🚨 WE HAVE A DEAL! After three years, in a major step forward for our members, we have ratified our first contract with @propublica.org’s management. We deeply appreciate everyone who supported us along the way. Here are some of our big wins👇

NEW from me at @autonomynews.co: Contrary to what some headlines suggested, Texas midwife Maria Rojas, accused of violating the state’s abortion ban, still can’t reopen her clinics. And the fact that the state has chosen to target a midwife is not a coincidence.

Texas Midwife’s Clinics Won’t Reopen Despite Court Victory

The use of an abortion ban to target a midwife evokes a long, racist history.

autonomynews.co

We lost Rosie the Riveter. www.today.com/video/jeanne...

Jeanne Gibson, Who Represented 'Rosie the Riveter,' Dies at 100

Jeanne Gibson, who represented the “Rosie the Riveter” campaign during World War II, has died at 100. Gibson was known for her contributions to the war effort as a shipyard welder and helping build de...

today.com

Read her excellent book: uncpress.org/978146966932... and remember that you have a role in shaping the present.

The Young Lords

Against the backdrop of America’s escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla...

uncpress.org

I am stunned to hear of the passing of the fierce, brilliant and principled scholar activist Johanna Fernandez. Johanna's scholarship will endure. She was a gem and the world is worse for her no longer being here. Rest in power, comrade.

That's it. The actual environmentalists in her area resolved the environmental concerns with the site. They worked out a deal w the solar company to put in a habitat reserve for endangered birds. That was the original reason environmentalists were worried about the site, & it's been dealt with.

So let's break it down! "Productive soil" can basically mean 2 things. 1) A high-organic-matter soil that keeps pushing out good yields of *bulk commodity crops*- even after decades of abuse. 2) Any soil that someone is managing to be productive! This can be nearly any soil!

Citation: I am a small farmer, with an organic farm. I am also a crop scientist. With a doctorate & everything. University of Florida DPM '11. And my whole 4-year undergrad degree was soil fertility & health. (farm tax, pls enjoy gratuitous snake gourd pic from the other day)

Ok so this lady says solar panels are getting built on "the most productive farmland" in her area. Which just ain't true at all. It ain't true here in NC either. Where I ALSO hear that talking point over & over again. Smells like astroturf! So let's get the dirt on solar farms & dirt ✨

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 6d ago

I genuinely don't know what to do about this. In our diseased information environment, one MAGA-adjacent "influencer" can do more to shape public opinion than mountains of studies or facts. Where are the pro-clean-energy influencers to counter this shit?

This was suspected and now epidemiological investigation points to the Ebola outbreak having silently spread for at least four months before it was formally identified. There have been 1500 confirmed deaths but the real number is likely a lot higher. www.science.org/content/arti...

EXCLUSIVE: Congo’s Ebola epidemic started at least 4 months before it was detected

A remote mining town gripped by fear saw hundreds of suspected cases before the government declared an outbreak, report says

science.org

“Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”

‘We can’t make it better again’: what Europe’s wildfires tell us about the climate crisis

In this week’s newsletter: As France and Spain battle huge fires in this summer of relentless heat, will it be enough to spur us to take action?

theguardian.com

Companies are all in on selling folks the idea that it’s in your best interest for your products to “know you” as if you are getting a dedicated servant but what you are really getting is a spy.

GM to launch its own in-vehicle AI system later this year

General Motors plans to launch a proprietary in-vehicle artificial intelligence system that's better tailored for its customers later this year.

cnbc.com

New paper from my colleagues on the critical importance of SNAP for people with disabilities, now under threat due to historically deep cuts to SNAP and work requirement expansions. www.cbpp.org/research/foo...

SNAP Provides Needed Food Assistance to Millions of People With Disabilities

There are over 70 million people in the United States with one or more disabilities.[2], [3] Many people with disabilities have greater expenses than people without disabilities,[4] making it harder.....

cbpp.org

I wrote about how immigration arrests are at all-time highs, even as ICE is trying to assume a lower public profile. How are they doing this? Look to your local police.

ICE’s Secret Weapon Is in Your Community

While attempting to maintain a relatively lower profile, ICE is managing to arrest record numbers of people. Here’s how it’s doing that.

newrepublic.com

Massive coverage loss in SNAP, and even more massive losses in Medicaid, will be among the *eligible*. Congress designed a dystopian set of administrative requirements that, by design, will make it practically impossible for eligible individuals to access coverage.

Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 6d ago

“Experts worry that the litany of unanswered questions surrounding medical frailty will lead to more vulnerable people getting kicked out of the program. Preliminary estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest over 7 million people will lose coverage in coming years.”

