Reporting across America for the
@WashingtonPost
. Ex-foreign correspondent. Street dog tamer. Tips: danielle.paquette
@washpost
.com or DM for Signal.
Sheriff Chitwood’s battle with the neo-Nazis began when a group of men laser-projected “Hitler was right” on the Daytona International Speedway.
Things got personal — and genuinely scary — when I rode along with him in Volusia County, Florida:
“It’s just hard sitting and waiting,” Jimmy Carter's niece said said, tears streaking her cheeks. “You just want it to be peaceful.”
Reported from the 39th president's hometown w/
@marycjordan
:
1. When I visited Jimmy Carter’s hometown recently, I wondered: What ever happened to A.D. Davis, the former president's childhood best friend?
The boy who, because he was Black, was not allowed to sit at the dinner table in Jim Crow-era Georgia with Carter’s family?
“”Raise your head. You are Moroccan,’ said a sobbing commentator in Arabic. The words resonated viscerally in ways that will take time to unpack.”
This piece from
@AidaAlami
gave me chills:
Holy Shit. Elon Musk just popped into a Twitter Spaces chat with a bunch of journalists. He was called out by journalist Drew Harrell, who he banned, for lying about posting links to his private information, then leaves almost immediately after being pressed. Here is the exchange
“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce.”
@jdawsey1
on the Trump staffers dreading a potential repeat:
Hate speech is surging. Antisemitism is on the rise.
And an 11-year-old girl stepped outside one recent morning to paper swastikas with handwritten slurs: “GO TO HELL, JEW B-TCH.”
Two friends in two years had relapsed and died. They had also had infants. They had also sought treatment. But finding help as an addict wasn’t the hardest part, Bechtel thought. It was finding help as a mom.
In Fargo, White supremacists are exploiting a teen girl's murder to spread "Great Replacement" rhetoric.
People woke up to racist fliers on their lawns: "Do you really want your children to become a hated minority in their own country?”
A Chicago street artist wasn’t sure what to do about his mural of Kanye West.
Leaving it up felt wrong after the rapper’s antisemitic spiral. But so did taking it down.
Then a rabbi called:
Reports of similar hate propaganda are surging to record-highs nationwide, and the most authorities can usually do is issue a littering citation.
“That s--- is going to create the next mass shooter,”
@SheriffChitwood
said. “And we’re supposed to do nothing?”
2. A.D. was a beloved character in the stories Carter told in his memoirs, but few people knew much about his life outside Carter's orbit.
Then I met a local historian who asked me: Did you know Carter got A.D. out of a prison for murder?
Turns out, almost no one did.
Republicans used to support Ukraine. Then came the middle fingers.
Reporting from northern Alabama, where a little charity effort has become mired in yet another American culture war:
"She’s been an adult for only nine months, but she is a veteran of school shootings."
Read
@JohnWoodrowCox
on a young woman forced into a grim, uniquely American club:
The men had stood across the street during the Daytona 500, raising their arms in Sieg Heil salutes.
Then they scattered hundreds of fliers promoting a fringe conspiracy theory referenced in the online rants of mass shooters.
Guinea, one of the poorest countries on Earth, has become a crucial player in the world’s green-energy transition.
But people there aren't benefiting from that "gold rush." Quite the opposite,
@Rachel_Chason
reports:
Abdul Sharifu fled Congo's war and found safe haven in Buffalo.
He died after getting stuck in the blizzard.
The city is home to a growing refugee population and advocates say official warnings need to be issued in more languages.
@emily_wax
reports:
Great detail from
@AnaSwanson
in SF:
“The Chinese had prepared three versions of a speech Mr. Xi could deliver that night. After Wednesday’s events with Mr. Biden, Mr. Xi had picked the friendliest one.”
A Chicago suburb launched a reparations plan for Black residents in 2019. But Evanston has only spent $400K of promised $10M. Hundreds applied, only 16 have received money. At least 5 people died before reparations could be dispersed.
@emmanuelfelton
On the morning of her first shift serving VIP guests at the Democratic National Convention, Leah Jordan wondered: Is my milk about to spoil?
She opened her fridge and checked the expiration date. Aug. 26.
“I’m good,” she said. “I’m good for right now.”
Travis Kelce to
@WSJ
on dating someone as famous as Taylor Swift:
“Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them… I’ve never dealt with it. But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying
As Maine gov.
@JanetMillsforME
launches a “broad discussion” on stopping gun violence — and President Biden visits the site of the latest U.S. massacre — the
@washingtonpost
asked people in Lewiston: What do you want to see change?
She didn’t trust the government. She didn’t trust the news. She didn’t know whom to trust, so Kathy Nichols eased into the armchair facing her psychic.
“What comes up in my future?” she asked.
A look at the era of exhaustion & uncertainty - w
@sabrod123
:
The hate campaign is terrifying Liberian immigrants in North Dakota. Many landed there years ago after fleeing civil war.
“I came here for safety,” one man told me. “It feels like the safety is disappearing.”
“There is only one commonality among all isolated, troubled young men who eventually become shooters, and America has struggled to address it: their access to a gun.”
Remember North Carolina's bathroom bill? That 2016 law cost the state billions in lost deals.
Now the GOP candidate for gov says he wants to see transgender women arrested for using the ladies restroom, and the state's biz community is panicking:
His earnestness seems otherworldly. His wholesomeness seems impossible.
Is it a prank, or the new punk rock?
