Ken Schwencke
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schwanksta.com
Ken Schwencke
@schwanksta.com
Senior editor of @propublica.org's data journalism teams. Super gay. Sometimes printmaker.
Pinned
Last year I picked up printmaking and linocutting as a hobby, and yesterday I ran this giant 18x24 print of the sky over Fire Island. I was trying to translate that big and calming sense you get when it’s warm and breezy out and you’re just watching the clouds go by.

#linocut #printmaking #artsky
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
This is what it took to shame Kristi Noem into letting an Irish green card holder who bouncing $80 in 2 checks 10 years ago free after 5 months in detention:

A veteran, Trump-voting spouse
9 US descendants
Letter signed by 18 Senators
30 character witnesses

www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-...
ICE Releases Grandma With Green Card After 5 Months in Time for Christmas
Donna Hughes Brown's case was highlighted during a hearing with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
www.star-telegram.com
December 25, 2025 at 5:02 PM
At the beginning of Gremlins, his mom is chopping onions with a small steak knife. Really makes the rest of the movie less believable.
December 24, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Justice Kavanaugh does not want to be known as Justice Kavanaugh Stop
NEW: By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court blocks Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Chicago to assist immigration agents. A majority holds that he likely lacks authority to do so. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
December 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Those roving patrols and racial targeting that Kavanaugh allowed?

This is what they led to.

www.propublica.org/article/immi... (from Oct)
December 23, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Trump flew at least eight times on Epstein’s plane (even though he had his own). On one flight, the only passengers were Trump, Epstein and a 20 year old woman

wapo.st/4b3ycG6
Second big batch of Epstein files includes many mentions of Trump
After a first batch of Epstein document had few mentions of President Donald Trump, the Justice Department disclosed thousands more with many references to the president.
wapo.st
December 23, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Before Bari Weiss pulled the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, @propublica.org @texastribune.org & a team of Venezuelan journalists compiled a first-of-its-kind, case-by-case accounting of 238 Venezuelan men who were held in El Salvador.

Read their stories here:

projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-i...
December 23, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Worth noting that the student admits that she just threw the thing together in 30 minutes without reading the paper she was supposed to be responding to.
December 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Landry rushed to clarify he isn't resigning as governor of Louisiana and this will be, like, his side gig I guess. The state constitution explicitly bans state officeholders from simultaneously holding any federal office.
Trump says he’s appointing Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as “special envoy” to Greenland.

Landry has previously expressed support for Trump’s plan to invade Greenland.
December 22, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
really cannot be emphasized enough that bari weiss has literally never done journalism. i don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. i mean that in the “has never performed the job she was hired to do” sense
One explanation for Bari killing the story is that she did so as a public act of fealty to the administration. But another is that, as an inexperienced journalist, she doesn’t understand that a refusal to go on the record is a kind of comment in and of itself
December 22, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Bari Weiss, looking up briefly from her group chat with JD Vance and Stephen Miller: “Sorry, you need to get someone from the administration on the record. Wish I could help.”
December 22, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Big news out of Montana: Dr. Thomas Weiner has lost his license and will never practice medicine there again as the medical board finally responds to reports that he hurt and mistreated people. They noted Scott Warwick, who got 10 years of chemo etc, died from it, but never had cancer. Context 👇
Let me tell you a story – one of the more haunting I’ve seen in 20 years of journalism. It’s about greed, death and denial. It took two years to unravel one doctor’s myth, a hospital’s complicity in creating it, and a documented trail of suspicious deaths…🧵
December 20, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
The UNC system just released its final policy on mandatory syllabi disclosure, stating that syllabi are university (not faculty) IP and certain course info must be posted on new, publicly searchable databases before every semester.

A thread about what's changed from the draft I reported on earlier:
NEW: Public universities in red states, from Texas to Florida, are increasingly required to make their syllabi public. The University of North Carolina may be next. Does "syllabi transparency" help combat distrust in higher ed, or feed ill-informed suspicions of it? www.chronicle.com/article/when...
When Everyone Can See Your Syllabus
More states are requiring public colleges to make class syllabi available to the masses. Proponents say these measures boost higher ed’s credibility, while faculty fear being targeted.
www.chronicle.com
December 19, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Excellent piece that explains why Denmark’s childhood vaccine schedule isn’t right for the United States.

Every major publication should run a piece like this.

@jakescottmd.bsky.social:

www.statnews.com/2025/12/19/d...
Why Denmark's vaccine schedule works for Denmark — but not for the United States
With its vaccine schedule, “Denmark has made a values choice to accept preventable hospitalizations and illnesses that other countries have chosen to prevent.”
www.statnews.com
December 20, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Some of these redactions are almost like modern art
December 19, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Gonna stop looking at the Epstein Files in a second because I'm frankly way too skeeved out to keep going but I will say this: the CSAM isn't blacked out nearly enough while the faces of guys in ties are obscured by vanta black rectangles the size of the sun.
December 19, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Making a production in discovery that is almost entirely redacted is a popular way to say “fuck you”
December 19, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Not the Epstein files Ticketmaster queue
December 19, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
Well now I have a lot more questions
December 19, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
This is a fantastic Keith Bradsher piece on China’s most cutting edge products, including flying taxis and car-sized lunch delivery robots. It crystallizes for me how much the *key* underlying hard-tech innovation is battery production. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
China's Clean Energy Push is Powering Flying Taxis, Food Delivery Drones and Bullet Trains
China’s experiments in clean energy can feel like living in the future. Even when things don’t quite work.
www.nytimes.com
December 18, 2025 at 6:11 PM
@nymag.com @alexshultz.bsky.social reporting that while Eleanor Holmes Norton has been showing steep signs of mental decline, she is suddenly loaning a large amount of money to her campaign — which only pays her campaign manager / treasurer / confidant and one adviser. nymag.com/intelligence...
December 19, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
STUNNING: Nearly a year since President Donald Trump took office, his education department’s Office for Civil Rights has not entered into a single new resolution agreement involving racial harassment of students, we found. 
@jsmithrichards.bsky.social @megomatz.bsky.social @jodiscohen.bsky.social
Monkey Sounds, “White Power” and the N-Word: Racial Harassment Against Black Students Ignored Under Trump
Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discriminat...
www.propublica.org
December 19, 2025 at 12:42 PM
i could do this
Basically the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are the same as dropping a golf ball from a helicopter and having it hit a specific square foot of Manhattan south of 52nd Street.
December 18, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
I took my friend with only a high school degree to a fancy party and saw his face freeze up at the terminology being used by the elite. “Hebephile?” “Ephebophile?” I quickly asked him if he wanted to go somewhere else and he anxiously nodded yes and so we went to a Trump rally.

By David Brooks
December 18, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
These are the people who are willing to go on the record.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...
December 18, 2025 at 5:26 PM