Rupert Grint, Daisy Ridley and Tramell Tillman also star.
This particular criminalization of parental poverty, used to disproportionately pathologize Black women and steal their children, is called Jane Crow. And it's proliferating because of deliberately cruel, punitive administrative policies like what's happening to SNAP and Medicaid.
When families can’t eat, on top of everything else, the risk increases of the state stepping in to remove their children because of “neglect”
I’ve been doing some in-depth reporting on the Prairieland cases, and had to get this out first as I continue to dig: I spoke with Ana Bell, sister of Des, who it turns out co-owns and runs an indie bookstore. We talked about the case, the judge, book banning, ICE killings, and living through this:
My Brother Was Sentenced to 30 Years for Moving a Box of Zines
The sister of a defendant in the Prairieland case, which targeted Texas ICE protesters, speaks out.
newrepublic.com
Trump's DOJ has accused gender-affirming care providers of colluding with drug manufacturers to violate federal law. In March, I warned this argument could easily be used against abortion providers. Today, Josh Hawley did exactly this in a letter urging DOJ to investigate abortion info site Plan C.
DOJ Takes Aim At Off-Label Prescriptions in Gender-Affirming Care Fight
The Trump Administration’s arguments in a recent hearing over a subpoena for trans patients’ medical records could also spell danger for abortion access.
autonomynews.co