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symonepharris.bsky.social
Wannabe film producer currently in book publishing | Once misquoted by The Guardian
482 posts 207 followers 529 following
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www.texastribune.org/2025/05/23/t...

The great Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has passed away at age 81. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/a...

Just terrible. www.news.com.au/travel/trave...

I really need Alexander Skarsgård to play some sort of midwestern man, stat. A befuddled father? Maybe an awkward loner who wears lots of unflattering sweater vests and has a thick Minnesota accent?

important news from Texas: A bill that would ramp up the criminalization of abortions, including out-of-state travel, made it out of a state House committee today. Why this matters: the deadline for the bill to move forward past committee was tomorrow. Now only full House left. Context here:

I’m reading this fantastic piece by Jonathon Sturgeon in Harper’s. I now have a fair amount of experience with Louisville. He captures many of its stunning nuances. Nowhere has felt closer to slavery to me. Not richmond (which was the leader until now). Not MS. harpers.org/archive/2025...

This blue Bay Area county insists it has 'zero contact' with ICE. But it gets $$ for sharing its info with federal immigration authorities. It's all part of a little-known data-sharing program that exists around the country & only some places have quit. really critical new reporting:

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

Making a 5-second AI video requires more energy than running a microwave for an hour

harron walker (not on here) posted this on ig

Loving Day, the landmark case that overturned U.S. state laws against interracial marriage, is on June 12. NPR wants to hear from people who celebrate this day.

NEW — Kelvin Membreño will be deported to El Salvador by ICE tomorrow. He’s the birth father of three US citizen daughters and has become an important part of their lives. Here their adoptive mother makes a last ditch plea to let him stay in the same country as the girls. A gutting guest essay:

The award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has died at age 81. Salgado appeared on Democracy Now! multiple times over the years. See our interviews with him on our website:

the House's budget bill is over 1,000 pages long so it's easy to miss all the bad things slipped in there things like, say, a little provision that would strip courts of funds to enforce contempt findings when the Trump administration violates court orders ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

They blame pollution but cut the EPA and clean air and water regulations. They blame poor nutrition but cut SNAP and programs to bring local produce to schools. They blame increased screen time while destroying public infrastructure that connects people. All while they take millions off healthcare.

This looks like a fun ride. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

Damn, not you too Aronofsky!!!! www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

This is sickening and grossly unjust. The whole point of serving a sentence is that at the end you are free and can make a new life. But the criminals in this administration want to act lawlessly for their own benefit and make everyone else suffer. www.thehandbasket.co/p/ice-deport...

“Exposure to environmental toxins”

You all know the GOP mega-bill will make big cuts in Medicaid. One under-the-radar consequence: This is likely to increase crime. Why do I say that? Well, the research is pretty clear: When there's a drop-off in Medicaid, crime goes up. boltsmag.org/medicaid-cov...

1/ One of the most devastating moments in my book, There Is No Place for Us, involves Kara, a mother of four in Atlanta, who finally works up the courage to seek therapy after years of homelessness, trauma, and near-constant struggle. She calls Medicaid. She asks for help. And here's what happens:

I've seen some liberals earnestly argue that rhetorical concessions on youth healthcare or youth sports would get Republicans to back off on other trans civil rights issues. This is a complete misreading of Republicans. They want trans people to suffer and force them out of public life.

If you want to describe this as being like the past, that's absolutely fine, but stop using Germany as the example. This is America. This is America is the Klan was winning elections at the federal level. This is the John W. Davis administration if he was less competent.

A major escalation of the ongoing weaponization of the federal government against institutions that are deemed insufficiently obedient. This isn't about Harvard, specifically: This is an authoritarian regime weaponizing the state to force civil society institutions into submission.

I made my WIRED debut on a topic I’ve spent a lot of time on this past year: the growing visibility of pro-eating disorder content in mainstream social media spaces. What was once relegated to corners of the internet is being pushed by algorithms into everyone’s feeds. www.wired.com/story/eating...

WHEW, BUDDY.

Conservatives will likely point to private charity or paid work as the solution here. But families on SNAP are already relying on overstretched food banks to fill in the gaps in the program. And most families on SNAP are already working--their jobs just don't pay enough to keep their kids fed.

I can't even say anything. Banning abortion for poor people was the first step toward banning abortion altogether. Banning transition for poor people is the first step toward banning transition altogether. It's monstrous now, as it is, and we're all standing directly downwind.

If this spending bill passes the Senate and is signed into law in its current form, all but the most financially fortunate transgender people will be forcibly detransitioned regardless of their ability - or inability - to produce their own sex hormones. This is a ten thousand-alarm fire.

I think if you're writing an obituary for Elon Musk's political career you should probably mention that he's still a federal employee, that his loyal right-hand man is still running his operation, and that people closely associated with him are employed in key positions all through the government

Don’t rank him at all but also: rank a full slate of five candidates other than him, so make sure he doesn’t end up in a run off. I suggest @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social as your top choice.

A HAPPY UPDATE! Mahmoud Khalil was allowed a "contact" visit—without plexiglass divider—with his wife and newborn son this morning before his immigration hearing, ACLU tells me, so I think we can safely assume that he was finally able to hold his child for the first time.

sobbing thehill.com/homenews/edu...

If you do in fact want Covid boosters for yourself or anyone, you can submit public comment to the FDA here: www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research. NSF Astronomy was cut by 53% Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79% Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO. #GiftLink ⚛️🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Not The Onion. A state government forcing partisan misinformation on students. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

It will be open season for police abuse and lethal force. This will be particularly deadly for Black men, who face the highest risk of death and injury at the hands of police. They are also taking this nationwide: dropping agreements with Phoenix, Trenton, Oklahoma City, and Memphis.

Great piece.

I cannot believe this shit. www.reuters.com/business/hea...

The Texas state board of Pharmacy can see the controlled substance prescription records of 37 other states. All that's needed for Ken Paxton to access those records is an administrative subpoena.

Republicans snuck an amendment into this bill to ban Affordable Care Act insurance plans from covering abortion care. This is part of their play for a national abortion ban, in the middle of the night, and ripping healthcare away from millions.

Tomorrow is Rümeysa Öztürk’s habeas corpus hearing in federal court in Vermont. At the same time, nearly 1,000 other women she was detained with in Louisiana remain in intolerable conditions. ICE has yet to answer my inquiries. I'll keep pushing.

In THE TROUBLE OF COLOR, I wrote about the poetic justice of the fire that destroyed the plantation where my great grandmother was once held enslaved. Nottoway reminded me that sites of slavery’s crimes against humanity still stand all around in Baltimore. www.thebaltimorebanner.com/opinion/colu...

IMPORTANT: Nationwide ban on Medicaid covering gender affirming care is in the House bill.

This is genuinely going to materially harm so many trans people and I don’t know what else to say. Hormones saved my life.

Wow…more bending of the knee from Disney. Now top brass is telling The View to tone down its Trump criticism. loom.ly/uFyXYew