Small Towns Work to Protect Abortion Rights • Storing Nuclear Secrets at Your Golf Club • Announcing OptOut Climate!

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Today's newsletter will take you through independent reporting and analysis on abortion rights, Trump's legal woes, LGBTQ+ issues, U.S. media, and more. But first, we have a special announcement.


Announcing OptOut Climate: Our First Issue-Based Program!

Today we are thrilled to announce that we have hired New York City-based journalist Cristian Salazar to lead OptOut's first issue-based program, OptOut Climate!

Cristian works at the intersection of journalism and technology. Having previously been executive editor of the Gotham Gazette, his writing has been published by The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other publications. Cristian also oversees FloodHelpNY.org, an online platform created to help New Yorkers understand how climate change is increasing their flood risk, and is currently working on a project to amplify Latino voices in the climate justice movement. Besides his newsroom experience, he has worked in nonprofit communications, digital marketing, and social media. He was born in Mexico and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In the coming days, Cristian will send out the first edition of our new, biweekly climate newsletter, which includes original reporting, a roundup of climate, environmental, and energy news from around the independent OptOut network, and helpful resources. He will also manage a networking community for climate journalists around the world, work to expand the OptOut roster to include more climate-focused publications, and join the curation team for our news aggregation app.

Sign up now to get our new climate newsletter in your inbox! Sign into your account and click "Manage" to subscribe to OptOut Climate.

Are you a climate journalist? If so, apply to join our networking community!

To help us expand our nascent climate program, you can make a tax-deductible donation. We rely on your support, not corporate owners or ads, to run all of OptOut's programs.

Feel free to send us your questions, ideas, tips, or anything else that could help our climate program: cristian@optout.news.


Your Independent News Roundup

Abortion Rights

"With reproductive rights now in states’ hands, local governments are challenging state statutes’ power and taking steps to protect abortion," reports BOLTS.

How Small Towns Are Working to Protect Abortion Rights from State Threats - Bolts
Radnor Township is a quiet suburb. Located about 15 miles outside of downtown Philadelphia, the town of 34,000 is known for its strong public schools and wealth. What it’s not... Read More

Meanwhile, in Idaho, things are about to get rough, reports the IDAHO CAPITAL SUN.

Idaho’s trigger law banning abortion in nearly all cases will go into effect on Aug. 25, and the heartbeat law allowing civil lawsuits against medical providers will go into effect immediately following an opinion from the Idaho Supreme Court on Friday evening.
Idaho Supreme Court allows trigger law banning nearly all abortions to take effect - Idaho Capital Sun
Idaho’s trigger law banning abortion in nearly all cases will take effect this month, and the heartbeat law will go into effect immediately.

'Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got Him?'

Another day, another crime Trump likely committed. The FBI raided the ex-president's Mar-a-Lago home this week to determine if he violated the Espionage Act by illegally holding classified documents there. From STATES NEWSROOM:

Search warrant shows Trump under investigation for possible Espionage Act violations - Nevada Current
A federal judge on Friday unsealed the warrant that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to search former President Donald Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago in Florida earlier this week, revealing he’s under investigation for possibly violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of j…

The feds were looking for nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago, explains MEANS MORNING NEWS.

In another inquiry, Trump pled the Fifth hundreds of times in his deposition with the New York Attorney General in a civil probe of him and his company for potential tax-related crimes. THE HUMANIST REPORT:

LGBTQ+

THE BAFFLER analyzes the government's response to the monkeypox emergency and the criticism of that response.

Poxed and Abandoned | Benjamin Weil
Does the public discourse about monkeypox represent a resurgence of medico-moralizing about queer sex?

TRANSLASH's latest article in its News & Narrative series comes from an incarcerated trans woman.

My name is Jessica Phoenix Sylvia. I am a trans woman who has spent the last eighteen years locked up for a domestic violence-related crime. Whenever I transfer to a new men’s prison things get wild.
Finding Trans Joy Even While Incarcerated
TransLash tells trans stories to save trans lives. section of the site.

The PENNSYLVANIA CAPITAL-STAR republished an article showing that meth addiction is especially prevalent among gay and bisexual men.

Meth addiction remains an LGBTQ issue, especially among gay and bisexual men - Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Side effects include decreased hunger, insomnia, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, and elevated heart rate and blood pressure.

The Media

The reactionary Wall Street Journal editorial board recently continued its tradition of opposing tax breaks for non-wealthy Americans, reports FAIR.

WSJ Hates Tax Breaks: California Edition - FAIR
The Wall Street Journal editorial board has a long history of liking tax relief only when it benefits the wealthy.

In JACOBIN, a local reporter from Massachusetts writes about her experience at a paper that, after being bought by wealthy landlords, censored her reporting on the real estate industry. If public, not private, money funded journalism, the industry would be far better off, she argues.

I’d learned just how easy it is to buy the narrative for a couple million dollars — pocket change to the landlords, developers, and corporations who use local newspapers as free public relations machines.
I’m a Local News Reporter. To Save Local News, We Must Publicly Fund It.
Local news infrastructure is collapsing. As I’ve seen firsthand as a local reporter, the only interventions are coming from wealthy investors, who are often angling to gin up positive coverage for themselves. To change that, we need publicly funded local news.

In Other News

Get the full analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act from THE AMERICAN PROSPECT executive editor and policy wonk David Dayen on the LEFT ANCHOR podcast.

Episode 244 - The Inflation Reduction Act | Left Anchor
Today we’ve got David Dayen on to discuss just what is in the monster Inflation Reduction Act--the gobs of tax credits, new regulations, tax hikes, and so on. Then we discuss what it reveals about the state of the Democratic coalition and what it might bode for the future.Check out Lee Harris’s Pro…

Marianne Williamson joins THE GRAVEL INSTITUTE to explain widespread depression in the U.S., arguing that it is a social, not individual, problem.

Despite strongly supporting a single-payer option in his presidential campaign—saying it would be "the first thing I would do as president"—Biden has totally abandoned the idea, writes THE LEVER.

The idea of creating a government-run health insurance plan that people could buy into has completely disappeared from the political conversation in Washington. Instead, Democrats have opted to deliver tens of billions of dollars of new government subsidies demanded by private health insurers that have funneled millions of dollars into Democratic campaign coffers.
Where Did The Public Option Go?
Democrats have completely forgotten about a public health insurance option, choosing instead to deliver expensive subsidies to their industry donors.

Some good labor news: the MINNESOTA INFORMER reports that workers at a second Starbucks store overwhelmingly voted to unionize.

Minneapolis Trader Joe’s becomes country’s 2nd unionized store - Minnesota Reformer
Workers at the Trader Joe’s in downtown Minneapolis voted 55-5 to unionize, becoming the second store in the country to do so. “We are so absolutely excited,” said Sarah Beth Ryther, a union organizer and crew member at the store. “We’re also really excited to get the hard work started of bargaining…

Thanks as always for following the work of the independent news outlets in the OptOut network! See you soon.


The OptOut Media Foundation (EIN: 85-2348079) is a nonprofit charity with a mission to educate the public about current events and help sustain a diverse media ecosystem by promoting and assisting independent news outlets and, in doing so, advance democracy and social justice.

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