Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 09/07/2025deportationdata.org/data/ice.htmldeportationdata.orgImmigration and Customs Enforcement – Deportation Data Project 030
Reposted by Justin BraunAaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 23/06/2025DISASTROUS. This means they will send people to horrific situations with no due process — in direct violation of promises the Solicitor General made to the Court in previous cases. This greenlights sending people to be enslaved in Libya or tortured in any random foreign country. 29472753092
Reposted by Justin BraunLighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 16/06/2025You’ve seen the “don’t share this code with anyone” SMS messages when you log in to your most sensitive online accounts: banking, messaging, #Google , #Meta, #Amazon. But who else might have seen them before you? 176
Reposted by Justin BraunMIT Technology Review @technologyreview.com · 11/06/2025We got unprecedented access to the AI model that Amsterdam developed to try to fairly detect welfare fraud. The result is one of the first in-depth looks at a system using responsible AI guidelines—and what happens when those big promises meet messy reality.technologyreview.comInside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AIThe Dutch city thought it could break a decade-long trend of implementing discriminatory algorithms. Its failure raises the question: can these programs ever be fair? 1186
Reposted by Justin BraunLighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 11/06/2025Most reporting on AI examines worst-case systems deployed under the guise of efficiency. But what would a good faith effort at Ethical AI look like? For two years, we’ve been looking over the shoulder of a city trying to do things differently. 12017
Reposted by Justin BraunChristian Nicolai Bjørke @cbjoerke.bsky.social · 09/05/2025So happy that our project «Inequality for the law» is on the shortlist. 🏆 Lucky to have been collaborating with the talented people at @lighthousereports.com. @elenadebre.bsky.social @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social @jusbraun.bsky.social 173
Reposted by Justin BraunLighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 02/05/2025🎙️ New episode of #Backlight is out! Want to dig deeper into financial investigations, but not sure where to start? In our latest episode, @margotgibbs.bsky.social and @giacomoza.bsky.social share how reporters can use financial clues to crack open investigations.lighthousereports.comBecome a moneytrails expertFind out what it takes to lead financial investigations with tips from Lighthouse reporters. 173
Reposted by Justin BraunLeon Yin @leonyin.org · 01/05/2025NEW: @bloomberg.com analysis of +13 years of ICE detentions shows immigrants transferred to the South and SW from interior US at unprecedented rates. Reducing the odds of winning their cases. w/ @elenamejia.bsky.social @racheladhe.bsky.social @pollymosendz.bsky.social bloom.bg/43am95w 813187
Reposted by Justin Braunjon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 17/04/2025It shouldn't matter if Trump’s victims have criminal records. If we only defend the “innocent,” the fascists will argue that their victim “was no angel.” An anti-fascist rhetoric that carves out exceptions for imperfect victims is a gift to our opponents. New from me for @us.theguardian.com:theguardian.comWhat is a ‘criminal’ immigrant? The word is an American rhetorical trap | Jonathan Ben-MenachemLabels like ‘gang members’ and ‘terrorist supporters’ are an easy way to make humans disposable 21150442
Reposted by Justin BraunHakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 15/04/2025Good job, Stanford admin. More of this. “America’s univs are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth,” they also wrote. “This strength has been built on government investment but not government control.“ stanforddaily.com/2025/04/15/l...stanforddaily.comStanford president and provost back Harvard in funding fightThe president and provost said Harvard’s rejection of government demands was “rooted in the American tradition of liberty.” 024355
Reposted by Justin BraunLighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 26/03/2025Europe frames migration as a crisis—but this masks the reality of its aging population and skills shortages. Over 18 months, with 20+ journalists, across 7 countries we answered: What’s the true cost of shutting migrants out of jobs? Hear from the reporters:lighthousereports.comThe cost of Europe’s structural racismEurope frames migration as a crisis—but this masks the reality of its aging population and skills shortages. 12013
Reposted by Justin BraunTarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 23/03/2025Many people rightly point to the core role that mainstream right parties play for defending liberal democracy against the far-right threat. However, solely focusing on the centre-right ignores the errors that leftwing parties have committed that have empowered the far right. A few thoughts … 614154
Reposted by Justin BraunHakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 10/03/2025I just sent our university president and provost an urgent request to defend First Amendment freedoms at Stanford, given this administration’s willingness to punish those who disagree with it. I urge you to do the same with your university leaders. 1388104
Reposted by Justin BraunHakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 10/03/2025Here’s the reality: This government—despite what they’d have us believe—cannot simply do whatever it wants. The moment we accept that bullshit, we become complicit in this blatantly authoritarian move by the president and his administration. With a loud, collective voice, we must say: fuck this! 41433430
