Dispatch from Pennsylvania on a highly unusual state Supreme Court election—one of the few most consequential matters on the ballot anywhere in the country next month. New from me in @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/pennsylvania...

If you want to see how much a single local official can change things, look no further than Chicago,

where the new prosecutor this year has ground exonerations to a halt by hindering the work of the commission that reviews wrongful convictions boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

Boston's Michelle Wu has attracted notice for standing up to Trump on ICE raids. But her stance is undermined by the city's fusion center, which civil liberties advocates have warned abt for yrs: "The whole purpose of it is federal & local law enforcement collaboration."
boltsmag.org/boston-polic...

Here's part two of my Denying Innocence series on the failures by Cook County prosecutors to investigate innocence claims. Thanks to our friends @boltsmag.org for copublishing.

revelations about cops planting evidence, threatening or coercing witnesses, and torturing people into false confessions have made Chicago the epicenter of the wrongful conviction crisis

yet prosecutors are weakening their response, even as another police abuse scandal looms over dozens of cases

"It’s a blueprint for authoritarianism wrapped in barbed wire and dressed up as local revival.”

ICE has its eyes on an idle Core Civic-owned prison in Walsenburg. Local officials have welcomed the potential influx of money and jobs. But residents are pushing back. My latest for @motherjones.com:

“If children can record everyday events with ease, law enforcement cannot claim hardship to record perhaps its most consequential investigative act"

here's how some state supreme courts are bolstering protections based on their own state constitutions even as SCOTUS rulings erode our rights

some really clarifying reporting here on this shooting that you're sure to read and hear a lot of very inaccurate things about

just before reading this i heard my local public radio station reference this as a shooting by multiple protesters

NEW: California was on track to pass a law this year that'd bring a path out of prison for some survivors of domestic violence who've been convicted of harming their abuser.

But the bill ended up dying in the state Senate as the session drew to a close this summer. Bolts reviews what happened:

Chilling dispatch from Mario Guevara, the journalist trapped in ICE detention for...doing his job.

People who are thrown in solitary confinement aren't told how long they'll spend there.

Some people end up there—for years. There are so few restrictions.

Read how this Texan who's experienced this describes it: boltsmag.org/designed-to-...

NEW in Bolts: The authors of a new book on solitary confinement answer questions about their experiences with isolation and the movement to end the tortuous practice.

“Isolating people inside a small, closet-like cell for weeks, months, and even years on end remains common inside this country’s prisons and jails, even though the United Nations defines the practice as torture.”

boltsmag.org/designed-to-...

Missourians have repeatedly used ballot initiatives to adopt policies that lawmakers in the GOP supermajority refuse to move on: abortion rights, paid sick leave, Medicaid expansion. In response, Missouri Republicans are attempting to make direct democracy impossible:

boltsmag.org/missouri-ame...

"We don’t want this mega prison in this state. We don’t need this mega prison in this state.”

New must-read from @boltsmag.org:
boltsmag.org/arkansas-pri...

For @boltsmag.org & @thenation.com, I went to the farms, livestock sale barns, and roadside bars of Arkansas and the prison towns of Upstate New York to report on how rural communities are changed (or changing) when a prison comes to town.

boltsmag.org/arkansas-pri...

19 people say they were sexually assaulted under Leonard Dixon – a Chicago superintendent who draws a $280,000 yearly salary and whose public records trail, including voting records, ties him to suburban Detroit.

Amazing work here by @kellygarcia.bsky.social:

www.injusticewatch.org/juvenile-cou...

Four deaths in two weeks: What’s behind the surge in violence at one Texas prison

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investi...

Abbott revived this bill by amending his special session call to effectively admit it's broader in scope than GOP and police proponents have been publicly saying

it's back on the calendar, could come up today

more on why Uvalde families are against it www.uvaldeleadernews.com/articles/edi...

We're finishing up our weekly newsletter at @boltsmag.org.

It's full of info on: today's elections, latest on redistricting, homelessness sweeps, DA races, voting rights restoration, prison reforms...

If you want to follow local politics & policy, you should be on this! boltsmag.org/newsletter

good thread here on the TX police secrecy bill that derailed yesterday (but some are already vowing to revive)

it would make more police files secret, undermine voter-mandated reforms in Austin, and help the state cover up its bungling response in Uvalde www.uvaldeleadernews.com/articles/edi...

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Blackwell and Harris, who are incarcerated in Washington state and Texas, respectively, co-authored the book

***Blackwell and Harris have agreed to answer questions from Bolts readers about their new book and the experience of writing it***

Submit by 8/27

boltsmag.org/solitary-con...

JUST IN: Federal appeals court just *upheld* Gov. Youngkin's 2022 decision to eliminate automatic rights restoration in VA. So people with a felony remain barred from voting *for life.*

Bolts reported here on people who were banned from voting, incl. one man who later became center of this lawsuit: