Erika Wittekind
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erikalyn.bsky.social
Erika Wittekind
@erikalyn.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.6K following 2.5K posts
Freelance writer. News junkie. Former nonfiction editor. She/her.

Believer in democracy, science, gun control, local journalism, and empathy. Mom to two cats and two teen boys.

Dane County, WI
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
physiciandemocracy.medsky.social
corporate.walgreens.com/newsroom/wal...
Walgreens Launches Enhanced Respiratory Index to Track Flu and COVID-19 Hotspots - Walgreens Corporate Site
corporate.walgreens.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:19 PM
erikalyn.bsky.social
November 11, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
volts.wtf
Still thinking about this story. Imagine how cooked your brain has to be on Fox News -- how terrified you have to be, every day in your isolated suburban castle -- to start *shooting* when you see brown people at your door, before the door is even open. We're such a nation of terrified cowards.
Cleaning worker who mistakenly went to wrong home fatally shot: Police
The shooting victim died from a gunshot wound to the head, the coroner's office said.
abcnews.go.com
November 11, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
undark.org
Whooping cough spread for months in Louisiana before health officials spoke up. Two infants died as vaccine outreach was halted. The silence proved costly. From @wwno.org , @npr.org , and @kffhealthnews.org 
Louisiana Took Months To Sound Alarm Amid Whooping Cough Outbreak
State health officials appear to have deviated from the usual response during an outbreak after it killed two infants.
f.mtr.cool
November 11, 2025 at 6:05 PM
erikalyn.bsky.social
He seems obsessed with mortality lately. Not be a conspiracy theorist, but what aren't the White House doctors telling us?
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4h
Trump: "If we die, we must die and we as men we die without complaining."
November 11, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
maris.bsky.social
“I had thought that the point of buying a beloved, profitable publication was to make it more profitable… That is not the point of buying a beloved, profitable publication (or any business). The point is to make the private equity firm more profitable.”
November 11, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
anna-writes.bsky.social
Breaking: Marion County agrees to pay out $3M for newspaper raid, express regret kansasreflector.com/2025/11/11/m...
Marion County agrees to pay out $3M for newspaper raid, express regret • Kansas Reflector
A handful of county-level officials who were involved in a small-town Kansas newspaper raid in 2023 will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor.
kansasreflector.com
November 11, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
nytimes.com
“I like to be a gentleman. It’s important to be chic.”

After the Louvre heist, a photo of a dapper man became an internet sensation. Now we know who he is, what brought him to the Louvre — and why he typically reserves his fedora for weekends and special occasions. nyti.ms/47Co8C1
The man, in his outfit from the first photo, in a courtyard filled with autumnal leaves. A headline reads: "The Mysterious ‘Louvre Detective’ Was a 15-Year-Old Passerby." Photo by Thibault Camus/Associated Press.
November 11, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
markharris.bsky.social
This is actually good spin, or would have been. But the fact that the Democratic cave happened without even a coordinated, agreed-upon message like this indicates the depth of the leadership void.
From a Bluesky post on which the author chose to disable quote-tweets (fair enough, and I wouldn't quote it if I weren't complimenting it: "Instead of saying this was good strategy, maybe senate dems should say: "the republicans were going to kill people by starving them to death, and because we aren't monsters, we decided to let this fight go. We'll keep fighting. Stop electing monsters.""
November 11, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
amandaweavernovels.com
This motherfucker stole the Resolute Desk!!!!
November 11, 2025 at 2:32 PM
erikalyn.bsky.social
Sure, sure, everyone can just "negotiate their own insurance." I remember that working super well prior to 2009.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21h
Trump: "I want the money to go into an account for people where they buy their own health insurance. It's so good. The insurance will be better. It'll cost less. Everybody is gonna be happy. They're gonna feel like entrepreneurs. They're actually able to go out & negotiate their own insurance"
November 11, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
junlper.beer
a new genre of photo in the last year is federal agents working for ICE pointing guns directly at photographers
November 11, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
madison.com
A Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team review of court records and interviews with former employees, lawyers, victims and witnesses reveals a concerning pattern.
Cop raped female inmate, then handed her a stack of napkins. Is it a bigger pattern?
A Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team review of court records and interviews with former employees, lawyers, victims and witnesses reveals a concerning pattern.
madison.com
November 11, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
j1j2.bsky.social
Mazomanie Wisconsin
Thursdays November 13 & 20
Defend Democracy Rally
November 10, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
jael.bsky.social
this @katelynburns.com piece about the death of lia smith deserves your full attention

www.teenvogue.com/story/politi...
Politicizing Transgender Athletes Is Dangerous. Lia Smith Deserved Better.
"Let her passing be an inflection point for how you think about trans rights and trans people more generally."
www.teenvogue.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
marcelias.bsky.social
🚨BREAKING: In a win for Wisconsin voters, a state judge vacated a ruling that would have forced election officials to conduct mass citizenship checks — a move voting rights advocates warned could have wrongly purged some citizens from the rolls. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
In a Win for Voters, Wisconsin Judge Withdraws Anti-Voting Order on Proof of Citizenship
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
phillipanderson.bsky.social
Jeebus. Just look at this shit:
"Everyone is on pins and needles," the source told MSNBC, referring to prosecutors who fear being asked by the U.S. Attorney Reding Quiñones, or his leadership team, to work on a case that President Donald Trump has said should lead to the arrests of an expansive list of individuals, including former President Barack Obama and former CIA Director John Brennan.
November 10, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
erikalyn.bsky.social
Love wins ... or at least survives to fight another day. 🏳️‍🌈✊
November 10, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
erikalyn.bsky.social
Republicans now coming out against the basic concept of insurance.

Fine, good, get rid of the middlemen. Universal healthcare now.
crampell.bsky.social Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 1d
Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without telling me you don’t understand risk pools
November 10, 2025 at 3:46 PM
erikalyn.bsky.social
Republicans now coming out against the basic concept of insurance.

Fine, good, get rid of the middlemen. Universal healthcare now.
crampell.bsky.social Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 1d
Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without telling me you don’t understand risk pools
November 10, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
marisakabas.bsky.social
I received this email about Democrats caving to end the shutdown from one of the SNAP recipients I spoke to:
I'm sorry, I know this is not your problem, but I just felt like screaming into a void seeing that now Dems may cave and end the shutdown without getting anything they were supposedly fighting for. We've been put through hell for weeks, constantly having our ability to simply feed ourselves dangled in front of our faces, our survival used as a bargaining chip, told it was for a reason. Our suffering would prevent even more suffering and that it would be temporary and worth it to save healthcare for millions. And now it's all for nothing. They stood for nothing. They caused suffering for no reason. They'll cause even more suffering for no reason. It wasn't 40 million people starving that made them cave. They were willing to put up with that. But the threat of holiday traveling being disrupted seems to be the thing to push them to give in. They have failed everyone. I'm so angry.
November 10, 2025 at 2:17 PM
erikalyn.bsky.social
Love wins ... or at least survives to fight another day. 🏳️‍🌈✊
November 10, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
joshtpm.bsky.social
Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.
November 9, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Erika Wittekind
wkow27news.bsky.social
Are you traveling by air this Thanksgiving? A heads up from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Thanksgiving air traffic could 'slow to a trickle' if shutdown persists, transport secretary says
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warns that U.S. air traffic could slow significantly if the federal government shutdown continues into the Thanksgiving travel season. The Federal Aviation Administration has already ordered
www.wkow.com
November 9, 2025 at 8:22 PM