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Scott Hechinger

@scotthech.bsky.social
17K followers 285 following 485 posts

Civil rights attorney. Longtime public defender. Dad. Executive Director, Zealous. Supporting local coalitions to tell more compelling stories and work better together. My org: ZEALO.US

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Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
What's happening in San Francisco is now a national scandal. Mayor Daniel Lurie's decisions on public safety are now national news. No different than Trump. Making decisions on fear & politics. Not reason or data. In the bluest of blue cities. Thread: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
washingtonpost.com
A fight over a San Francisco nonprofit tests how far Democrats will move on crime
The fate of SF Pretrial, a group that runs diversion programs, reflects the tough-on-crime sentiment emerging even in liberal cities.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
What's happening in San Francisco is now a national scandal. Mayor Daniel Lurie's decisions on public safety are now national news. No different than Trump. Making decisions on fear & politics. Not reason or data. In the bluest of blue cities. Thread: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
washingtonpost.com
A fight over a San Francisco nonprofit tests how far Democrats will move on crime
The fate of SF Pretrial, a group that runs diversion programs, reflects the tough-on-crime sentiment emerging even in liberal cities.
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Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
READ: A short story that's happening right now. Something deeply dangerous in SF. A waste of taxpayer dollars. A decision driven by greed. One that will undermine community health & safety. No one knows about it. Please read & share. There's still time to change how it ends.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
I get it. It's hard to take your mind off of the daily crises in Washington. Trump's injustices move at breakneck speed. But we can't lose sight of local horrors. In blue states & cities. Inflicted by Democratic politicians. In San Francisco right now is the worst I've seen:
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AkivaMCohen @akivamcohen.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
A short story about deeply dangerous science fiction that wastes taxpayer dollars? I'm hooked!
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
I get it. It's hard to take your mind off of the daily crises in Washington. Trump's injustices move at breakneck speed. But we can't lose sight of local horrors. In blue states & cities. Inflicted by Democratic politicians. In San Francisco right now is the worst I've seen:
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
READ: A short story that's happening right now. Something deeply dangerous in SF. A waste of taxpayer dollars. A decision driven by greed. One that will undermine community health & safety. No one knows about it. Please read & share. There's still time to change how it ends.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
If you’re voting in the CA governor’s race, you should know the current front runner, Xavier Becerra, fought to sidestep the constitutional ban on executing intellectually disabled people —by trying to artificially inflate a Black man’s IQ. Sadistic. More: theintercept.com/2026/05/19/x...
theintercept.com
Xavier Becerra Pushed to Inflate a Black Man’s IQ to Execute Him as California AG
Becerra, a front-runner for California governor, has a history of blocking police accountability and seeking to uphold the death penalty.
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Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
READ: A woman was forced to give birth in Brooklyn criminal court 2 nights ago on a courtroom bench. Shackled. All while courtroom personnel gawked. And the judge ultimately refused even to dismiss her case—trespassing on her own rooftop. This is "justice" in America. More:
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
READ: A woman was forced to give birth in Brooklyn criminal court 2 nights ago on a courtroom bench. Shackled. All while courtroom personnel gawked. And the judge ultimately refused even to dismiss her case—trespassing on her own rooftop. This is "justice" in America. More:
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
One thing giving me life right now: Last night, my 10-year-old son stole home to win the semi-finals of his baseball game. The catch: He didn't even know he won the game until his teammates surrounded him & started jumping up & down. "I'm so happy!" he told me after the game.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Two weeks ago, @TheNation published my piece arguing Democrats were about to blow a once-in-a-generation political moment on ICE. I was head down and couldn't share it. They blew it — exactly the way I said they would. A thread. 🧵 www.thenation.com/article/soci...
thenation.com
Why Do the Democrats Keep Expanding the Institutions They Claim to Oppose?
The pattern is always the same: The public demands change, but the Democrats cave to political pressure and maintain the status quo, allowing the machinery to grow.
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Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Hi to new & old followers. I’ve been more offline, focusing on supporting advocates, building narrative infrastructure, & staying grounded w/ family during heavy times. When I’ve been on, it’s been to stress: documenting ICE and police actions is core First Amendment expression. Posting more now.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Two weeks ago, @TheNation published my piece arguing Democrats were about to blow a once-in-a-generation political moment on ICE. I was head down and couldn't share it. They blew it — exactly the way I said they would. A thread. 🧵 www.thenation.com/article/soci...
thenation.com
Why Do the Democrats Keep Expanding the Institutions They Claim to Oppose?
The pattern is always the same: The public demands change, but the Democrats cave to political pressure and maintain the status quo, allowing the machinery to grow.
1412062
Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Lying in a legal briefing would get you disbarred as a regular lawyer. But when you’re an unelected, lifetime appointee with powers to write decisions that completely undo & remake the Constitution, the decision gets to stand & you get to keep your lifetime position. Outrageous.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Lying in a legal briefing would get you disbarred as a regular lawyer. But when you’re an unelected, lifetime appointee with powers to write decisions that completely undo & remake the Constitution, the decision gets to stand & you get to keep your lifetime position. Outrageous.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
This Mother’s Day, nearly 150,000 mothers will spend the day apart from their children. 58% of all women in U.S. prisons are mothers. 80% of women in jails, including many who are incarcerated awaiting trial simply bc they can’t afford bail. Read: www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/03...
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Bari Weiss & her CBS overlords are losing just as they deserve to.
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Jayne Miller @jemillerbalt.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Baltimore County Council bans immigration detention centers. 6-0 vote. wbaltv.com/article/balt...
wbaltv.com
Council blocks construction of ICE detention center in Hunt Valley
The Baltimore County Council took swift action Tuesday night to block the construction of an ICE detention center in Hunt Valley.
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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Every cable show and political podcast is featuring stories about Colbert being censored and James Talarico’s entire arc, previous speeches… MyTikTok feed is similarly chock full.
media.tenor.com
barbra streisand is wearing a purple dress and holding a bunch of grapes on her shoulder
ALT: barbra streisand is wearing a purple dress and holding a bunch of grapes on her shoulder
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Regorama! @regipsaloquitur.com · 15/02/2026
This is such a poetic way of putting it.
