The Casey Fund

This is so scary. More needs to be done to protect incarcerated people. They’re vulnerable enough as it is.



As the U.S. is beginning to wrap its arms around the fentanyl crisis, a new kind of drug epidemic is emerging. It is faster, more addictive, more lethal and powered by synthetic drugs — substances that can be made almost anywhere. No pills or needles, just paper.

“The Daily” spoke with our investigative correspondent Azam Ahmed about his reporting on the synthetic drug crisis. Tap the link in our bio to watch the full episode.

Video by The Daily Video Team/The New York Times

This is so cool—a little bit of as well as history right in Nashville. Thanks for the video.



A mile from my house in South Nashville is a Civil War battlefield.
I’ve lived in Crieve Hall for years. A mile from Overton High School. Off Harding. Off 65.
I drive Peach Orchard, Overton, Crieve, and Franklin Pike every single day.
On December 16, 1864, the 13th United States Colored Troops, Black soldiers, most of them born into slavery, charged a hill in my neighborhood into Confederate cannon fire.
556 men went up. 221 didn’t come back the same.
The highest casualty rate of any Union regiment in the Battle of Nashville.
The Confederate general who killed them wrote his report. Used a slur I won’t repeat. But what he was forced to admit, on paper, was this:
They fought like men.
20 minutes up Gallatin Pike, in Madison, 1,910 of those soldiers are buried in Section J of Nashville National Cemetery.
Apart from their white officers.
Apart from the men they fought beside.
Even in death. The line still got drawn.
And here’s the part nobody told me in school.
The first Memorial Day was held by formerly enslaved people. Charleston, South Carolina. May 1st, 1865.
10,000 of them.
They dug Union soldiers out of a mass grave behind a Confederate prison. Gave them a proper burial. Built a fence that read Martyrs of the Race Course. And then they had a parade.
For 50 years after, white Charleston pretended it never happened.
The story sat in an archive at Harvard until a historian named David Blight pulled it out in the 1990s.
So the very holiday we observe this weekend was built by the people America was trying to forget.
I live a mile from that hill in South Nashville.
The neighborhood IS the memorial.
We just stopped reading it.
This Memorial Day, when somebody says remember the fallen, remember all of them.
Even the ones America tried to forget.
Godspeed.

“Poverty itself is violence.” We couldn’t agree more.

Baltimore, long seen as one of the most dangerous cities in America, has utilized a number of new initiatives to dramatically reduce violent crime—and with it, make neighborhoods safer for longtime residents. We know that punitive policing doesn’t work, and Baltimore’s progression away from that is proof. The question is, will other cities step up and replicate it? We hope so.



Inside the safest year in Baltimore’s history

We love this idea—food insecurity is such a big factor in our communities and can lead to so many other problems. Kids need food to grow, learn, and thrive.



Our President on the vision behind Joy Kitchen and its work with Nashville youth.

Joy Kitchen is a Nashville-based nonprofit and upcoming charitable restaurant led by Chef Sterling Wright. We bring love, healing, faith, and opportunity to overlooked youth through culinary education, economic empowerment, and whole-person support.

This gutting of the by the Supreme Court is going to reverberate for generations. Decades of progress towards equality in representation could vanish. And it’s not just elections at the federal level; state and local elections, where turnout is traditionally low and votes matter, will become whiter.

“I weep not only for my parents, but also for the South.”

Democracy Docket Legal Content Editor Ashley Cleaves is from Louisiana — and Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act hits close to home. But the implications stretch far beyond her home district.

Stay tuned for more insights from Ashley on how we move forward, and what tools we have to protect our democracy.

Read more of our coverage of today’s ruling at the link in our bio.

What do you think? Is “justice-involved” a more appropriate term? Is there a need for a catch-all term at all? Listen to what people experiencing it have to say.



Inmate? Incarcerated person? Justice-involved? Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear recently urged his party to stop using “advocacy speak” to better connect with voters. One phrase he pointed to was “justice-involved population.” What do people in prison think of the term? We asked them. ⁠
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✍️: Aala Abdullahi / The Marshall Project⁠
🎥: Brandon Wall / The Marshall Project⁠