Ken Schwencke
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schwanksta.com
Ken Schwencke
@schwanksta.com
19K followers 360 following 320 posts
Senior editor of @propublica.org's data journalism teams. Super gay. Sometimes printmaker.
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schwanksta.com
Ken Schwencke @schwanksta.com · May 18
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
A photo of a large print with a textured blue sky and three smallish birds flying across it A photo of the print on a drying rack, showing the scale and paper’s edges.
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
matttomic.bsky.social
Jesus Christ.
“I get 10 messages, DMs (direct messages) a game, (saying), ‘F— you, I’m gonna f— your family up,” one player said. “I personally hate gambling. Hate everyone talking about parlays this, parlays that. I hate getting DMs in my Instagram talking about, ‘You f—– up my parlay.’ I hate people sending me threats because I messed up their parlay,” another said. Terrible. Hate them. Every game, no matter if it’s a good game or bad game, you’ve got motherf—— sending death threats, saying racist s—. Every game. I guarantee you, if I check right now, I’ll probably have something from this game. Every game. Everywhere. DMs, Twitter. People be tripping, bro,” a player said. “I hope it doesn’t happen, but it’s going to come to a point where players are going to be targeted because people have lost so much money on them. That’s what I think. But hopefully I’m wrong.”
November 15, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
propublica.org
NEW: FBI Director Kash Patel granted waivers to Deputy Director Dan Bongino and two newly hired senior FBI staff, exempting them from polygraph exams normally required to gain access to America’s most sensitive classified information, officials said.
FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff
As the FBI’s deputy director, Bongino receives some of the country’s most sensitive secrets, including the President’s Daily Brief. His ascent to that position without passing a standard bureau backgr...
www.propublica.org
November 14, 2025 at 4:35 PM
schwanksta.com
Just passed an apartment in Brooklyn with what appears to be comic sans address lettering
A photo of the front of a building with 1470 eastern parkway in comic sans font
November 14, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
justinelliott.bsky.social
NEW:

Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts

www.propublica.org/article/kris...

w @josh-kaplan.bsky.social @amierjeski.bsky.social
Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rule...
www.propublica.org
November 14, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:

- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.
As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited to film the raid. Next to Caicedo, masked Border Patrol agents inspected another man’s tattoos and asked him if he belonged to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist group. Until that moment, Caicedo’s only interaction with law enforcement in his two-and-a-half years in the United States had been a traffic stop two weeks earlier for driving without a license or insurance, according to the records we reviewed. Chicago police had run a background check on him and found no prior arrests, no warrants and no evidence that he was in a gang. Caicedo said he had a pending asylum application, a steady job at a taco joint and a girlfriend whose daughter attended elementary school across the street. None of that mattered. The U.S. government paraded him and his neighbors in front of the cameras and called their arrests a spectacular victory against terrorism. But later, after the cameras had gone, prosecutors didn’t charge Caicedo with a crime. They didn’t accuse him of being a terrorist. And after a brief hearing in immigration court, the government sent him back to the country he had fled nine years earlier. “I lost everything,” he said in a phone interview from his mother’s home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.”
November 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
jeisinger.bsky.social
JOB ALERT! We are hiring a business editor.

You have an unerring instinct for the jugular of the wealthy & powerful? Build a team with me and we’ll get after it!

job-boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/j...

You can email me or on Signal at 718-496-5233
Senior Editor, Business
New York City, United States
job-boards.greenhouse.io
November 12, 2025 at 2:43 PM
schwanksta.com
never felt more vindicated about disliking anyone more than Michael Wolff right now
oversightdemocrats.house.gov Oversight Dems @oversightdemocrats.house.gov · 3d
🚨BREAKING: Oversight Dems have received new emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate that raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes.

Read them for yourself. It’s time to end this cover-up and RELEASE THE FILES.
November 12, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
newsjennifer.bsky.social
This photo was taken by @chicagotribune.com photog @mandophotos.bsky.social this past Saturday in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. Chicago's local news journalists are doing a helluva job capturing the aggressive tactics CPB & ICE are using here.
bsky.app/profile/mand...
junlper.beer onion person @junlper.beer · 4d
a new genre of photo in the last year is federal agents working for ICE pointing guns directly at photographers
November 11, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
propublica.org
NEW: Foreign food safety inspections have hit a historic low after Trump staffing cuts. The dramatic shift in oversight comes as the U.S. has never been more reliant on foreign food.

“It’s only a matter of time before people die,” one expert said.
Foreign Food Safety Inspections Hit Historic Low After Trump Cuts
The dramatic shift in oversight comes at a time when the U.S. has never been more reliant on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fruit.
www.propublica.org
November 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
dansinker.com
I spent Halloween chasing ghosts. Not kids in costumes, or jumpscares in a haunted house. I spent Halloween chasing ghosts of a different kind: careening from one ICE spotting to another. I wrote an essay about it, and about other ghosts we’re chasing. dansinker.com/posts/202…
November 5, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
royalpratt.bsky.social
Federal agents pulling a woman out of Rayito Del Sol, a daycare by Lane Tech high school
November 5, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
nycsouthpaw.bsky.social
🤔
Trump originally named Isaacman as his intended NASA nominee in December, but he withdrew the nomination in May, after what the president said was "a thorough review of prior associations." Although Trump didn't specify what that meant, some in the president's orbit had raised concerns about Isaacman's connections to SpaceX and Elon Musk, as well as his past donations to Democrats. • Follow Trump's second term The next month, Isaacman donated $1 million to a MAGA political action committee, as well as giving to the Republican National Committee, according to the Federal Election Commission. And in September, he was back at the White House for a dinner of tech industry leaders.
November 5, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
damonberes.com
“We can’t police that whole thing,” Common Crawl said. “It’s not our job. We’re just a bunch of dusty bookshelves.”

