This is the most Jenny Morber thing ever

If you don't know about this, it's a good example of how corporations trap farmers in never-ending debt and submission by dictating all the terms. It shouldn't be legal.

This Data Center is Getting a $77 Million Tax Break to Create One Job No other project in the country has gotten such a large subsidy to create so few jobs, according to watchdogs.

Rockland County, NY, gave a $77 million data center tax break to JP Morgan Chase to create exactly one job. On a dollars-per-job basis it appears to be the costliest subsidy in U.S. history, possibly even a world record

nysfocus.com/2026/04/20/d...

Poultry Farmers Hunting for an Off Ramp The vast majority of American chicken is raised under the contract system. A network of advocates aims to help unhappy producers get out.

Under the contract system, a company provides chickens, feed, medicine, slaughter + mandates about care; a farmer pays for everything else + might soon become heavily leveraged in debt — and search for an offramp. A few orgs are trying to help. My latest for Offrange
ambrook.com/offrange/liv...

Image of a book on fire. Below, the text "book censorship news" is in white.

Where and How Book Censorship Is Impacting Children’s Publishing Right Now.

Publishing imprints for young readers are shuttering thanks to a softening school and library market. That's a result of book censorship, and it impacts you wherever you live.

bookriot.com/book-bans-an...

US Citizen Kids at Risk of Losing Housing Support Under HUD Plan Tens of thousands of American citizens, most of them children, stand to lose public housing benefits under a Trump administration plan targeting immigrants without lawful status.

📍 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋:

A new proposal could strip housing assistance from tens of thousands of families — including many U.S. citizen children — by denying aid to “mixed-status” households, forcing families to separate or risk losing their homes. #AbuseOfPowerWatch

Florida's Wildlife Cops Are Searching Thousands of Flock Cameras for ICE Ron DeSantis has empowered hundreds of conservation police to work directly with ICE.

New: Florida's wildlife police are giving ICE access to Flock from thousands of cameras around the country & performed dozens of lookups for immigration enforcement per month. Shows ICE is still accessing and also shows that access often comes from unexpected places:

www.404media.co/floridas-wil...

Braiding knowledge: how Indigenous expertise and western science are converging Researchers are weaving Native practices with western methods to revive ecosystems and reclaim food sovereignty

Historically, western scientists considered themselves rigorous + empirical + Indigenous thought mythic, religious, made-up. An overdue braiding of knowledges is helping Native Nations regain food sovereignty for their communities. My latest for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The Search for the Perfect Snail Snack - bioGraphic Hawai‘i’s depleted land snails are eking out an existence in human care. Giving them a brighter future means figuring out what they actually want to eat.

For the past 40 or so years, snail experts have had access to a passable manufactured snail food: a cultivated form of fungus related to air conditioner mold. Hayes equates this to french fries. “Snails eat it, but it’s not necessarily nutritionally good,” he says

www.biographic.com/the-search-f...

The Search for the Perfect Snail Snack - bioGraphic Hawai‘i’s depleted land snails are eking out an existence in human care. Giving them a brighter future means figuring out what they actually want to eat.

The Search for the Perfect Snail Snack

Hawai‘i’s depleted land snails are eking out an existence in human care. Giving them a brighter future means figuring out what they actually want to eat.

www.biographic.com/the-search-f...

The Search for the Perfect Snail Snack - bioGraphic Hawai‘i’s depleted land snails are eking out an existence in human care. Giving them a brighter future means figuring out what they actually want to eat.

Endangered Hawaiian tree snails use their rake-like tongues to scrape microbes off the surface of leaves. What are they eating? That's a mystery researchers have been trying to crack for decades. From me today in bioGraphic www.biographic.com/the-search-f...

The Search for the Perfect Snail Snack - bioGraphic Hawai‘i’s depleted land snails are eking out an existence in human care. Giving them a brighter future means figuring out what they actually want to eat.

Endangered Hawaiian tree snails use their rake-like tongues to scrape microbes off the surface of leaves. What are they eating? That's a mystery researchers have been trying to crack for decades. From me today in bioGraphic www.biographic.com/the-search-f...

Utah’s new study aims to kill ‘as many cougars as possible’ - High Country News Critics say the state's attempt to boost ungulate populations lacks scientific grounding and transparency.

This is madness. Important reporting here via @thatsmohrlikeit.bsky.social
www.hcn.org/articles/uta...

How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues The health secretary is spreading doubts about vaccine safety and considering changes that could prompt manufacturers to flee the U.S. market. History has shown how plagues from the past can roar back...

This story by @sheinvestigates.bsky.social is so so good and so so upsetting. Get ready to have your head explode

www.propublica.org/article/rfk-...

March 18, 2026 Today, civil rights leader Dolores Huerta issued the following statement:

Dolores Huerta's statement on Cesar Chavez: “I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for... I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences"

Hamstrung As the number of states mandating increased space for hogs and other livestock rises, language in the House’s new draft Farm Bill seeks to take it all away.

When California and Massachusetts passed laws forbidding pork being sold from farmers that used inhumane gestation crates, some farmers spent millions to overhaul their operations. The new Farm Bill would invalidate those state laws.

From @lelanargi.bsky.social:
ambrook.com/offrange/leg...

Oats can improve soil and water quality. All that’s missing is a market for them. A group of Midwestern oat farmers wants to improve soil and water quality and grow a nutritious local crop. All that’s missing is a market.

This week I look at the science behind what happens when Midwestern farmers add a "healing crop" of oats to their corn + soybean rotations — and how it literally removes nitrate from soil and water.

