Welcome to the worst hours of journalism each week, when politicians get on TV and spin things and reporters treat this as news. Cover what they're doing, not what they're saying.

A pattern in daily journalism is that big and obvious questions stop being asked in ongoing coverage: Where is the Secretary of State? What happened to Trump's promise to end this war before he even took office? What are the US objectives? Similar with Iran war, ICE, much more.

Steven Beschloss@stevenbeschloss.bsky.social · 20h ago

Doubt America has devolved into a dictatorship and a kleptocracy? Jared Kushner is not a govt official. He’s just the son in law of Trump. Where are the experts? Where are the professionals appointed and confirmed? What a disgrace . www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/w...

Terrific reporting from @wral.bsky.social on the UNC football investigation — as the high-paid GM steps down, Bill Belicheck's son and whole program under scrutiny

John Robinson@jrobin.bsky.social · 2d ago

Nothing good has happened with UNC football since Bill Belichick was hired. Thanks to the Board of Trustees for forcing the hiring. www.wral.com/sports/north...

Remember when the United States had a Congress?

Eric Michael Garcia@ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 3d ago

AHAHAHAHAHA! The House canceled votes for the last two weeks of September!

jfc, Google. When he renames America as the United States of Donald J. Trump, are you going to do that too?

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · last wk.

Google Maps has now capitulated to Donald Trump and changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. Apple Maps still uses the correct name.

Will @axios ever say, “Thanks for the call, Mr. President, but you’ve lied to me too many times. We’re not printing that.” Narrator: Apparently not. www.axios.com/2026/08/28/t...

"That sucker is open": U.S. gains the upper hand in the battle for Hormuz

The U.S. has eroded Iran's main source of leverage.

axios.com

North Carolina had a milestone on Saturday: Independent voters rose past the 40% share among registered voters. Even though 2 out of 5 voters are independent/unaffiliated, NC law prohibits independent voters from serving their state on the 5-member State Board of Elections. #ncpol #ncga

Good accountability reporting from @nbcnews.com

Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 2w ago

Pay attention to actions, not rhetoric: Sen. Ron Johnson is the author of a budget just this month that envisions public debt rising from >$41 trillion to >$58 trillion in a decade. His name is on the document and the numbers are explicitly written out.

Lara Korte, who was just fired from Stars & Stripes, has been covering the relocation of personnel from Bahrain for months and did a great piece today on 1,300 Navy family members displaced from Bahrain who are stuck in limbo given the damage to the Bahrain base. www.stripes.com/branches/nav...

Navy families evacuated from Bahrain face ‘uncharted territory’ amid bureaucratic confusion

The evacuation has left families in limbo and forced military officials to improvise solutions for support programs.

stripes.com

Chase Madar@madar.bsky.social · 2w ago

Remarkable how little political noise it's made here in the US that a major American naval base in Bahrain was basically destroyed, and that this was kept quiet for five months www.nytimes.com/2026/08/14/u...

Questions for the US leading news outlets and journalists: Is the United States at war? What are members of Conress saying and doing as the president issues threats against Iran, Oman and others? These questions were raised early and dropped. Accountability requires sticking with them.

Gonna go with @kairyssdal.bsky.social on this one, but honestly, it’s a close call

We've got quite the story for you 🧵

Jesse Coburn@jessecoburn.bsky.social · 3w ago

You and I — all of us taxpayers — funded this $533 million artillery plant outside of Dallas. It hasn’t produced a single usable shell. Yet the defense contractor, General Dynamics, has never been held publicly accountable. Nor has it had to pay a penny back… 1/

Yeah, see, the thing is, a lot of them didn’t. Survive, that is.

Prediction markets are not predictive and should not be covered as news

I don't care why the polls were off. I care that national political journalism still doesn't know how to cover voters — and, more broadly, what's happening in people's lives and grassroots politics that shows up in votes.

The complaints cite a ProPublica report detailing how CBS and Paramount have for years given FCC commissioners luxury gala tickets, which the commissioners accepted even as the FCC was reviewing or about to review major Paramount business decisions.