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Karissah🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Explosion @risslecrisis.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
As someone who did public defense work, I can confirm everyone would have been hauled in by end 2019, maybe a 3 day trial at most... and sentenced before summer 2020
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
For nearly all those I once served , the presumption was risk, disposability, and guilt. For the powerful, it is ordinarily complexity, credibility, and patience. That asymmetry is not abstract. It is structural. And once you’ve seen it up close, it’s impossible to unsee.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Reminder that Justice Kavanaugh’s rewriting of the constitution to allow police to engage in blatant racial profiling was based in part on his “belief” that police would exercise restraint. I don’t think he really believed that. www.propublica.org/article/immi...
propublica.org
More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.
The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
“Americans who oppose ICE raids.” This is more than half of everyone in the United States. Both left and increasingly right. Raiding cities isn’t enough. They’re coming after our viewpoints.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
A man was choked on the floor of a Charlotte restaurant by Border Patrol agents — and thousands of Americans invented a knife to justify it. My newest oped on on the lies Americans tell themselves to excuse state violence. zeteo.com/p/ice-migran...
zeteo.com
The Lies Americans Tell Themselves to Justify State Violence Against Migrants
I posted a photo of Border Patrol agents pinning a man to the ground in a headlock – and the internet made up every excuse in the book to defend the assault.
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Dawn @teslatoast3327.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Of course Brett Kavanagh didn't believe that. It was 100% intentional. He knew exactly how this would play out.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Reminder that Justice Kavanaugh’s rewriting of the constitution to allow police to engage in blatant racial profiling was based in part on his “belief” that police would exercise restraint. I don’t think he really believed that. www.propublica.org/article/immi...
propublica.org
More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.
The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...
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Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Policing lying under oath IS a felony. It’s perjury. But prosecutors rarely charge police. They rely on police & police department cooperation for their cases. And fear that if they hold police accountable, they’ll lose that critical partnership. So lying continues & expands.
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Prison Journalism Project @prisonjournalism.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Today, we launched “Cancer in Confinement,” a series exploring why cancer is often deadlier inside U.S. prisons than in the free world. This is the big project I mentioned yesterday. I hope you will read and share.
prisonjournalismproject.org
Cancer in Confinement
PJP writers on suffering from the leading killers in behind bars — a problem of neglect, delayed care, and poor coordination
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Policing lying under oath IS a felony. It’s perjury. But prosecutors rarely charge police. They rely on police & police department cooperation for their cases. And fear that if they hold police accountable, they’ll lose that critical partnership. So lying continues & expands.
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Reposted by Scott Hechinger
Gregory Pijanowski @gpijanowski.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Thread...or when the legal system actually works against these guys they get to surrender themselves with dignity rather than get arrested and do the perp walk etc.
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Taylor Nichols, MD MS @tnicholsmd.com · 15/02/2026
This is why we need a way to report the police and assaults by police to agencies other than the same police departments committing the assaults and lying about them. I've tried to navigate this before as a mandated reported, seeing patients in the emergency department assaulted by police.
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logan, hater club CEO @logan.hater.club · 15/02/2026
One thing I think leftists with people skills can do that will pay off wildly is talking to regular folks who are liberal and pissed and getting them to realize that a lot of what ICE is doing is built expressly from what local law enforcement is doing.
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hilzoy @hilzoy.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
This.
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Ken Yee @yuweiquan.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
This is a short, insightful thread about the American justice system and what the Epstein files reveal.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Filming and documenting ICE activities and arrests is the most American thing you could do. The pinnacle of First Amendment protected action.
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Serenity Now! @cpo10za.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Cold, sad fact of two justice systems in America.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Meanwhile, when allegations involve extreme harm and immense power, the process often looks slower, more opaque, more cautious. Or non-existent. It exposes something deeper than any one case. Our system doesn’t respond to harm. It responds to status, narrative, and power.
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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10/02/2026
We live in a moment when so many people in this country share the moral clarity that ICE endangers us all—only for the heads of the “opposition” party to try to quash this clarity with meaningless reforms, and to give ICE more money and power. 2020 never ended.
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Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
It is also never “non” lethal (as Scott knows). It is at best less lethal but can still be fully lethal.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
ICE reportedly plans to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into detention centers. Let’s translate what $38.3 BILLION actually means in human terms. Not abstractions. Real impact. Thread:
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
ICE reportedly plans to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into detention centers. Let’s translate what $38.3 BILLION actually means in human terms. Not abstractions. Real impact. Thread:
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Filming and documenting ICE activities and arrests is the most American thing you could do. The pinnacle of First Amendment protected action.
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Maine's Black Lawyer @lutherevers.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
As a current public defender, for over a decade, I cosign everything here. We absolutely have a two-tier justice system. I've had clients convicted of non-violent misdemeanors get more jail time than dozens of people in the Epstein files.
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Fed Leppard @itsnotbread.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
I knew a public defender who said cops lied under oath so often that it was known as 'testilying' and everyone at every level knew and expected it.
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Scott Hechinger @scotthech.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Police lie. All the time. In paperwork. To prosecutors. To the media. On the stand while testifying under oath. And even when in the very rare case their lies are exposed, they get to keep lying with few if any consequences. This pattern isn’t just limited to ICE.
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Rachel Esselle @rachelsl.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Short but important 🧵
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