My latest for FoodPrint
foodprint.org/blog/oats-ca...

@profsecchi.bsky.social !!!!

My name is Marisa Kabas, and I'm an independent journalist who publishes The Handbasket. I'm reaching out about a matter that involves your team and that continues to trouble me. In June of last year, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and I filed a FOIA lawsuit against the DC Metropolitan Police Department to compel them to release body camera footage from the March 17, 2025 DOGE raid on the US Institute of Peace. What followed was months of back and forth with their lawyers, arguing why it was in the public interest to release the un-redacted footage in its entirety. Though tiny segments were handed over, that wasn't enough: We wanted all of it.  On February 18, 2026, a DC judge ruled in our favor, and your reporter Mark Segraves sent a kind note of congratulations that day. Then on Monday, March 2nd, the footage was handed over to me and excitedly announced I'd received it and would be reviewing it in the coming days and sharing what I learned. When Segraves emailed me this past Thursday asking for my phone number, I didn't think much of it. But when he called me just before 2pm on Friday to let me know NBC4 Washington would be airing a segment at 5pm, I grew concerned.  Segraves said he'd obtained some of the footage via a FOIA request that week after he heard the footage had been released to me. He said he'd credit the work of RCFP and me, but it was little comfort. I asked if he'd known the day before when he emailed me for my number, why didn't he tell me then? He didn't have a good answer for that. He acknowledged all the hard work I'd done getting this footage released. I asked him if he could hold the story until Monday, to which he replied that he's "not just a blogger" (implying that that's all I am, presumably) and that he'd have to check with his editor. I said fine. Nearly an hour later he called back to say his editor refused to hold the story, but that they were happy to interview me via Zoom to add to the package, and I said I would.

What followed was two hours of furiously writing and posting clips of the footage to Youtube so I could get something published before the 5pm broadcast, and in the midst of that, recording a quick Zoom interview with a person who was about to take credit for my work. At 4:59pm ET, The Handbasket published a piece titled "Police body cam footage shows DOGE knew Institute of Peace was private property during raid." Then I tuned into NBC4 Washington via your website to catch the broadcast, and my instinct to rush to get something out first was proven right.  "It's a story you're seeing first on News4," your newscast began. "For the first time we're getting an inside look at what happened the day the Trump administration took over the US Institute of Peace. News4 obtained more than four hours of police body camera video from that day." What followed was more than six minutes of clips and commentary from Segraves, but it's not until six minutes and 21 seconds into the piece that he mentions my name (mispronounced though he asked for the correct pronunciation on Zoom), "The Handbasket blog," and the RCFP's foundational role in bringing this footage to light. I was angry, but didn't feel there was much I could do. Then I saw the version NBC4 posted to Instagram and TikTok—the video itself made ZERO mention of the RCFP or my work, only briefly acknowledging it in the written caption on Instagram, and not even bothering to do that on TikTok. An average viewer with no background on the case is lead to believe that this footage was released because of your efforts. When I saw that, I decided I couldn't let this go. It's difficult to explain what it's like to spend nearly a year working on a story only to have another reporter and outlet surreptitiously take credit for it; months of work and personal risk only to have another reporter lying in wait to swoop in. What NBC4 did was immoral, unethical, and to be frank, just truly sucked.

I just sent this email to the news director at NBC4 Washington about the unprofessional and disrespectful way they handled publishing the body camera footage of the DOGE raid on the US Institute of Peace that was obtained via my FOIA lawsuit:

EPA moves to curb state input on water permits, raising alarm The Clean Water Act has allowed states and tribes to derail some high-profile projects. That power will be diminished with new rule, say environmental advocates.

The Clean Water Act has allowed states and tribes to derail some high-profile projects. That power will be diminished with the Trump administration's new rule, environmental advocates say.

Pseudoscientific Push to Frame Abortion as a ‘Water Quality’ Issue Rears Its Head in Iowa About an hour into the Republican gubernatorial debate in Iowa earlier this...

I used Iowa to take a look at the nationwide push from right wing groups to link abortion drugs to water quality issues. It's an organized effort that has no basis in actual science. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pseudos...

Best story of the month imo
www.nj.com/food/2026/03...

The Massachusetts Department of Correction has been fighting me for months, trying to withhold data about its collaboration with ICE.

Yesterday, I won that fight, and obtained records showing that the state has transferred more than 2,000 people into ICE custody since 2009.

A quick thread:

Bhattacharya urges measles vaccination as US activity increases

After remaining silent for almost a year about the U.S. measles outbreak, NIH/CDC poseur Jay Bhattacharya is now recommending measles vaccines.

And this is where he gets to see the impact of the destruction of trust in public health and vaccines, for which he is partially responsible.

i love them

"Pelican-za"? Is that something?

These are very good pelicans

Not a duck but I did see Eurasian coots on a trip to Denmark and they are extremely weird (and adorable)

📈Oil prices are spiking after escalation around Iran.

🥣 Food prices likely next.

1/2 the world’s calories depend on synthetic fertilizer made from fossil #gas – 1/4 of that trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

This is a food access issue.

👉 #FuelToFork
ipes-food.org/report/fuel-...

Where Will All the Ranchers Go? Trump announced plans to increase grazing on public lands. Critics say the land can’t support any more.

Trump plans to increase livestock grazing on public lands, ostensibly to bolster the beef industry. Critics say w 87% of Western lands already dedicated to this + a concurrent deactivation of enviro protections, there are a lot of ways this could go sideways. My latest for Offrange:
bit.ly/4rQpLUc