FCC Commissioners Face Ethics Complaints for Taking Luxury Gifts From Paramount

Citing a ProPublica report on Paramount providing luxury Kennedy Center gala tickets to FCC officials, the complaints note that commissioners accepted the gifts while the FCC was reviewing or about…

propublica.org

President Trump wants to soften one of the strongest legal protections American workers have: the right to hold an employer accountable when retirement savings are mishandled. Here's what you need to know: propub.li/4g078bJ

One obvious lesson of NYT primaries coverage: The paper is more dug in than ever on horse race coverage, partisan labeling, and fixation on ideological differences as dysfunction. Read the Times for its investigative journalism: it does not know how to cover the electorate or grassroots issues

Prisciliano Trejo Ricano came to the U.S. at 3yrs old. ICE took him this June. He was 29. He told his family he didn't feel right but ICE wouldn't give him medical attention. After a month, ICE finally moved him to a hospital Prisciliano died five days later enlacelatinonc.org/en/Young-Mex...

A young Mexican man living in Durham died in ICE custody.

News in Spanish about politics, immigration and community issues for Latinos in North Carolina.

enlacelatinonc.org

Running out of body bags, using forklifts to transfer corpses into makeshift morgues, a mortician conducting 200 funerals in a month when he usually does 30, crematories running at double capacity… And these senators just want to memory-hole it all www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/n...

‘We Ran Out of Space’: Bodies Pile Up as N.Y. Struggles to Bury Its Dead (Gift Article)

The coronavirus crisis is overwhelming New York’s system for burying the dead.

nytimes.com

Fox news is the single biggest malign force in our public discourse in the past century, partly a symptom but certainly a major cause of destroying norms around news reporting as fact-based and nonpartisan

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

TUBERVILLE: Fauci killed 9 million people FOX BUSINESS: Yeah. We can't prove that, right? TUBERVILLE: We can

Not the same. www.axios.com/2026/07/29/t...

My comment after reading this: hahahahaha. Would that the NYT had reported Meta's track record on "open" approaches, and its shoddy corporate behavior in an unregulated environment toward users and the public interest, along with other tech giants. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/t...

Mark Zuckerberg Blasts Centralization of A.I. Power (Gift Article)

In an interview with The Times, Meta’s chief executive took aim at Anthropic and OpenAI, which have pushed to tightly control A.I. development, and said he supported “more openness.”

nytimes.com

Please don't eat this stuff. Admire the labels and enjoy the nostalgia.

The News & Observer@newsobserver.com · last mo.

The snack aisle is getting a nostalgic makeover, but nothing tastes quite like you remember — by design.

Would be great if the press covering this explained the "why" these are considered war crimes. Many of us are sketchy on history knowledge, especially on norms and laws forged generations ago, and context helps

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

Trump is back to threatening war crimes: "I could take out most of their bridges in less than an hour ... I could knock out all of their power plants within one day ... they know I'm going to do that If they don't make a deal. The bridges are gonna be gone."

Inspiring, awesome move by the owner of Eastern NC's Grady-White Boats: Sell the Company for $400 Million? He’s Giving It Away Instead. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/b...

Sell the Company for $400 Million? He’s Giving It Away Instead. (Gift Article)

After his sole heir died, Eddie Smith, the owner of Grady-White Boats, looked for a way to pass on his legacy. He was inspired by Patagonia to pledge future profits to charity.

nytimes.com

📣 Local investigative journalists! There are less than five days left until the deadline to apply to ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Newsrooms from 26 states can apply. Check your eligibility and submit here by July 27 at midnight ET 👇

Local Reporting Network Fellow

Remote, United States

job-boards.greenhouse.io

How do you know if the fruits and vegetables you buy at the grocery store come from farms where workers were harmed? Read this thread by our reporter @maxblau.bsky.social 🧵

Max Blau@maxblau.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I’ve reported at length about abuses of foreign farmworkers who come to the U.S. on H-2A visas: stolen wages, guns pointed in their faces. One woman I met was kidnapped, raped and nearly killed. I wanted to know: How do I tell if the produce I buy is part of the problem? 👇

"We believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it. We urge the WHCA to condemn the administration’s actions from the podium." -- 500+ veteran and former journalists, in advance of Friday's rescheduled dinner deadline.com/2026/07/trum...

Journalists Call On WHCA To "Forcefully Stand Up" To Trump At Dinner

A number of organizations are calling for the White House Correspondents' Association to make a statement about Trump's attacks on the media.

deadline.com

Veterans Affairs workers: Is your local VA hospital experiencing staffing and care issues? Reach out to ProPublica reporter @ericumansky.bsky.social 👇 ✉️ Email: eric.umansky@propublica.org 📱 Signal: Ericumansky.04

Is Your Veterans Affairs Hospital Short-Staffed? Have You Seen Setbacks in Care? Help ProPublica Investigate.

We want to understand the consequences of cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. If you have firsthand information about conditions at your local hospital, we want to hear from you.

propublica.org