A scoop from me: The Trump administration is about to release a proposed rule that would gut most of the quality standards that define Head Start while blocking undocumented immigrants from enrolling their kids www.thenation.com/article/soci...

A New Trump Rule Would Lower Standards at Head Start and Exclude Immigrants From the Program

The Trump administration is on the verge of releasing a proposed rule that would eliminate crucial quality standards at the nation’s preschool program for low-income children.

thenation.com

Ebola outbreak in DRC is now the second largest ever, according to Africa CDC head Jean Kaseya. Over 3,400 cases have been confirmed, and deaths rose by nearly 50% over the past week. More than 80% of new cases are still coming outside of known contact lists, the spread is out of control.

CAR T cell therapy, pioneered for cancer treatment, has recently been used for autoimmune diseases like lupus. These diseases often hit women in their reproductive years. A small study finds that post-CAR T cell therapy, women stayed in remission during their pregnancies and had healthy newborns.

Healthy pregnancies and newborns are possible after CAR T cell therapy

Women who received treatment for autoimmune diseases with CAR T cell therapy went on to have regular pregnancies and healthy babies.

sciencenews.org

You don’t want hands free driving, you want trains. You want trains you want trains you want TRAINS

Your personal health data at risk. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Most Smart Watches, Rings, and Bands Lack Basic Transparency Reports and Key Privacy Features

Oura Rings, Garmin GPS fitness watches, Apple Watches, Whoop bands—every year, more and more tech devices are promising to monitor our health and fitness, guide us toward healthier living, and provide...

eff.org

"Covering an area the size of Britain, Western Sahara is designated as a “non-self-governing territory” by the United Nations and remains on its official list of territories still awaiting decolonization." Eoghan Gilmartin for @africaisacountry1.bsky.social africasacountry.com/2026/07/odys...

Odyssey to Africa’s last colony

Backed by Moroccan state subsidies, Christopher Nolan’s decision to film The Odyssey in occupied Western Sahara is the latest and highest-profile chapter in a five-decade campaign to normalize colonia...

africasacountry.com

one tendency that comes out about period films is the insistence that XYZ moral thought would not have occurred to anyone in the ancient world. to be sure there are moral innovations and changes but the existence of thorough dissatisfaction with the present moral order is not a modern phenomenon

Yesterday I watched a #HealthAffairs webinar about the #primarycare crisis, and one #researcher talked about the fact there are 14,000 J-1 #visa #physicians in the US, and guess which specialty is numero uno in dependence on visa-carrying #foreign #doctors: #Geriatrics (and #Nephrology close second)

“‘Should I keep paying my mortgage?’ Haitian families confront impossible choices around #TPS. As Haitian TPS nears an end, families are asking who will care for their children, whether to sell their homes and whether they can survive what comes next.” haitiantimes.com/2026/07/27/h...

'Should I keep paying my mortgage?' Haitian families confront impossible choices around TPS

Many Haitian TPS holders are beginning to grapple with the potential domino effects of TPS ending, including financial, family and mental health impact due to job loss and potential detention or depor...

haitiantimes.com

“Since January 2025, the data shows, ORR has shared more than 460,000 “leads” with ICE about unaccompanied children, their sponsors -- usually parents or other relatives -- and additional ​household members, leaving them vulnerable to detention and deportation.” www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of children, sponsors arrested by ICE after tips from US child migrant agency

More than 12,000 people have been arrested ‌by U.S. immigration authorities following tips from the Office of Refugee Resettlement during President Donald Trump’s second term.

reuters.com

Fund the Humanities just because. Fund the Humanities for more vicarious intellectual intercourse on Main. Whichever.

*whispers* you know we can do this cultural debate about art thing all the time, right? Websites and news organizations used to have culture critics on staff whose entire job was writing about books, movies, and TV. People read them and then discussed them. We have the technology to do this again.

Yeah a lot of the criticism of her piece is *know your place* ( “snark”, “condescension” “looking gift horse in the mouth” (ha)). oh, hi. she knows her place: criticism. I was gonna see the movie + already expected it to be what she says it is: a decent way to spend a few hours in a/c.

Photo of the Silent Parade held on this day in 1917. The Negro Silent Protest Parade, also called the Silent Parade, was a political protest in New York City, held with the intention to draw national attention to racial violence (lynching in particular): beinecke.library.yale.edu/blog/1917-na...

At just 16 years old, Robert Barton made a drastic decision that derailed his life. But a D.C. law that allowed Barton to redefine himself. It's now under threat by federal elected officials, he writes in an opinion piece:

Congress shouldn't overturn D.C.'s second chance laws. I'm proof

At just 16 years old, I made a drastic decision that derailed my life. But I'm the beneficiary of a law that allowed me to redefine myself.

51st.news