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Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s been 220 days since Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like. Read on for news from California, Washington D.C. and Maryland as the government shutdown drags on.

Public records are for the public

When Wired made public records-based stories free, subscriptions went up.

When 404 Media published reporting that relied on the Freedom of Information Act without a paywall, new sources came forward.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) spoke to Wired Global Editorial Director and FPF board member Katie Drummond and 404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox about why giving the public access to public records reporting is good for journalism — and for business. Read more here.

Shutting down the government doesn’t shut down the First Amendment

It’s absurd and unconstitutional to exclude reporters from immigration hearings unless they get government permission to attend, especially when it’s impossible to obtain permission due to the government shutdown, and particularly when the current government despises First Amendment freedoms and will use any opportunity to evade transparency.

And yet that’s exactly what an immigration court in Maryland did this week. We wrote a detailed letter to the top judge at the courthouse explaining why they need to reverse course, both to comply with the law and for the sake of democracy. The next day, Capital News Service reported that the court had backed down and lifted the ban. Read the letter here.

No secret police in LA

Award-winning journalist Cerise Castle sued Los Angeles County in July and obtained a court order for the department to release the sheriff’s deputy ID photographs.

But now the county is appealing. Its objection to allowing the public to identify law enforcement officers is especially striking when Angelenos and others across the country are outraged by unidentified, masked federal immigration officers abducting their neighbors. It also comes on the heels of the city of Los Angeles embarrassing itself with its failed effort to sue a journalist for publishing officer photographs.

We connected with Castle’s lawyer, Susan Seager, to try to figure out what the department is thinking. Read more here.

Top three questions about the White House ballroom

FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper has lots of questions about the demolition of a section of the White House to construct a ballroom.

She wrote about three of them for our government secrecy site, The Classifieds: (1) Is there a budget? (2) Who are the donors, and what do they get in return? and (3) Where should we look for answers about what’s going on at the East Wing? Read more here.

What we're reading U.S. assessment of Israeli shooting of journalist divided American officials The New York Times

A retired U.S. colonel has gone public with his concern that the Biden administration’s findings about the 2022 killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military were “soft-pedaled to appease Israel.” There has been “a miscarriage of justice,” he says.

ICE detains British journalist after criticism of Israel on US tour The Guardian

The detention of Sami Hamdi by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement solely for his views while on a speaking tour in the U.S. is a blatant assault on free speech. These are the tactics of the thought police.

Trump and Leavitt watch with glee as the press is crumbling Salon

“As the press becomes more subservient and less independent, the firsthand knowledge needed to even stage a fight to get our mojo back is a whisper in the ether,” writes Brian Karem. That’s why veteran journalists who know how abnormal this all is need to be extra vocal these days.

One third of all journalists are creator journalists, new report finds Poynter

It’s no time for gatekeeping. There aren’t enough traditional J-School trained journalists to adequately document every ICE abduction – let alone everything else going on. We appreciate everyone who is exercising their press freedom rights, no matter how they’re categorized.

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The late Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson’s first live album, Brian Wilson: Live at the Roxy Theatre, is set to be reissued on Nov. 7 in celebration of its 25th…

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The cease-and-desist letter asks the district to remove the video from an app accessible to students at North Kirkwood Middle School.

Join us for Happy Hour every Monday -Friday from 2 pm to 6 pm! Enjoy 5 food items for just $5 each with $3 Domestic Bottles, $3 Wells, $4 Special […]

The post Happy Hour at Tin Roof appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

It's a busy weekend with Halloween celebrations, events, and clocks falling back one hour on Sunday. The weather is adding onto that, bringing a cold front to the area.

St. Luke’s Birth Care Suites gets in on the Halloween fun dressing newborns in adorable bewitching buntings.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland on Friday approved the transfer of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration detention in Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, for a multi-day hearing in his criminal case brought by the Trump administration after an erroneous deportation to El Salvador.  The Trump administration previously planned as soon as Friday to again deport Abrego […]

SPRINGFIELD - The bill passed early at 2:54 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, a timing Bishop Paprocki described as “under the cloud of darkness.” In a statement released shortly after the vote, Paprocki criticized the measure and its proponents, calling it an endorsement of what he termed a “culture of death.” “It is quite fitting that the forces of the culture of death in the Illinois General Assembly passed physician-assisted suicide on October 31 — a day that, culturally, has become synonymous with glorifying death and evil,” Paprocki said. He emphasized that “killing oneself is not dying with dignity” and expressed concern that the legislation contradicts the medical oath to “do no harm,” noting that doctors would now be authorized to “prescribe death.” Paprocki also highlighted potential risks associated with the bill, citing “documented cases of patients being denied treatment and instead offered

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Your local McDonald’s might be making a McChange to how they make change.

The Illinois legislature has passed a bill that modifies the Clean Slate Act to automatically seal the criminal records of nonviolent offenders.

A plan to sell downtown's Interco Plaza for use as a parking lot has cleared the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and now heads to the mayor's desk, despite community opposition and questions over whether the sale is legal under the site’s designation as a city park.

Three people were charged in St. Louis for stunt driving and possession of a controlled substance after initiating a "slideshow" in an older model Cadillac, which was blocking an intersection.

The Trump administration now expects about 600,000 total deportations in 2025, fewer than under the Biden administration’s final fiscal year, as a drop in border crossings outweighs the effect of increased deportations elsewhere, according to a report released Oct. 30 by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.  State and local officials are kept […]

As anyone who has read Techdirt for any length of time knows full well, there’s been a years-long campaign to demonize kids and social media. Never mind that actual experts have said the data doesn’t support the claims of inherent harm, politicians around the globe are rushing to ban kids from social media as fast […]

The Missouri Department of Conservation has expanded the LaBarque Creek Conservation Area near Eureka, adding 15 acres to the protected site through a partnership with Open Space STL.

The Ultimate Unity Game Development Bundle has 4 courses are designed to designed to teach about game dev and how to create your own games using the Unity engine. You’ll learn about the fundamentals of C# programming, 2D and 3D game development, mobile game development, how to build amazing cutscenes, and more. It’s on sale […]

Missouri’s new sports betting framework could help squelch the kind of scandal that has enveloped the industry in recent weeks, the state’s top gambling regulator said.