Contributing Writers

Criminal justice reporter Keri Blakinger speaks with us about her new memoir, out today, called “Corrections in Ink,” which details her path from aspiring professional figure skater to her two years spent in prison after she was arrested in her final semester of her senior year at Cornell University with six ounces of heroin. Blakinger says her relatively short jail sentence was a lucky case, which she attributes to progressive drug reform as well as her racial privilege.

Police and bikers in Uvalde, Texas, are restricting a growing number of journalists from reporting on the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead. “None of us can ever recall being treated in such a manner and our job impeded in such a manner,” says Nora Lopez, executive editor of San Antonio Express-News and president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

We speak with Texas Democratic state Senator Roland Gutierrez about how the police botched the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a small town that is part of Gutierrez’s congressional district. The shooting left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead after the police waited over an hour before anyone confronted the gunman.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a vote of no confidence held by members of his own Conservative Party on Monday. The 211-148 vote came just days after Johnson was booed by conservative royalists when he arrived at a service to honor the queen’s 70-year reign. We speak with Priya Gopal, English professor at the University of Cambridge, who says the vote signals a division within the country’s Conservatives and an opening for progressives.

The Biden administration this week canceled almost $6 billion in student loan debt for borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges, which defrauded thousands of students before being shut down in 2015. We speak to two activists from the Debt Collective, a group working to end the student loan crisis, about the ongoing fight for full federal student debt cancellation.

We speak with the chair of the California Reparations Task Force, which is the first in the United States and has just released a landmark report calling for “comprehensive reparations” for Black people harmed by a historical system of state-sanctioned oppression. While the state report is unprecedented, reparations are “first and foremost a federal responsibility,” says attorney Kamilah Moore.

The House committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its first public hearing on Thursday after 10 months of meeting in private. The hearing will be the first of eight and is expected to draw on roughly 1,000 depositions and interviews.

Russian missiles struck Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv for the first time in over a month on Sunday. This comes as Russian and Ukrainian forces continue to battle over control of the eastern city of Severodonetsk and Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning Western nations against supplying longer-range missile systems to Ukraine.

The Biden administration this week canceled almost $6 billion in student loan debt for borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges, which defrauded thousands of students before being shut down in 2015. We speak to two activists from the Debt Collective, a group working to end the student loan crisis, about the ongoing fight for full federal student debt cancellation.

We speak to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was elected in 2019 after promising to end cash bail, curb mass incarceration and address police misconduct. He now faces a recall campaign, with opponents blaming rising crime rates on his policies, even though sources like the San Francisco Chronicle report that crime rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

As President Biden calls on Congress to enact new gun control measures, we go to Buffalo to speak with Cariol Horne, a racial justice advocate and former Buffalo police officer. She says the nation must address white supremacy, as well as gun control, following last month’s massacre in Buffalo, when a white supremacist attacked a grocery story, fatally shooting 10 people, all of whom were Black.

In a devastating new report, Oxfam says one person is likely dying from hunger every 48 seconds in drought-ravaged Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. We speak with Shannon Scribner, director of humanitarian work at Oxfam America, about how the hunger crisis has worsened since an earlier report was released 10 years ago. She says climate change and the recent war in Ukraine have worsened already dire conditions in East Africa.

The Biden administration this week canceled almost $6 billion in student loan debt for borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges, which defrauded thousands of students before being shut down in 2015. We speak to two activists from the Debt Collective, a group working to end the student loan crisis, about the ongoing fight for full federal student debt cancellation.

We speak to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was elected in 2019 after promising to end cash bail, curb mass incarceration and address police misconduct. He now faces a recall campaign, with opponents blaming rising crime rates on his policies, even though sources like the San Francisco Chronicle report that crime rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels.