The Perfect Rose on Los Feliz Blvd on @kcrw.com yesterday — thank you to the kind listener who sent this my way!

Just a perfectly normal update on gas prices in downtown LA

Ziemba Shares First New Song In 5 Years 'The Perfect Rose': Listen Ziemba, aka René Kladzyk, put out her albums True Romantic and Unsubtle Magic back in 2020 and 2021 respectively, and we haven’t heard a peep from her since. In the interim, she moved from El Paso to ...

Hear @ziembavision.bsky.social's first new song in five years, the folk-rock epic "The Perfect Rose"

“I hear elements of the Weather Station, the War On Drugs, and Bruce Hornsby in there, and the way Kladzyk sings the word "California" is pure Joni.”

Joni is always there 🕊️ — thanks @stereogum.com

The Perfect Rose Listen to The Perfect Rose

This expansive and searching song was born on a long drive from NYC to LA, and I think a bit of that endless road is still alive inside of it.

My song The Perfect Rose is now yours.

too.fm/bbyljx2

Inside the Fight for Safe Military Housing Military families battle to hold a Texas housing empire accountable

Looking for a weekend read?

Dive into the story of military families fighting to hold a housing empire accountable, the latest from @ziembavision.bsky.social:

Inside the Fight for Safe Military Housing Families battle to hold a Texas housing empire accountable.

In the Texas lawsuits against Hunt Military Communities, all of the families reported issues with mold and health problems that they linked to substandard housing. 15 families reported losing or having to replace belongings, and 16 families dealt with rodent or insect infestations.

Inside the Fight for Safe Military Housing Families battle to hold a Texas housing empire accountable.

"Even the DOD doesn’t appear to know which rules or laws apply in some cases."

A new collaborative investigation into a privatized military housing empire with @ziembavision.bsky.social from @pogo.org:

Inside the Fight for Safe Military Housing Families battle to hold a Texas housing empire accountable.

This shocking tale shows how hard Texas military moms - and an attorney/veteran- are fighting to improve family base housing. So far, they’ve been blocked from safety/health protections available to other tenants. A @texasobserver.org @pogo.org collaboration www.texasobserver.org/privatized-m...

Inside the Fight for Safe Military Housing Military families battle to hold a Texas housing empire accountable

Texas military families are fighting to hold Hunt Military Communities accountable, saying it is systematically under-maintaining homes & intentionally misleading families who live in them.

Read @ziembavision.bsky.social's latest, reported in partnership with @texasobserver.org:

Among the many revelatory findings in this piece I hope you won't miss this one:

The maintenance backlog in military family housing is currently nearly $7 BILLION.

(The entire reason military housing was privatized in the first place was to eliminate the maintenance backlog.)

Inside the Fight for Safe Military Housing Military families battle to hold a Texas housing empire accountable

The wonky world of privatized military housing continues to prove endlessly fascinating.

Read the new deep dive investigation into a El Paso-based military housing empire and the Texas families fighting for justice, co-published with @texasobserver.org

www.pogo.org/investigates...

To sum it up, if ICE wanted people in detention to be able to report sexual abuse and assault that happens in detention, there is significant room for improvement in the hotline they are sending people to. / END

ICE's poster for reporting sexual abuse and assault misleadingly includes the phrase "Report Sexual Assault Now" in eight different languages, while the number people are directed to call has no option for callers to communicate in languages other than English and Spanish. /9

If a person who has experienced sexual assault manages to stick it out through the lengthy irrelevant recorded options and get connected to a human, that human may not know anything about how they can report their assault. /8

It's wild and telling that ICE's posters for migrants to report sexual assaults in detention send them to a number with no menu option for reporting sexual assault. /7

She offered to try to transfer me to someone else who would be able to help with my request. I said that's okay and hung up.

Some quick observations /6

After waiting on hold, I was connected with someone named Anna. She clarified that she doesn't actually work for ICE, and doesn't know about the process of reporting a sexual assault in detention.

She works for a call center. /5

Next, the recording cycles through a list of six pre-recorded options to direct your call, none of which are “report a sexual assault."

If someone has the wherewithal to select option 6, “all other call inquiries” then you are placed on hold for an “ICE representative.” /4

When you call ICE’s Detention Reporting and Information Line (the first phone number on this poster), you get the option to choose between English and Spanish.

What if you speak a different language and want to report a sexual assault? Tough. /3

ICE is required by law to put up posters in all detention facilities that provide information for how to report when a sexual assault happens. This is the English version of the poster. /2

I got a tip yesterday that migrants in detention are having a hard time using ICE’s hotline to report sexual assaults happening within detention facilities. So I decided to call up the hotline myself.

Here’s what I learned. [THREAD]

Just a casual summer 2016 lunch with senior advisor to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the former PM of Israel, then-Russian rep to the UN, and Jeffrey Epstein

Epstein Files Show Financial Ties to DOD Deputy Secretary Feinberg DOD Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg is referenced in 20 documents in the Epstein files, while the company he founded, Cerberus, appears in 360 files

In a House hearing yesterday, AG Pam Bondi was questioned about Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

We reported on these ties last week.

“Your private equity record is rife with mismanagement,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote in a letter to Feinberg following his Pentagon nomination, in which she raised alarms about conflicts of interest and fraud. Cerberus holding DynCorp has faced multiple DOJ lawsuits over fraud allegations.

Whistleblower emails in the docs allege DOD Dep. Sec. Feinberg and his company Cerberus were part of a “massive fraud” and money laundering scheme, while Deutsche Bank emails in the Epstein files show Feinberg’s company had been marked “high risk”

Epstein Files Show Financial Ties to DOD Deputy Secretary Feinberg DOD Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg is referenced in 20 documents in the Epstein files, while the company he founded, Cerberus, appears in 360 files

Yet ANOTHER senior White House official (and billionaire) in the Epstein files:

100s of docs show financial ties btw Pentagon Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg’s company Cerberus and Epstein

www.pogo.org/investigates...

Emails in the Epstein files suggest that Jeffrey Epstein maintained a business relationship with Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm formerly led by Dept. of Defense Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg.

Read the full story at POGO Investigates: https://bit.ly/46sUWMD

A whistleblower’s email in the Epstein files alleges “massive fraud” by Cerberus and Feinberg enabled by the SEC, through which companies operated shell companies to funnel and obscure the transfer of money. “Money laundering clean up GUARANTEED,” one email reads

Emails btw Epstein and business associate Andrew Farkas in 2015 discuss funds received from Feinberg’s company Cerberus. “I need a lead. If it’s not going to be your guy I need to focus efforts elsewhere. I have $200mm now from each of harvard and cerberus”