Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST Good morning. We're starting with how a major criminal justice bill disappeared from the national conversation — and what that tells us about how news gets made.

KELI In December 2018, the Senate passed the First Step Act 87 to 12. That's bipartisan, that's landslide. It freed thousands of nonviolent federal prisoners, reduced mandatory minimum sentences, and reshaped federal sentencing law. Trump signed it. The press ran it for seventy-two hours and then stopped covering it almost entirely. By 2024, neither party made it a centerpiece of their platform.

HAST So what happened? The story didn't fit. The frame that had been built around this administration — authoritarian, lawless, indifferent to due process — didn't bend to accommodate a bill that did the opposite of all three. You can watch newsrooms across the country make the calculation: this doesn't match the narrative we're running. So it gets filed away.

KELI Here's what to watch: in the coming weeks, pay attention to how major legislation gets covered. Does it get sustained airtime or a short burst? Does the outlet explain what changed in law and practice, or just run the vote count and move on? Watch whether the framing is about the substance — what sentences now are, who walks free — or about the politics of the moment. Because the First Step Act tells us that the narrative determines what counts as news, not the other way around.

HAST Now to Texas, where data center developers are using nondisclosure agreements and shell companies to keep their deals away from public view.

KELI Data centers are booming across the state. They draw enormous amounts of power, they attract federal tax breaks, and they reshape local property tax bases and grid demand. But the developers behind them are operating in near-total secrecy. Nondisclosure agreements seal the terms. Shell companies hide who owns what. Even state officials — the Texas Tribune talked to them directly — say they need more transparency from the industry and can't get it.

HAST The mechanism here is simple: the state has leverage to demand disclosure, but hasn't used it. The companies have incentive to hide the terms because those terms are cheaper and lighter than what they'd get in negotiation if the public knew what was being given away. The developer gets subsidies, the grid gets strained, the tax base gets locked in — and the public doesn't see the arithmetic until it's done.

KELI Watch whether the Texas legislature takes up transparency rules in the next session. If they do, watch what gets exempted. If they don't, watch whether local governments start demanding disclosure as a condition of land use approval.

HAST International now. The Irish Prison Service transported crime boss Daniel Kinahan to court in a bulletproof and bombproof van after his extradition from Dubai. Kinahan had been tracked across Europe and the Middle East for years as a cartel figure. His arrest marks a shift — he'd been operating from abroad with relative immunity. The court appearance is expected this week.

KELI Sticking overseas. Israel confirmed Monday that a Palestinian detainee, Ihab Diab, died in prison nearly two years ago. The family disputes Israel's account of health issues, alleging torture led to his death. The Israeli military has not provided an autopsy or independent medical corroboration. This is an update on a case that's been running since his detention.

HAST Different scale, but same structural question: how does a death in custody get confirmed, explained, and verified? When the state holds someone and they die, the state's account needs scrutiny — not because the state always lies, but because the state is both the jailer and the witness. An independent autopsy and a timeline would change what we know here.

KELI The Pentagon is reshaping its nuclear strategy away from long-range, high-yield missiles toward shorter-range tactical nukes for possible regional conflict with China and Russia. The policy chief driving this is Elbridge Colby, a China hawk. The shift assumes wars that stay regional and nuclear. Hawaii, which houses major military installations, sits in the path of that calculus.

HAST One date marker before we close. In 2018, a Horizon Air employee named Richard Russell hijacked a Bombardier Dash 8 from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, flew it unauthorized for more than an hour, and crashed it on Ketron Island, killing himself. No passengers were aboard.

KELI That's the Independent News Drop. We'll be back this evening. From Inkwell.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. Over at Gil's Intelligent Version there's a piece on what the original words of scripture actually say about the Trinity — before any translation decided for us.

HAST Six words, examined in Hebrew and Greek. It's at inkwell dot wiki, slash trinity.