Sam Levin

@samtlevin.bsky.social

18573 Followers 637 Following

Guardian senior reporter, based in Los Angeles. Sam.Levin@theguardian [dot] com. https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sam-levin

handout photo of Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, wearing a white button down, with flowers behind him.
smiling portrait of Liam, age 5, in a school picture
text screenshot from article: The FBI said the information came from a “sensitive source with excellent access” and introduced the report as a warning about “extremist actors targeting law enforcement officers and federal facilities”. In “late May”, an individual “participated in a debrief session held via a Signal call within the ‘courtwatch’ Signal groupchat”, the FBI wrote, without identifying the individual or the specific group or organizations involved. That person “discussed how to improve future activities near federal facilities in New York City, including 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street and 290 Broadway”, the report continued, listing the addresses of three immigration courts in Manhattan.
José and another firefighter in uniforms and holding tools while standing on a road near a row of trees on fire
Cruz-Estrada in a firefighting uniform in the middle of the woods by a large plume of smoke, while responding to the Hermits Peak fire in New Mexico in 2022
Image that says: “The FBI and NYPD say using these emojis could signal affiliation with the Tren de Aragua gang … Experts and immigration attorneys who reviewed the records said the claims were ludicrous, uneducated and baseless” Followed by pictures of alien, ninja, crown, hand, swords, train, and shield emojis
Bar graph titled: "Drug test positivity rate for opiates in California prisons" with subhead: "Quest Diagnostics used a different chemical in drug tests from mid-April through July" The bar graph shows that the opiate testing rate was around 6.6% to 6.8% in Jan thru April of 2024, and then spiked to 17.1% in May, 20.5% in June and 17.1% in July when a new chemical was used.
text screenshot: One judge criticized the US government for failing to address plaintiffs’ concerns that their gender dysphoria would be exacerbated in men’s prisons “whether because they will be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower in the company of men, referred to as men, forced to dress as men, or simply because the mere homogenous presence of men will cause uncomfortable dissonance”.
text screenshot: Whitney, who was recently transferred, said in interviews prior to her move that staff for weeks gave her conflicting information. In mid-February, she and another trans woman were placed into a form of isolation called a “special housing unit” and told they could be there for months, she said. The other woman attempted suicide out of fear of being transferred, she said. Days later, the women were moved back to the general population. Whitney’s doctor, however, then told her that her hormone therapy medications would start to be tapered down. Whitney said going off those medications would wreak havoc on her body and mind, describing it “like a slow death”. The doctor also said staff would start using male pronouns for her, though she said that had not happened yet. She said she was also told she would be allowed to keep women’s underwear she already owns, but would not be issued new garments.
text screenshot: There were days in here that I thought I would never make it, moments where I was filled with so much doubt. No matter how I sought to encourage myself, I failed. At times, fear seemed to consume me. Anger boiled below the surface and tears glistened in my eyes. Nothing could comfort me. I found no solace in tomorrow. The day our paths crossed, I felt renewed comfort, a sort of peace in not what’s said, but just your presence. God has truly given me a gift in your friendship … your smile, the glow in your eyes, the compassion in your words. Tomorrow holds no promises, but today, I take comfort in your friendship. I thank God continuously for you. Thank you for being my friend.
text screenshot: In Bowman’s final letter to Young, he said: “I never wanted to be writing this to you. It crushes my heart to do so. Man I LOVE YOU Brother! [From] the moment I met you, you was in my corner … Thank you [for] bringing so many people in [to] meet me and eventually grow to love me too.” Bowman expressed gratitude to Young for making him an uncle to his children and taking him on “trips around the world” through the photos and postcards his family sent. Bowman’s letter concluded: “I’m stopping now before everything in me breaks. I love you for life, brother!”
screenshot of text: “I’m afraid I’m going to get sick and be unstable and unwell,” he said of the possibility of seeing his care cut off again. “It’s cruel for them to just take us off this medicine really suddenly.” He said he would not let the policies strip him of his dignity: “I’m happy to be the person that I am. They want to try to tell me that I’m something different, but I know who I am inside, and that’s something they will never be able to take away from me. We’re not just going to sit back and let this happen to us. We’re going to keep fighting.”
text screenshot: “We’re talking about people who’ve been on hormones and in women’s facilities for years. This is crucial to their health and daily living,” she said. “There are also people who have been working so hard to get appropriate housing and healthcare, and they’ve just achieved this, and it’s now being taken away. A lot of folks are feeling hopelessness.”
screenshot of Guardian article: “The officers yelled at these women: ‘Come right now, leave your things. You don’t have time to pack,’” the man said in Spanish. “The officials were degrading them and saying disgusting things, like: ‘We don’t have to call you women anymore. Where you’re going, you’re going to be a man.’” As one trans woman was trying to pack her bra, an official laughed at her and said: “You won’t need that where you’re going,” he recalled. “The women were screaming and crying, saying: ‘Where are you taking us?’ It was so humiliating.”