Meanwhile, CC has accepted hundreds of thousands in donations from AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. And it expressed open antagonism toward the media:
In our conversation, Skrenta downplayed the importance of any particular newspaper or magazine. He told me that The Atlantic is not a crucial part of the internet. “Whatever you’re saying, other people are saying too, on other sites,” he said. Throughout our conversation, Skrenta gave the impression of having little respect for (or understanding of) how original reporting works. Skrenta did, however, express tremendous reverence for Common Crawl’s archive. He sees it as a record of our civilization’s achievements. He told me he wants to “put it on a crystal cube and stick it on the moon,” so that “if the Earth blows up,” aliens might be able to reconstruct our history. “The Economist and The Atlantic will not be on that cube,” he told me. “Your article will not be on that cube. This article.”
November 4, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
jenafifield.bsky.social
Just in: USCIS says in news release that election officials have run more than 46 million queries to check voters' citizenship in expanded SAVE tool, and more than half of states have signed up to use the tool or are in the process. Background:
propublica.org ProPublica @propublica.org · 16d
NEW: DHS used to only have information on immigrants who’d had contact with the agency.

Under a new data-sharing agreement, the system added information — including full Social Security numbers — on millions of Americans not in DHS databases.
DHS Agreement Reveals Risks of Using Social Security Data for Voter Citizenship Checks
A recently released agreement gives the Department of Homeland Security access to hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security data. It contains alarmingly few provisions to ensure accuracy and privacy, experts say.
www.propublica.org
November 3, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
In Chicago, a woman was driving to get coffee when a DHS vehicle fleeing an angry crowd crashed into her car. Armed agents jumped out of the vehicle, yanked her door open, pulled her by the legs out of her car at gunpoint, held her incommunicado for hours, then released her with no charges.
Dayanne Figueroa was on her way to get coffee before heading to work when she encountered a chaotic scene in West Town: heavily armed, masked federal agents making arrests on a residential street. People yelled as vehicles honked their horn — a sign now used to alert neighbors that immigration federal agents are in the area — and witnesses said federal agents had arrested several landscaper workers presumed to be in the country without authorization. As Figuero tried to drive through the 1600 block of West Hubbard Street on Friday, Oct. 10, an unmarked vehicle driven by federal agents collided with Figueroa’s as it tried to speed away from a hostile crowd, multiple videos reviewed by the Tribune show. Seconds after the crash, agents abruptly stopped their vehicle and exited with weapons in hand pointing at Figueroa, a U.S citizen. Agents then forcibly opened her door and pulled her out of the vehicle by her legs without identifying themselves, presenting a warrant or informing her that she was under arrest. As bystanders yelled, “You hit her! We have it on video!” agents ignored the crowd and forced Figueroa into a red minivan and drove away. Her car was left behind in the middle of the road, her coffee still in the cup holder, and her keys in plain view.
November 3, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
maxtani.bsky.social
NYMag blew up its story about ICE's increased presence at 26 Federal Plaza, and pasted it on a wall a few blocks away on Broadway
November 3, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
atrupar.com
O'DONNELL: Why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?

TRUMP: Are you ready? I don't know who he is

O'DONNELL: His crypto exchange Binance helped facilitate a $2b purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin. And they you pardoned him.

TRUMP: Here's the thing -- I know nothing about it
November 3, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
crampell.bsky.social
The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse.
I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email
November 2, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
themorrancave.bsky.social
How did @propublica.org reporter @ericumansky.bsky.social learn that the Trump administration had just gone ahead and made it significantly harder for male vets with breast cancer to get coverage? This crucial info was not made public. Read his 🧵 for the details👇
ericumansky.bsky.social Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 13d
One night recently, I got a Signal message

Would I be interested in seeing an internal Trump admin memo?

I said yes (duh). Then, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

The memo shows how the VA is making access to health coverage header for just one group:

Male vets w/ breast cancer….
Excerpt of a Department of Veterans Affairs Memorandum dated June 15, 2025. It's addressed to the Acting Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, and the subject is "Amend Presumption for Male Breast Cancer."
November 1, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
theweekendmsnow.bsky.social
“Our diversity is our strength, but it can also be a weakness” Former Governor and NYC Mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo stresses the need for a united NYC and says diversity can cause problems when there’s “antipathy between groups”.
November 1, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
If you're in need of positive and rather wholesome news, there's a high school teacher named Bryan who took a ton of freely licensed celebrity headshots at the New York Film Festival last month for Wikipedia, and I truly can't believe how drastic the upgrade is for some articles (thread)
November 1, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
koshpointoh.bsky.social
Andrew Cuomo interview this morning on MSNBC and he…
-said diversity could be a weakness
-continued to repeatedly mispronounce “Mamdami”
-CONFUSED TWO BLACK ANCHORS WITH EACH OTHER
November 1, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
ndhapple.bsky.social
My question would be what is the salience of the issue set? Congestion pricing polled terribly. Yet, its salience was low.
October 31, 2025 at 1:14 PM
schwanksta.com
This is a lie: www.propublica.org/article/immi...
October 30, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Ken Schwencke
pbump.com
I use Claude (an AI) to scan my posts for spelling and grammar errors. On the most recent post (about the East Wing, link below), I got a really amazing addendum.
www.pbump.net/o/yes-most-a...
October 30, 2025 at 3:03 PM