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This prison newspaper has been publishing for more than a century
Previous issues of the Prison Mirror, which has been publishing since 1887, sit on display in the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Stillwater.
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Inside a state prison near Stillwater, Minn., past the armed guards and the wings of cells stacked one on top of another, tucked in the corner of a computer lab, Richard Adams and Paul Gordon are fervently discussing grammar.
Both men are on staff at the Prison Mirror, a newspaper made by and for the people held at the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Stillwater. Gordon had written a profile on the prison art instructor. He read it aloud to Adams.
“I was curious if there was a certain style or something he preferred to paint. ‘When I get time I like Bob Ross, the guy that does the painting on the TPT channel,’” Gordon recited, referencing the Twin Cities’ PBS channel. Adams leaned in, a confused look on his face, and asked him to repeat the sentence.
“Is that what he said?” Adams asked. “It sounds like you’re saying you like the guy from the TPT channel.” He suggested Gordon add an attribution to the quote, like “he said” or “he replied.”
Conversations like this have been happening in this prison for more than a century. The Prison Mirror is one of the oldest prison newspapers in the country, running since 1887. Publications like this aren’t common, but in an era where many journalism outlets in the free world are struggling to thrive amid scores of layoffs, journalism behind bars is actually growing.
Richard Adams, left, Paul Gordon, center; and Patrick Bonga make up the staff of the Prison Mirror at the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Stillwater. The men say they’re limited in what they can write about, but they still find meaning in the work.
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“Overall we do see a growth and a lot of interest in starting publications, starting podcasts even. And so that’s really quite exciting,” says Yukari Kane, CEO of the Prison Journalism Project.
Thirty years ago, she says there were estimated to be only six prison newspapers. Today, there are more than two dozen. That doesn’t take into account the hundreds of incarcerated writers submitting work to publications on the outside, like The Marshall Project’s Life Inside series.
Kane says this kind of work can offer a window into what prison is actually like, one that prison administrators aren’t necessarily going to offer up freely.
“There’s a lot of information that people who are inside prisons see and are experiencing every day. There’s some reporting that can only be done from inside,” she says.
Even if a newspaper doesn’t circulate far beyond the prison yard, it can offer a sense of empowerment for its writers.
“Having a newspaper, it’s beneficial to everybody. It informs the population. It gives you a voice,” Gordon says. “There’s a quote I like: You can either be an agent of destiny or a victim of it.”
Patrick Bonga, a senior editor, works on the layout for the latest issue of the Prison Mirror at the Stillwater prison.
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The Stillwater prisoners write book reviews, legal explainers, and summaries of local, national and international events for the monthly newspaper. One man recently submitted an essay on homesickness. Another wrote an editorial criticizing lockdowns. The men on staff — there are only three of them — had to apply for these unpaid jobs, and they’re highly sought after.
Adams says the job requires a lot of reading and research about what’s going on around the world and the prison. There are challenges. They don’t have the internet, for instance, so they have to rely on print media and articles printed out by prison staff.
‘They do have freedom of the press technically, but they’re not free themselves’
The prison also has to approve everything the paper publishes. The men say that can limit what they write about, especially if they want to report on the harsher aspects of their lives.
“I am limited in the sense of, they’re not going to let me print all types of crazy things about the water or the lockdowns or getting restrained or anything like that, which is understandable to a degree,” Gordon says.
Last fall, around 100 Stillwater prisoners refused to return to their cells. Gordon says the disobedience was their way of protesting extreme heat, poor water quality, and staffing shortages, which he says often result in lockdowns. He plans to write about it, but says he has been retaliated against in the past for sending reporting to outside publications.
“I was a lot more aggressive in my writing back then, and that was a learning experience for me,” he says.
Paul Gordon, who has been in prison for nearly 20 years, says he hopes “to write something that matters.”
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Brian Nam-Sonenstein, a senior editor at the Prison Policy Initiative, says punishment for doing journalism behind bars is common.
“You can lose what are called good time credits, which are essentially time off of your sentence based on good behavior. You could go to solitary confinement. You could have your privileges revoked,” he says.
“They do have freedom of the press technically, but they’re not free themselves,” says Kane, of the Prison Journalism Project. “So they do face consequences in and potentially with the work that they do.”
Plus, having everything approved by prison administration can undermine the whole journalistic endeavor, though the ability to write freely varies widely across prisons, Nam-Sonenstein says.
“Incarcerated newsrooms are not necessarily fully captured organs of prisons, but we do have to recognize the constraints that are placed on them, especially when we compare it to free world journalism,” he says.
