The Injustice Report

Reporting that bends the arc of justice.

The rate of the executive orders and political news since January 20^th is dizzying, the scope overwhelming. That’s by design. Distracted and outraged, we become frozen, unable to act, not sure where to look. Add to that the grief of the January 29th airplane crash, and continuing stories around the globe of climate crises and violence and genocide, and it can feel impossible to do anything.

And yet, it’s never been more critical for us to pay close attention. Almost all my reporting and writing can be summarized in one phrase: dehumanizing rhetoric and unjust policies hurt real people. I want to tell you the stories of those people.

As the scale of injustice has expanded in the twenty years less than two weeks of the second Trump administration, I’m relaunching this newsletter as a shared publication to focus on the deeper, more intimate stories than can usually be told by a breakneck breaking-news cycle—we’ll take our time and do this right.

I knew I couldn’t do this work alone; I’ve asked two friends whose writing I admire to join me:

Alejandra Oliva’s debut, Rivermouth, came out last year, and when I moderated her event at BookPeople, I told her the truth: it is easily one of the best books I’ve read in years about immigration and the communal, cultural, and spiritual costs of our current rhetoric (you should buy it immediately). She’ll be joining us to talk about immigration and what’s happening in Chicago, among many other things.

Lauren Pinkston is a friend of my dear friend, Constance Dykhuizen, and when I met Lauren, it was like nuclear fusion: the colliding of two great energies into something glorious. Her work and research on trafficking is wide-ranging and gut-wrenching, but she also speaks clearly and firmly in a nonpartisan way about misconceptions in our political language and how policies affect everyone. She’ll be writing out of her ongoing research and giving us insight from Tennessee, along with other places.

And I’ll continue reporting here from Texas, primarily on refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants, as well as book banning (which has turned into larger attacks on our education system). We might be adding more writers; we’re building this plane as we fly. Our goal is not to write objective news (for that, I go to Reuters, Associated Press, and the BBC; I also love the New Yorker’s reporting on immigration and ProPublica’s in-depth features). Instead, we will report on and analyze what we’re seeing in our communities. And we will center people made vulnerable by injustice.

My first post, “The Death of Refugee Resettlement,” will come on Monday, followed by pieces by Alejandra and Lauren. After that, we’ll plan to publish twice a week, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays (though that might change in these tumultuous times). For now, as we build our community, subscriptions will be open and free. You can read more about us on our new About page.

We hope you’ll share and recommend this newsletter to people in your community as we relaunch The Injustice Report—reporting that bends the arc of justice.