I'm ordering a copy of this for someone in prison in Texas -- if anyone else would like to send a copy to a Texas prisoner, DM me and I can send a name, address and order instructions.

Thank you Joe Fryer and Savannah Sellers for having me on NBC News NOW to discuss “They Came for the Schools.”

Joe even alerted me to a tag I’d failed to remove from the sleeve of my fancy new suit, saving me from much embarrassment 😂

'They now forecast that the combined Social Security Trust Funds won’t be exhausted until 2035, a year later than they expected in 2023.'

cool cool cool washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/…

LASD just posted its 12th in-custody death for this year.

So far, this means 2024 is still on track to be far less deadly than 2023 in Los Angeles jails.

Gruesome case in Palmdale, where sheriff's deputies searched a landfill today for a missing infant investigators believe is dead.

His parents are in custody now in Utah, on unrelated charges.

w/James Queally latimes.com/california/sto…

Thank you, The Associated Press. That's how you prevent the normalization and banalization of him and his party.
apnews.com/article/donald…

Ramiro Gonzales is the next person facing execution in Texas.

He wants to donate his kidney.

“How can I give back life? This is probably one of the closest things to doing that,” he told Keri Blakinger.

Re-upping our story on his case:

themarshallproject.org/2022/07/11/thi…

All X users today in the US will see a timeline 'takeover' ad and a 'Spotlight' ad on the Explore page from conservative media org PragerU promoting a new doc that ties 'radical Islam' to the Free Palestine protests.

Each ad buy costs typically more than $500k for 24 hours.

Great column by Nuala

What it’s like to watch AI hijack your old job sfchronicle.com/opinion/articl… via San Francisco Chronicle

Shooter of two Jewish men in L.A. agrees to plead guilty to hate crimes latimes.com/california/sto…

In an unexpected (to me) twist, my story about men playing D&D on death row in Texas won a New York Press Club award. 🎉🎉🎉

A white Carroll student held a sign in the stands that read: T.A.N.H.O. — short for “tear a n—— r’s head off.” School officials found the same acronym scrawled in shoe polish on three cars in the parking lot.

For the most part, tensions over race simmered out of sight—until a Carroll Dragons football game in October 1996. That day, Carroll was playing Grapevine, a cross-town rival led by a pair of star Black athletes.

Previewing the current fights over the role of Christianity in public schools, in 1992 a Carroll student sued the district over its tradition of praying at pep rallies. The lawsuit stirred a hornet’s nest of resentment and landed the town on the Today show. The student prevailed

By the 1990s, wealthy Black families had begun moving to Southlake and other elite suburbs, in search of the same academic opportunities that drew white parents. The community began to change; some resisted.

(At the time, a new niche field was emerging focused on the way race-neutral policies — like suburban zoning rules — perpetuate racism. It was called Critical Race Theory. But more than three decades would pass before most Americans became aware of that phrase.)

That reality is reflected in Carroll yearbooks from the 1980s, filled with page after page of all-white faces. In one from 1983, photos show members of the school’s 4-H Club appearing to perform a skit while dressed in blackface—a tradition steeped in centuries of racism.

What none of them acknowledged at the time—at least not publicly—was that, in America, income is often a proxy for race, and that by keeping Southlake wealthy, its leaders were, in effect, keeping it white.

Opposition to affordable housing in the ensuing years became a litmus test for anyone seeking office in Southlake. The outrage would be so severe if the town ever voted to allow apartments, one zoning board member said in 1985, “we might as well just bring our own rope.”

(Pausing here to note that, as the town grew, that tradition of hosting minstrel shows to raise money for Carroll continued until at least the early 1960s. Here are two from 1960 and ’62 raising funds for the PTA and the baseball team.)