Marty Hawthorne, an instructor at the prison who oversees the paper, says he believes the prisoners have “right to do what they’re doing,” when it comes to publishing the newspaper.
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Marty Hawthorne works at the Stillwater prison and oversees the Prison Mirror.
“They have a lot of freedom. My philosophy is: It’s their newspaper. It’s not my newspaper,” he says. “I believe they have a right to do what they’re doing.”
He says if the men plan to publish something critical, he makes sure whoever they’re writing about has an opportunity to respond. But he says he also pushes back when leadership tries to censor stories he believes are fair.
“Because that is my job,” he says. “They’re incarcerated people, right? They don’t have power or authority. Somebody has to speak up for them in these places.”
Gordon, who has been serving a life sentence for nearly 20 years for murder, has been working at the paper only for a few months.
“I believe my job is only to lay out the positions, and then let people come to their own conclusion,” he says. “I hope to write something that matters and through writing, I hope to leave a much different footprint than the one I’ve already left on the world.”
Patrick Bonga, posing in his cell, says practicing journalism has changed the way he thinks about the world and helped him fight against bias.
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Patrick Bonga, a senior editor for the paper, says including all sides to a story has changed the way he thinks about the world. He’s been in and out of prison multiple times. Now in for assault, he says the newspaper is helping break that cycle.
“For the first 40 years of my life, any other opinion other than mine did not matter. But now just having to be objective and to put stories together that aren’t one sided, I’m now starting to practice in my own life a lot of fight against bias. And that’s a big thing,” he says.
For Gordon, making the paper isn’t just about journalism. It’s about getting to a turning point.
“When we first come to prison, it’s a journey to figure out how to do this time. We come here and we’re mad at the world, that life didn’t work out. We spend day after day after day trying to figure out and find that one moment where if we would have made that one decision, everything would have went right,” he says. “Then we get mad at the people around us for nobody helping us in that one moment. And it’s a journey to finally get to the point that we take responsibility for our own actions, that we can finally grow.”
Adams says he wants to keep his stories positive.
“I don’t want to bring negativity to the paper because we all know what’s wrong. Let’s bring some more of what’s positive, what’s right,” he says.
He set up a suggestion box in his cell, for other prisoners to weigh in on what they want to read. He also wants to start an advice column. He’s a father, and he thinks other men will have questions about how to be a good dad, even if their relationship with their kids is mostly over the phone.
Richard Adams hopes to write positive stories for the paper the give other prisoners the tools they need to be successful when they leave prison.
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Right now, he’s writing about side hustles men can get once they’re released to make a little extra money – things like driving for Uber and DoorDash, or selling flowers.
“You have a choice while you’re here, where you can change or you can go back out there and do the same things that got you in here. You can go back out there and at least try to make a difference,” he says.
After all, most people in prison get out and return to their communities. Adams wants to give them hope and the tools to start over when and if they get the chance.
One observer of the current Senate race in Louisiana noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy could lose his reelection bid.
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Annie Flanagan for NPR
Sen. Bill Cassidy lost Saturday’s Louisiana Republican primary according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Cassidy, who served two terms in the Senate, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That vote put him at odds with Trump and his MAGA coalition, ultimately leading Trump to push Rep. Julia Letlow to run against Cassidy.
Cassidy’s bid for a third term was viewed as a test of Trump’s grip on the party–and of what voters want from their representatives in Washington. The primary pitted Cassidy, a veteran lawmaker, former physician and chair of the powerful Senate health committee, against Letlow, a political newcomer and a millennial MAGA loyalist.
A detailed view of a hat that reads, Run Julia Run, is seen at a campaign event for Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) on May 6, 2026 in Franklinton, Louisiana.
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A former college administrator, Letlow won a special election in 2021 for the House seat her late husband, Luke, was set to assume before he died from COVID in 2020.
In Congress, Letlow sponsored a bill to collect oral histories from the pandemic and has focused on education and children. She introduced the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would allow parents to review classroom materials like library books and require schools to notify parents if their child requests different pronouns, locker rooms or sports teams.
She also serves on the powerful appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.
Letlow, who came first in Saturday’s primary, will face Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming in the runoff on June 27. Cassidy came in third.
The election result is a victory for President Trump who has put Republican loyalty to the test on the ballot so far this year in Indiana state senate primaries and in Cassidy’s race.
Another major test of Trump’s influence comes in Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday when Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has found himself at odds with the president, faces a challenger endorsed by Trump.
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Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
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