Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

October 30, 2026

Sidney's Picks: Dolores Huerta (1930-2026)

Photo credit: 

Potje, Creative Commons

The Best of the Week’s News

  • Remembering pioneering labor leader Dolores Huerta (1930-2026) (NYT)
     

  • Trump’s anti-university czar, Leo Terrell, threatened to choke a staffer and seemed biased against his Jewish staffers despite heading up an antisemitism task force. (Crimson) 
     

  • Trump DOJ official embraces eugenics. (Bulwark)
     

  • “Sovereign citizen” conspiracy theories are spreading through parenting social media. (Wired)
     

  • ChatGPT told this woman to cut back on her epilepsy meds and hide it from her doctor. She died of a massive seizure. (NYT)
     

  • Brazilian judge orders investigation into JD Vance’s donor network for potentially illegally funding the campaign of failed presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro. (WaPo)

October 23, 2026

Sidney's Picks: The Next Pandemic?

Photo credit: 

Farmed mink, NAF, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • Bird flu is ravaging an Utah mink farm. Humans rarely catch the deadly virus from birds, but they can catch it from mink. Federal authorities refuse to act. (ProPublica)

     

  • Many OB-GYNs were driven out of Idaho by the abortion ban, and those who stayed are struggling to hang on. (NYT)
     

  • Conspiracy theorists known as Sovereign Citizens are defrauding the Canadian government of tens of millions of tax dollars. (CBC, fifth estate)
     

  • Amazon is using AI to predict whether workers will join unions. (Novara Media)
     

  • Meet the unlikely rebels of Data Center Alley. (Nation/EHRP)
     

  • West Bank settlers attack a journalist. (WaPo)

October 16, 2026

Sidney's Picks: For Texas Tweens, Minor Misbehavior Can Bring Criminal Charges

Photo credit: 

Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • Shareholder groups push Starbucks to restore labor committee. (Reuters)

     

  • A rural Pennsylvania town fights to save its hospital. (WHYY)

     

  • High school football players in Idaho threatened to lynch a female classmate in a group chat that referenced gang rape at Cornell. (WaPo)

     

  • Hillman judge Jamelle Bouie: If the Dems retake Congress, they better not mess around (NYT)

     

  • For Texas tweens, minor misbehavior at school can result in criminal charges. (NYT)

October 9, 2026

Sidney's Picks: Tuskegee 2.0

Photo credit: 

A health worker vaccinates a child in West Africa, USAID, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • How Trump’s revenge campaign descended into disarray, rancor, and recrimination. (NYT)
     

  • Nearly 40,000 missing neighbors: The ICE arrests in New York and New Jersey (Gothamist)
     

  • ICE has arrested more than 500 U.S. citizens. (ProPublica)
     

  • Tuskegee 2.0: RFK revives an unethical medical experiment that would deny the lifesaving hepatitis B vaccine to babies in West Africa. (Rolling Stone)
     

  • Texas AG and flailing senate candidate Ken Paxton is harassing pediatricianswith frivolous investigations into their vaccine prescriptions. (NYT)
     

  • ICE shock gloves traumatized soldiers who volunteered to get zapped for testing. (AP)

October 2, 2026

Sidney's Picks: ID Faith-Healing Family Lost Four Kids and Authorities Could Do Nothing

Photo credit: 

Brecht Bug, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • An Idaho family that believes in faith-healing over medical care lost four children to untreated diabetes, and authorities were powerless to intervene. (ProPublica)
     

  • Prosecutors say Andrea Shaw smothered her twin babies, she blames vaccines. (NYT)
     

  • Heat stroke killed one man and left another paralyzed, but their employer is still sending workers on H-2A visas into the fields. (Prism)
     

  • Rideshare drivers want a fair hearing before being kicked off the apps. (Capital & Main)
     

  • Tennessee authorities claim they followed their protocol for the botched execution of Christa Pike, but that may not be true. (NewsChannel 5)

September 25, 2026

Trump Saved Susan Collins from a Bribery Probe

Photo credit: 

Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News
 

  • Amazon drones besiege a Texas town. (NYT)
     