text screenshot: While in isolation, Bowman has reflected on how the men of death row take care of each other when they aren’t kept apart – remembering birthdays, helping people prepare for difficult family conversations, sharing commissary items, offering grief support: “These people have helped me survive this – people who never would’ve gotten together on the outside, who are so different, but still have so much humanity in common. Some say they never had a friend until they came here. There’s no such thing as unredeemable.” When he now has brief moments to communicate with others in passing, “I tell them to keep their heads up,” he said. “They are going to be left to grieve me, but I need to make sure they continue to have the courage for their own fight.”
screenshot of Guardian article showing a photo of a South Carolina prison hallway with heavy steel doors painted blue of individual cells. Below the photo is text: Young can now only visit him behind glass, with Bowman wearing leg shackles, a belly chain and handcuffs. When Bowman walks through the facility, a guard holds onto him with an attached dog leash. Even though he has no physical contact – his lawyers can’t even directly hand him paperwork to sign – he is subject to a full-body strip-search when leaving and returning to his cell. Before execution watch, he was often called upon to help staff. “Now, I’m put behind these two doors, being led around on a leash whereas the day before, I was your friend helping you out. All of a sudden, I’m something other,” Bowman said, according to Young.
text screenshot: In September, Bowman was transferred to this placement, also called execution watch, moved to an isolated cell, with policy dictating he would “not be allowed to associate with other inmates at anytime”. He is locked behind two doors – an outer one with a window that guards can peer through and an inner one of bars. There’s a slot with a tray that slides in and out with meals, which must be eaten alone. If he wants a toilet brush to clean, it goes on the same tray as his food, said Boyd Young, his lawyer and friend of 15 years. There’s no desk. He had to give up many possessions, but what he was allowed to keep all sits on the floor – clothes, food, towels, an antenna television that plays a few local channels. The only place he can sit is his steel bunk. At 6ft 4in, he can touch both cell walls at the same time. He never has privacy as a guard is consistently watching him, making him reluctant to wash his body by hand. At times, the lights have been on 24/7.
Photo of ten incarcerated firefighters in a California women's prison, dated 12/29/2012, wearing yellow uniforms and standing in front of a firetruck. Laquisha Johnson top row second to left.
Rasheed Stanley-Lockheart in a yellow firefighting uniform crouched in front of a truck with a black dog by his side.
old undated photo of Roberta Bell smiling in front of a fence, with her three children smiling next to her.
text screenshot: Leslie, a former Dublin resident in her 30s, said a guard sexually abused her for nearly two years. She is now facing deportation to Mexico, despite having lived in the US since she was a teenager. “These officers knew we were immigrants and thought that they could do whatever they wanted to us, because we were going to be deported,” said the woman, who asked not to use her full name for fear of reprisal and spoke in Spanish. “Biden needs to grant clemency to survivors who deserve to come home. Biden needs to stop our deportations. Give us a chance to stay in the US with our kids and heal.”
text screenshot: Bamby Salcedo, a longtime activist and president of the TransLatin@ Coalition, said she and other advocates were bracing for a harmful ruling, but added: “For many of us as a community, hope is the last thing that will die. Regardless of the outcome, we as people are resilient … and we are going to continue to exist despite the oppression we may experience because of this decision. We are going to continue to fight like hell for all of us to be protected.”
text screenshot: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another liberal, also noted that a decision declaring that the ban on care is not discriminatory could open the door to bans on gender-affirming healthcare for all trans people, not just youth: “You’re licensing states to deprive grown adults of the choice of which sex to adopt.” Matthew Rice, Tennessee’s solicitor general, responded that the “democratic process” was the “best check on potentially misguided laws”. Sotomayor interjected: “When you’re 1% of the population, or less, it’s very hard to see how the democratic process is going to protect you. Blacks were a much larger part of the population and it didn’t protect them. It didn’t protect women for whole centuries.”
screenshot of text: Elizabeth Prelogar, the US solicitor general, noted that the court would “turn its back on 50 years of precedent” if it sided with Tennessee’s arguments that the law does not constitute sex discrimination warranting closer scrutiny. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, repeatedly compared Tennessee’s ban with the prohibition on interracial marriage, overturned by the landmark Loving v Virginia decision in 1967: “Some of these questions … sound very familiar to me, [such as] the arguments made back in the day, the 50s and 60s, with respect to racial classifications.” Jackson later added: “I’m worried that we’re undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases.”
screenshot of text: “The justices likely see this case as a potential harbinger of future litigation and constitutional questions about trans people’s equal protection,” Redburn said. Rice also claimed that trans plaintiffs were seeking a “right to engage in nonconforming behavior”. Redburn said the remark was noteworthy and raised broader concerns about people’s rights to self-expression: “You can see the motivation is not, as the state has suggested, to protect the health of children, which is something that states have a right to regulate, but instead is based on not only particular animus towards transgender individuals, but also a broader social vision that upholds a certain gender hierarchy.”
