I'm excited to have a short creative nonfiction piece in the latest issue of carte blanche. ✨
Merci beaucoup à carte blanch for choosing this piece, and please check out this wonderful new issue/literary magazine out of Montréal!

carteblanchemagazine.com/issue-52/bar...

Thank you so much, Hayden's Ferry, for the Best of the Net nomination! You can read my short story "Reputations" here: haydensferryreview.com/lauren-barbato

When I first conceived this story, I was thinking about survivor narratives, the shifting politics of victimhood, and the role of the accused.

I'm so happy that American Literary Review nominated my short story, "The Great Renunciation," for the Best of the Net Anthology! You can read the story here: americanliteraryreview.com/2025/04/03/l...

Beyond the false claims linking Tylenol to autism, it is especially gross to see extremely wealthy men shaming women for not ‘toughing it out’ during pregnancy.

We also really need to start qualifying the term "Christian" and stop using it as an umbrella term assuming a unified belief system or sociocultural stance. (Looking at you, mainstream media.)

He became Christian in 2021, I believe, but it sounds like he did it for his brand. I've seen this a lot in those conservative circles.

Weirdly, I think this could finally be the Catholic Church's time to shine and condemn today's declaration of martyrdom and deification!

As a religion scholar (w/ a focus on Catholic history), it's mind-numbing to see the Catholic hierarchy fall under the spell of Technocratic Evangelicalism. Once upon a time, JFK was the model for U.S. civil religion. Father Ted Hesburgh exemplified liberal Catholicism & free speech. What a time.

creating AI slop of Charlie Kirk arguing in favor of progressive causes until conservatives get confused

Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk

“But Charlie [Kirk] also advanced another really important idea. And that is that he loved the people on the other side of that table”

Here’s Charlie Kirk questioning whether Kamala Harris was Black and calling for Joe Biden to be executed

Some people have a very different idea of what love means

Necropolitics: the culture of life has embraced the culture of death.

Did any of these people actually read or listen to what Kirk actually said or did?

I don’t know how you can portray someone who created a “professor watchlist” as a free speech champion or how someone who said vile things about minorities and immigrants was being civil.

A montage of Charlie Kirk: Roll that footage…

"Charlie Kirk died as he lived: propagating hateful myths about marginalized groups in our society. He was both a profiteer and architect of America’s increasingly violent culture war. He spent his entire adult life pouring fuel on the fire. You reap what you sow."

To Hell With Charlie Kirk

As someone who spent many hours listening to Kirk’s show on AM radio, I would say that he made Rush Limbaugh seem like Walter Cronkite by comparison, in terms of rhetorical tone and empirical rigor. The subtext of every show was “You don’t hate the left enough.”

He was a very talented shitposter who was adept at creating selectively edited, “own the college kid libs” content that made his boomer billionaire funders and MAGA Republicans happy. That’s what his fans admired him for. There’s no need to pretend like he was something other than what he was.

MSM is showing its whole ass right now. They know Kirk wasn’t a good dude, yet they’re bending over backwards to sanitize him, leaving out his entire racist and white nationalist record.

Mathew Dowd was fired by MSNBC for even the mildest of truths.

While both men and women are struggling in Trump’s economy, women—especially young women—are bearing the brunt of rising costs, growing debt and dwindling faith in the American Dream.

The Heritage Foundation is hyping the Catholic-based "restorative reproductive medicine" as an "ethical" alternative to IVF. In reality, it’s just standard fertility care repackaged to advance a pro-natalist agenda. #reproductiverights #Catholic #Project2025

msmagazine.com/2025/09/03/t...

This is terrific factual reporting on lies of Republican HHS Secretary RFL Jr. Maybe some other journos can follow the
AP's example. RFK's plans -with no real pushback from the GOP - will kill America's children; we need to get the word out.

A religiously inspired fertility approach is gaining traction just as Trump abandons his campaign promise to expand in vitro fertilization access.

Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM) is being promoted as a new "alternative" to IVF—but this medicine actually has roots in Catholic bioethics. For @msmagazine.com I explored the ideology behind RRM & its growing influence on fertility medicine & policy. #reproductivejustice #Catholic #IVF