Reposted by Justin BraunEliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 27/02/2025Bellingcat's new US division is looking for an executive director to make Bellingcat US the best Bellingcat it can be. Details of the role and compensation can be found here: www.on-ramps.com/jobs/3408on-ramps.comBellingcat US | Executive DirectorOn-Ramps is a full-service executive search firm that exclusively serves the social sector, working with innovative, mission-driven organizations across diverse issue areas. 10325117
Reposted by Justin BraunAdam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 21/02/2025I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party. 842341782
Reposted by Justin BraunHamed Aleaziz @haleaziz.bsky.social · 18/02/2025www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/w... 401702643
Reposted by Justin BraunLighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 17/02/2025New episode of #Backlight is out! This month, we are talking about how journalists can incorporate AI reporting into their beat and hold companies and governments to account.lighthousereports.comDon’t leave AI reporting to the expertsYou don’t have to be a tech reporter to cover AI 179
Reposted by Justin BraunGabriel Geiger @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social · 17/02/2025If you’re a reporter looking to take on AI accountability investigations, consider giving this a listen! 041
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 17/02/2025I think focusing on federal programs that are getting killed where some states have backstops/equivalent programs and others don't is a useful approach to demonstrate how much of government is focused on preventing stuff from going south 010
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 17/02/2025I think it's important to prepare for the informational asymmetry to change: data on government failure will become harder to access while successes will be more widely publicized. In other words, government will look more like a corporation 100
Reposted by Justin BraunDon Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 14/02/2025The IRS was a simple test for DOGE: was it really interested in efficiency and state capacity? If so, you support the tax enforcement, the biggest ROI in govt. Or did it want to minimize parts of the state that bothered billionaires? We have our answer. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni... 12644041702
Reposted by Justin BraunElias Koch @eliaskoch.bsky.social · 11/02/2025New paper with @ankuepfer.bsky.social accepted at EJPR🎉 When do MPs debate each other & when do they avoid discourse? Applying a new framework to study the emergence of elite discourse, we find that ideology and gov/opp dynamics shape MPs incentives to seek & avoid dialogical interactions. #polisky 87617
Reposted by Justin BraunJonas Schaible @beimwort.bsky.social · 09/02/2025Ich musste an diese Kontroverse um Laschet denken und wie ähnlich die Struktur der Position der CDU heute ähnelt: Die CDU würde nie mit der extremen Rechten zusammenarbeiten, sonst würde sie die ja normalisieren. Das hat sie ausgeschlossen. Also kann, was passiert ist, keine Zusammenarbeit sein. 1848999
Reposted by Justin BraunJohannes Hillje @jhillje.bsky.social · 08/02/2025Wow! Demo für Demokratie in München: „Die Polizei spricht von 200 000 Menschen, die Veranstalter sogar von 320 000 Teilnehmern.“ 1084340961
Reposted by Justin Braunelia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 05/02/2025The list is mostly black people. This is KKK shit folks. Out in the open. 3266110
Reposted by Justin BraunDhruv Mehrotra @dmehro.bsky.social · 04/02/2025NEW: A 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk now has direct access (admin privileges) to a Treasury Department system that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and more. W/ @telliotter.bsky.social, @leahfeiger.bsky.social, @timmarchman.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/elon-m...wired.comA 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment SystemThe Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a sleepy part of the Treasury Department. It’s also where, sources say, a 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has admin privileges over the code that controls So... 1114373
Reposted by Justin BraunElena DeBre @elenadebre.bsky.social · 03/02/2025Norway’s criminal justice system has often received high praise for its equity and fairness; it has rarely been under scrutiny in data-driven criminal justice journalism. 1106
Reposted by Justin BraunGabriel Geiger @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social · 02/02/2025In 2022, Frank went to prison. A richer man convicted of the same crime went free. 142
Reposted by Justin BraunLighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 01/02/2025In 2022, two men were convicted for driving under the influence. Frank in a cheap, old car, unemployed with debt. Jakob in a new, expensive Audi, worth millions. Their cases were nearly identical, but their sentences could not have been further apart. 12513
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025Huge shoutout to everybody at NRK, our reviewers, and @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social, @elenadebre.bsky.social, and Tahmeed Shafiq at @lhreports.bsky.social 010
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025In my view, data journalism isn’t about fancy graphics and bombarding readers with numbers. At its best, data journalism provides the basis for compelling human stories and the confidence that these stories reflect a systemic reality 120
