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🎙️ Citations Needed | Newsletter 😱
🕑 Added 2025-10-16 15:34:09 +0000 UTCDear patrons,
Pardon the slight delay! We hope you were able to join us for our Beg-a-thon livestream on Monday, Oct. 13, where we talked all (deeply unfortunate) things MAHA with Justin Feldman. If not, you can watch on YouTube, and we'll release the recording in the coming weeks.
Below are some stories and articles we've been reading lately. Have a look if you'd like, and feel free to let us know in the comments what's captured your interest lately.
Thanks again, so very much, for your ongoing support of the show!
— The Citations Needed Team
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The 13th Largest Army in World Is Unleashing Violence in Chicago - Sarah Lazare and Lindsay Koshgarian, In These Times (October 5, 2025)
ICE has unleashed a wave of state-sanctioned violence on Chicago that has shaken residents. This violence is happening as ICE sees its budget only increasing.
Poor Communities Are Paying the Price for "Free" AI Tools - Dan Howells and Todd Larsen, In These Times (October 1, 2025)
AI tools are being advertised as free ways to simplify a myriad of tasks. They come at a cost to water usage and noise pollution to poor communities.
Gaza’s Nightmare - Yousef Aljamal, In These Times (October 1, 2025)
In the weeks before the ceasefire in Gaza, the region lay in ruins as the people were left to pick up the pieces. A refugee in Gaza describes how desperate the conditions had become.
Bailing Out Pfizer Won’t Lower Drug Prices - Veronica Riccobene, Jacobin (October 11, 2025)
Trump announced a deal he said would lower drug prices. But the agreement with Pfizer would largely funnel people to the company’s online platforms and enrich the company.
How María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize Could Lead to War - Gabriel Hetland, The Nation (October 14, 2025)
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize was mainly covered because Trump did not get it. But Machado’s award celebrates a figure who has worked to destabilize her country and supported Trump’s baseless strikes of Venezuelan vessels.
Now is Not the Time to “Moderate” on the Police - Lily Sánchez, Current Affairs (October 14, 2025)
Left-wing mayoral candidates Zohran Mamadani and Omar Fateh have distanced themselves from defunding the police to appear more electable. It should not be lost that police forces still brutalize their communities and are only becoming more entrenched.
This is Why You Don’t Let Libertarians Run Your Country - Alex Skopic, Current Affairs (October 9, 2025)
Javier Milei’s Argentina was hailed as a triumph of free market economics at the start of his term. Now his country is undergoing an economic crisis and they are resorting to a cash infusion from the U.S.
The Trump Administration Is Hiding How Many Pregnant People Are in ICE Detention - Jessica Washington, The Intercept (October 10, 2025)
The Trump Administration has not revealed how many pregnant people are detained in ICE facilities. The existing evidence indicates its a high number and they are being kept in deplorable conditions.
The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act - Natasha Lennard, The Intercept (October 7, 2025)
Trump has teased invoking the Insurrection Act to send the military to cities. The Insurrection Act gives the president wide powers to crush dissent with little accountability.
NYT Sidelines LGBTQ Youth Again in Conversion Therapy Case - Olivia Riggio, FAIR (October 10, 2025)
The New York Times’ coverage of the Supreme Court’s conversion therapy case heavily skewed the focus to the conservative therapist practicing conversion therapy and her free speech argument. Survivors of conversion therapy were largely ignored.
The Free Press Called Out "Incomplete" Reporting on Gaza's Starving Children. Here's the Complete Story. - Ryan Grim, Drop Site News (October 12, 2025)
Bari Weiss’ The Free Press tried to debunk the Gaza famine claims by reporting on the comorbidities of starving children. The actual families of these children describe the impacts of hunger on their children.
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Comments
Yassified_Paperclip
Also- unrelated but still concerning- I wanted to highlight that several institutions are quitely recommending to take up masking again. The COVID 19 pandemic never went away. We swept it under the rug 5 years agoin order to "go back to normal" and now we have "Airborne AIDS" https://www.ajpmfocus.org/article/S2773-0654(25)00146-4/fulltext
Yassified_Paperclip
The "Free" AI and LGBTQ conversion camps definitely have my attention. As far as AI expansion goes, It's a predictable playbook at this point to make something free and convenient to alleviate the compounding stress of modern daily living, only to enshittify it as soon as a large enough market share is throughly dependant. The fact that it's so environmentally destructive doesn't seem to alter the pattern either. Just more skulls to crack in the name of "convenience" and "progress" as they liberally define it. LGBT rights is a much more personal issue for me, and my heart bleeds for all of the minors that are directly impacted by these facist policies. We are one of the few countries that voted no on a UN proposition of a children's bill of rights and it fucking shows. https://www.hrw.org/feature/2022/09/13/how-do-states-measure-up-child-rights