Who is Tony P, and why can’t we stop watching?
One coffee shop owner couldn’t find a therapist online who was accepting new clients.
Had the shooter tried to seek help and hit a similar wall?
“I can’t even get my doctor on the phone,” she said, “but it’s a little too easy to buy a gun.”
What could the operators do about the n-word carved onto a car? A spray-painted swastika? Antisemitic fliers?
As hate crimes + speech surges, Oregon's hotline is trying to help (without necessarily involving the police):
Jupiter Paulsen, 14, was skateboarding to her mother’s house last June when Arthur Kollie, a 23-year-old Liberian immigrant, stabbed her to death.
Kollie's sister said he is gravely mentally ill, but White supremacists framed the attack as a "hate crime."
The mother of a psych ward nurse wants to see raises for mental health care workers.
“She makes $2 less an hour than I do, and I sell weed,” said Jenny Coffey, the manager of 207THC, gesturing toward a glass display of pipes. “It’s a lot to put up with to be broke.”
I hate mass killings. But this time we, (w/
@karinbrulliard
@jslaternyc
), got to write about a hero, his dance partner, a dance community and unconditional love. 💜Hattie & Jim
He’s a retired cop. She’s a dancing queen. He saved her life at Star Ballroom.
Then one self-described "pro-White advocate" contacted her father "relentlessly," urging him to lodge an "anti-White hate crime report."
It didn’t matter that Jupiter’s mother is Hispanic. Her face suddenly appeared on Great Replacement propaganda.
"If a child sold for sex is always a victim, what happens when that child is accused of selling someone else?"
Gripping work, as always, by
@mjcontrera
:
JD Vance posted about Springfield, Ohio, nearly every day for a week.
And nearly every day he got facts wrong -- not just about cat-eating. via
@GlennKesslerWP
Someone else spray-painted “Jews Not Welcome” near the entrance of a Maryland high school.
Someone else passed out fliers in Los Angeles blaming Jews for the coronavirus pandemic.
(This is far from a comprehensive list.)
Relatedly, one of the several mass shooters to reference the Great Replacement theory in recent years pleaded guilty today to carrying out the Buffalo massacre.
“A wave of lawmakers who oppose vaccine requirements are winning elections for state legislatures amid a national drop in childhood vaccination rates and a resurfacing of preventable deadly diseases.”
Over the past two months alone, someone jumped an older Jewish man in New York, yelling antisemitic slurs and “Kanye 2024.”
Someone else tagged tombstones with swastikas at a Jewish cemetery in suburban Chicago.
J.D. Vance claimed that Biden’s rhetoric “directly led” to the assassination attempt.
But Trump supporters who witnessed the horror tell me they disagree:
“The only thing Biden inspires is sleep.”
Since a gunman stormed Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue four years ago, killing 11 men and women in the deadliest rampage against Jews in U.S. history, researchers have recorded a steady acceleration in prejudice-fueled attacks.
Why did we all root for him?
A psych professor weighed in:
“It runs through all civilizations — the myth of the hero, the epic. An individual leaves home, must overcome challenges and in the process is transformed.”
"My brutalist building is made of heavy concrete, steel and glass, but it swayed for so long as the quake’s aftershocks spread here that I was queasy, as if seasick. It took me a few seconds to register that I was on land."
Brenda McDonnell sells food, not hotel rooms.
But that didn’t stop the restaurant owner from fixing up a motel nearby — just so her staff would have somewhere to live.
Read
@rachsieg
on America's urgent affordable housing shortage:
"Dolphin likened prohibiting cellphones to curbing consumption of sugary foods. 'In a matter of months, you start feeling better,' he said."
@jslaternyc
Must-read work from
@mjcontrera
,
@jennabelson
,
@Jdharden
&
@vanhoutenphoto
:
There is little awareness of child sex crimes perpetrated by members of a profession that many children are taught to revere and obey: law enforcement.
Time is running out for Afghan allies who risked their lives for Americans. They’re on the verge of getting kicked out of America — and people don’t seem to care.
Gripping work from
@ahauslohner
:
What
@karinbrulliard
found in Aurora, Colo.:
“Residents of buildings that some officials have alleged are under gang control said the false rumors have led to threats and even drawn armed groups to the properties — claiming to offer protection, vigilante-style.”
"Land mines planted during Cambodia’s three-decade-long civil war, which was driven in part by U.S. interference, are still exploding today."
By
@rebtanhs
&
@RegineCabato
:
For my first story
@latimes
, I went to Mexico and got drugs.
Specifically,
@ConnorASheets
and I went to pharmacies, got pills & tested them.
Turns out, some are selling oxy & Adderall over the counter – but the pills are actually fentanyl & meth.
"She hated to think about more children dying and the thousands of others, like her, who had lost their friends and would never understand why."
@JohnWoodrowCox
“It’s a real trauma, and trauma and romance don’t go together,” Kolomiychuk said. “When people are struggling to survive, they don’t think about intimacy, about sex.”
@JStein_WaPo
@schmidtsam7
“Haley has found a soft spot in Trump’s armor. She seems to relish the opportunity to torment him. That could make the next few weeks much more interesting than anyone might have expected… if she keeps it up.”
@danbalz
:
New: The fragile Galápagos Islands are being pulled into the booming cocaine trade that’s fueling Ecuador’s violence
Our story about how drug traffickers made the Galápagos Islands their gas station.
Reported alongside
@Cascabelito09
@vanhoutenphoto