Sidney’s Picks: The Best of the Week’s News

• The Marshall Project kicks off a three-part series on the cash-strapped public defender system of Louisiana. 
   
• School teachers are driving for Uber to make ends meet.
   
• Meet the cat-worshiping end times cult of Nashville. 
   
• Dreamer’s scholarship yanked just before his first class

The Best of the Week’s News

• Hillman judge Katrina vanden Huevel on the end of federal private prisons and the importance of investigative reporting
   
• ALEC and the Koch Brothers set their sights on the Constitution
   
• Hillman Prize-winners take stock of extreme poverty 20 years after welfare reform
   
• National Freight, Inc. is on the hook for a million dollars in back wages for overtime violations
   

The Best of the Week’s News

• Think tank scholar, corporate consultant, or both?
   
• “It’s very easy to become numb…” An oral history of the shooting of Michael Brown 
   
• Sarah Jaffe’s “Necessary Trouble” is a guided tour of American radicalism. 
   
• Get that baby out of here: Trump’s child care plan would moslty benefit the rich

The Best of the Week’s News

• An appeals court in Indiana partially reverses Purvi Patel’s feticide conviction
   
• Buyers beware: Sperm banks are largely unregulated 
   
• New documents shed light on the unholy alliance between Big Oil and Big Tobacco
   
• How sleazy lawyers profit from desperate homeowners facing foreclosure