Text screenshot In a Florida case, a judge said Levine was the only state expert with significant trans healthcare experience and noted that the psychiatrist acknowledged that he believed hormones and puberty blockers were “sometimes appropriate”
Text screenshot: Two doctors submitted by Tennessee who have treated trans youth have also faced scrutiny in the courtroom. Dr Geeta Nangia, a South Carolina phychiatrist, said in a Florida case that she had treated “over a thousand patients with gender dysphoria”, but a judge rebuked her for not clarifying “how many of those patients, if any, she supported in their identified gender”. A plaintiff’s expert said the number was “highly suspect”. The judge denied Florida’s request to have Nangia do mental examinations on two 12-year-old trans plaintiffs, saying her views and résumé were unclear and that “no individual will be required to submit to an examination by a transgender denier or skeptic”. Nangia declined to comment.
Screenshot of text: Subheadline: ‘Far off from the accepted view’ Dr Michael Laidlaw, another endocrinologist cited by Tennessee, testified in a 2022 case that he had no experience treating gender dysphoria or conducting research related to trans identity. Laidlaw, who has been represented by ADF, previously compared gender-affirming care with Nazi eugenics, according to the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper. A judge questioned Florida’s decision to use him as a witness, criticizing his refusal to use trans people’s correct pronouns and characterizing him as “far off from the accepted view”. Laidlaw declined to comment.
Text screenshot: A Tennessee federal judge who initially blocked the healthcare ban said both Cantor and Hruz were “minimally persuasive” given the “deficiency in their experience”. “It’s such a strange thing to watch,” said Sydney Duncan, senior counsel at Advocates for Trans Equality, who is based in Alabama. “It’s as if the American Cancer Society recommended a certain standard of care for someone getting chemotherapy, but then a random doctor in a strip mall next to a Domino’s Pizza with no cancer experience or research had a differing opinion, and we’re expected to take him seriously.”
Screenshot of text: A North Carolina judge accused Hruz of “conspiratorial intimations” and “political hyperbole”, saying he was “not qualified” to opine on gender dysphoria or mental health, but could testify as an endocrinologist about hormone treatment risks. A Florida judge said he was a “deeply biased advocate”. In 2013, Hruz, who is based in Missouri, met with Kim Hutton, who has a trans son and spoke with him about the suicide risks for trans kids denied care. According to Hutton’s later deposition, Hruz responded: “Some children are born in this world to suffer and die.” “He’s a fanatic, not an expert,” Hutton said in a recent interview. “That’s not someone who cares deeply for children. He would have parents like me strip medical care from our children and watch them suffer.”
screenshot of text: Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, will play a key role in defending the state against Trump’s agenda. He told the Guardian last week he had been preparing for months for Trump’s possible return and said the state should “reinforce and strengthen” the existing sanctuary law, without offering specifics. He said he was also prepared to hold accountable any pro-Trump county sheriffs who go rogue and attempt to assist the president-elect’s deportation agenda. It’s a threat advocates are increasingly monitoring. “There will be recalcitrant sheriffs in California who will try to circumvent and delegitimize the state sanctuary policy,” said Newman, noting Trump’s ties to Joe Arpaio, an infamous Arizona sheriff who brutally targeted immigrants and was convicted of criminal contempt for his actions. “There will probably be one or more sheriffs in California who want to be the next Joe Arpaio with regular appearances on Fox News.”
text screenshot: “It’s a good time to zoom out and map the deportation system, which is interwoven throughout the state,” added Prasad. “It’s using not just state government resources, but also our airports, our roads. There are detention centers in our communities. Companies registered in the state are providing transportation to Ice to carry out deportations.” A county in Washington state blocked deportation flights from its local airport in 2019, for example, but was ultimately thwarted in court.
screenshot of text: “California has its own culpability in feeding the deportation machine, which advocates have been pointing out for years,” said Anoop Prasad, advocacy director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which supports incarcerated Californians. “Governor Newsom hasn’t taken action on those calls in prior years, but hopefully now he’s willing to understand the urgency.” In 2019, Newsom vetoed a bill passed by lawmakers that would have banned private security agents from entering prisons to arrest immigrants. In 2023, he vetoed another measure widely supported by legislators that would have stopped transfers from prisons to Ice. This year, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented students to be hired for campus jobs.
Close up portrait of Michael looking in the camera, with visible burn scar on the right side of his face near his ear.
Portrait of Michael Kenyon standing looking to the side, both arms visible with serious purple burn scars, and burn scar on right side of his face by his ear. Photo taken in October, three months after he was burned by police.
Sisters of Ryan Gainer - Rebecca and Rachel - standing outside their family home in Apple Valley with their arms around each other, two weeks after San Bernardino deputies killed their brother in their front yard.
Marsiah Collins, 19, smiling in a selfie with his father Martin Collins