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025So what’s the point in doing all these robustness checks? It’s simple: we want to be sure – as sure as we possibly can be – that our claims are true. That even in Norway, who you are can shape how the justice system treats you. 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025If you read the articles, you will find that none of these tests show up. In fact, there are very few numbers in these stories and the few numbers that are included are mostly raw averages. www.nrk.no/norge/xl/de-...nrk.noFrank måtte i fengsel – en rikere mann slappNRK avslører et ukjent klasseskille i norske domstoler. 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025What about people who don’t have to serve prison time? Isn’t there an over-dispersion of zeroes in our data? We estimated negative binomial models as well as models that exclude such observations and, once again, all of our findings were robust. Our code is available here github.com/Lighthouse-R...github.comGitHub - Lighthouse-Reports/norwegian_criminal_justice: Pipeline to analyze Norwegian criminal justice data in collaboration between NRK and Lighthouse ReportsPipeline to analyze Norwegian criminal justice data in collaboration between NRK and Lighthouse Reports - Lighthouse-Reports/norwegian_criminal_justice 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025But most defendants receive short sentences and only very few receive long sentences. Could the results be driven by these ‘high leverage observations’? Our results remain robust when log-transforming the prison day variable 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025But could there be aggravating circumstances that our methodology did not capture? We conducted sensitivity checks for such “omitted variable bias”. And we found that there would need to be an omitted variable of equal strength to “repeated offense” to increase our p-values beyond 5% 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025We used regression analysis to control for such differences: Our preferred models include all judge and defendant personal characteristics, and dummy variables for the crimes for which defendants were convicted as well as aggravating and mitigating circumstances 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025Showing disparate patterns is hard: longer average sentences for men could mean that judges are biased or they could just be an indication that men commit crimes that carry longer sentences 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025Norway is an exception: in an amazing effort, @cbjoerke.bsky.social & Henrik Bøe collected more than 9000 verdicts and linked defendants and judges to the population register and national tax list 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025In most European countries, sentencing data is largely anonymized. This poses a huge challenge to the kind of data driven criminal justice reporting, pioneered by the @themarshallproject.org and others in the US & around the world 110
Justin Braun @jusbraun.bsky.social · 01/02/2025The crimes you’re convicted of should determine your punishment, not who you are. But even in Norway – one of the “fairest” criminal justice systems – @lhreports.bsky.social & NRK reveal that there are disparities in sentence length by income and gender www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/...lighthousereports.comHow we investigated sentencing bias in Norway’s criminal justice systemNorway’s criminal justice system is regularly hailed as a model — but is it truly impartial? 2158
Reposted by Justin BraunMike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 01/02/2025The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...blog.archive.orgEnd of Term Web Archive – Preserving the Transition of a Nation | Internet Archive Blogs 4803276812099
Reposted by Justin BraunHakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 31/01/2025It is simply not enough for universities to say, “Our grants & research offices are looking into how research will be affected by the latest directive.” University leaders must actively and very publicly make the case for the kind of work many of us do. The silence on this front is deafening. 4123462407
Reposted by Justin BraunMarina Weisband @afelia.bsky.social · 29/01/2025Wenn eine schwarz-blaue Regierung beschließt, dass mein Antifaschismus gegen die FDGO verstößt, verliere ich meine Staatsbürgerschaft. Normal, oder? 632707752
Reposted by Justin Braun404 Media @404media.co · 29/01/2025OpenAI furious DeepSeek might have stolen all the data OpenAI stole from us 🔗 www.404media.co/openai-furio... 1073681929
Reposted by Justin BraunFinancial Times @financialtimes.com · 29/01/2025OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor www.ft.com/content/a0dfedd1-5255-4f…ft.comOpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitorWhite House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft 611638103
Reposted by Justin BraunMathieu von Rohr @mathieuvonrohr.bsky.social · 27/01/2025This keeps getting better #DeepSeek 88920
Reposted by Justin BraunEliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 20/01/2025I see the mask is off completely now 35821161
Reposted by Justin BraunFinancial Times @financialtimes.com · 17/12/2024Skilled migrants contribute more to public finances than working Britons, report finds www.ft.com/content/a9665565-eebd-47…ft.comSkilled migrants contribute more to public finances than working Britons, report findsMigration Advisory Committee figures highlight trade-offs of tighter UK immigration policy 211535