  • Trump saved Susan Collins from a bribery probe. (ProPublica)
     

  • Mamdani secures $131 million settlement for underpaid DoorDash drivers. (Guardian)
     

  • Anti-union consultant posed as organizer to lure workers at the Golden Krust restaurant away from their union. (DocumentedNY)
     

  • ICE officer was not wearing a body cam when he shot an Austin man last week. (Texas Tribune)
     

  • The White House banned Politico for reporting on an official background briefing. (WaPo)

September 18, 2026

Sidney's Picks: 52 Babies Were Hospitalized For Botulism

Photo credit: 

Nerissa’s Ring, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News
 

  • Employees of Microsoft and OpenAI knew they were committing “the largest theft of labor in human history,” court documents show. (NYT)
     

  • Trump is sending Somali immigrants with no criminal records to Guantanamo. (Mother Jones)
     

  • 52 babies were hospitalized for botulism linked to formula, but the FDA insists the formula supply is safe. (ABC News 7)
     

  • A Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin paid for Donald Trump, Jr.’s tropical wedding celebrations. (ProPublica)
     

  • Why does New York City’s police commissioner keep putting the most compromised cops on the most problematic units? (HellGate)
     

  • Republican who marched with the Nazis in Charlottesville is expected to win a seat in Florida’s state legislature. (TPM)

September 11, 2026

Sidney's Picks: Trump-a-Palooza Fizzles

Photo credit: 

Internet Archive Book Image, medical illustration of an ectopic pregnancy, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News
 

  • The bathos of Trump’s fake convention. (Nation)
     

  • Despite warnings, child sexual abuse images persist on Elon Musk’s X. (NYT)
     

  • Deaths from ectopic pregnancies have doubled and abortion bans are largely to blame. (ProPublica) 
     

  • Trump’s Venezuela deal helps his rich friends and nobody else. (MoJo)
     

  • Mayor Zohran Mamdani creates an office of worker rights to build union power in New York City. (NYT)
     

  • The quixotic fight to leak-proof the New York City subway system. (NYT)

September 4, 2026

Happy Labor Day!

Photo credit: 

Brent Moore, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • The labor movement bids a fond farewell to union sister Dolly Parton. (Nation)
     

  • Maria Bartiromo was fired from Fox News, allegedly for leaking to the White House details of the network’s policy of not discussing Trump’s outlandish election conspiracy theories (Daily Beast)
     

  • Democrats warn that the Pentagon is so broke that it’s siphoning moneyfrom the National Institutes of Health. (TNR)
     

  • Trump’s bribe jet lacks the critical security features needed to fly it outside the U.S., but he wants to take it to Ireland next week. (WaPo)
     

  • One of Elon Musk’s DOGE kids applied for college credit for trashing the government. (Wired)

     

  • Former Kentucky governor Matt Bevin arrested for contempt of court while working as an extra on a Christian film. (LPM)

August 28, 2026

Sidney's Picks: Letter Proves RFKjr Lied in His Senate Confirmation Hearings

Photo credit: 

Pamela Drew, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

 

  • A newly-obtained letter proves RFK jr. lied in his Senate confirmation hearings when he claimed his 2019 trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. (Guardian)
     

  • Washington Post ordered to reinstate columnist Karen Attiah after she was fired for calling out white men who espouse hatred and violence in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. (NYT)
     

  • Were your blueberries picked by exploited workers? It’s maidenly difficult to tell. (ProPublica)
     

  • The Pentagon has a secret media blacklist. (Intercept)
     

  • Can an obscene YouTube gun nut win a GOP House seat? (MoJo)

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Recent Posts

October 30, 2026
Sidney's Picks: Dolores Huerta (1930-2026)
October 23, 2026
Sidney's Picks: The Next Pandemic?
October 16, 2026
Sidney's Picks: For Texas Tweens, Minor Misbehavior Can Bring Criminal Charges
October 9, 2026
Sidney's Picks: Tuskegee 2.0
October 2, 2026
Sidney's Picks: ID Faith-Healing Family Lost Four Kids and Authorities Could Do Nothing

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