Kristen Meriwether

@NewsSmithville For the record, $120k of this is from an illegally collected fee.

We still haven't forgotten. And it's now been 30 days. -No answer from the City of Smithville about where $197,780 for the Fire Dpt budget was spent -No answer if the city purchased $80K in bunker gear Your tax payers are waiting...

@gothburz “She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.” 😂😂😂

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

This story… For the record, we are at Day 25 of the city not being able to answer, “what did you spend the money on?” Newsletter’s gonna be lit 🔥

@NewsSmithville For those keeping score at home: if you forget to pay your utility bill BY ONE DAY they will fine you a % of the bill and after 30 days, shut you off. The penalty for the city not telling you what they spent your tax money on? ZERO

Did you think we forgot? -What did you spend $197,780 on in FY24? -Did you buy $80K in bunker gear, as promised? -Why only spend 1/2 the uniform budget? -Why cut that line item next year? -Why is the current budget $35K less than the fee rev? Your tax payers are waiting...

I sent sent my first email about the legality of the fee in Nov, the same time SPD opened their investigation into potential fraud on the nonprofit side of the FD. Is this why it took the city 5 months to respond? Is this why the item was pulled in March?

I got a news tip in Nov claiming this fee was illegal. As I began looking into the numbers, it didn’t pass the smell test. Did a budget deep dive and found that the city didn’t put this money in a dedicated fund. And this year, the Fire budget was lower than the fee collected.

The plot thickens…

@ewarren Or you guys could stop spending our money like drunken sailors and manage the country’s expenses like a fucking grown up.

A wealth tax on the top .15% of the richest families would generate $6.2 trillion in revenue. That could pay for: Universal childcare Millions of new homes Slashing child poverty Medicare for people aged 55+ Universal paid family leave Tuition-free community college And more.

@sylawinget Sitting on the Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding I recently found out he died 3 days after he recorded it and never heard it finished. The whistle at the end? Placeholder for lyrics he hasn’t written. Now listen to that song again and tell me it doesn’t hit different.

If you see this tweet please reply the last song you listened to. I’m making a playlist

As a local news publisher I’ve been thinking a lot about how to rebuild the information nervous system. When you posted your viral tweet yesterday, my first thought came to gov’t data. Ur right…soooooo much data is produced. But most of it is useless to the population it serves. “The news” used to perform the function of facilitating that information. But I don’t really think that’s needed now. A resident should easily be able to get a transcript summary, see who voted on what, how it will affect them, ect. I don’t understand tech like you. I’m a journalist by trade. But your tweets have given me hope the technical barrier to figuring this out is almost gone.

Something I've been thinking about - I am bullish on people (empowered by AI) increasing the visibility, legibility and accountability of their governments. Historically, it is the governments that act to make society legible (e.g. "Seeing like a state" is the common reference), but with AI, society can dramatically improve its ability to do this in reverse. Government accountability has not been constrained by access (the various branches of government publish an enormous amount of data), it has been constrained by intelligence - the ability to process a lot of raw data, combine it with domain expertise and derive insights. As an example, the 4000-page omnibus bill is "transparent" in principle and in a legal sense, but certainly not in a practical sense for most people. There's a lot more like it: laws, spending bills, federal budgets, freedom of information act responses, lobbying disclosures... Only a few highly trained professionals (investigative journalists) could historically process this information. This bottleneck might dissolve - not only are the professionals further empowered, but a lot more people can participate. Some examples to be precise: Detailed accounting of spending and budgets, diff tracking of legislation, individual voting trends w.r.t. stated positions or speeches, lobbying and influence (e.g. graph of lobbyist -> firm -> client -> legislator -> committee -> vote -> regulation), procurement and contracting, regulatory capture warning lights, judicial and legal patterns, campaign finance... Local governments might be even more interesting because the governed population is smaller so there is less national coverage: city council meetings, decisions around zoning, policing, schools, utilities... Certainly, the same tools can easily cut the other way and it's worth being very mindful of that, but I lean optimistic overall that added participation, transparency and accountability will improve democratic, free societies. (the quoted tweet is half-ish related, but inspired me to post some recent thoughts)

@mcdermott I’m 15 months into a solo local newsletter (on Ghost not Substack) and can confirm it’s SUPER hard to do good enterprise. But it’s not the churn for me. It’s keeping up with the biz side. Ad sales. Finances, payments ect. So much of your bandwidth goes to non journalism things.

This is why Substack isn't an answer to the death of newspapers and magazines. Original, enterprise reporting takes time, and a single reporter doesn't have that time when they have to keep up with the newsletter churn. They need an organization behind them to fill in the gaps.

@Gunny_SukumoHQ Cajun food! Gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, and beignets are the most popular items. New Orleans would be the best way to try that. Also, you have to go to a crawfish boil. They are only in season for March/April but we usually have parties to make them. So fun!

アメリカのご当地グルメ テキサスBBQとか、フィリーチーズステーキとか、シカゴピザとか食べてみたいものはたくさんあるけど 他にも「この州、この地域に来たらコレは絶対食っとけ！」みたいなものってあるんやろか？ 日本でも地域色あるんだから、アメリカにも各地の名物が沢山あるはず

@hajime20250823 Best ketchup ever. They sell bottles of Whataburger ketchup at HEB (the grocery store here). I think you can also buy them at Whataburger as well.

テキサスのみんな、お待たせ。 テキサスのソウルフードWhataburgerに行きました。日本だと「ケチャップを下さい」と言わないと、ケチャップがもらえないけど、ここでは何も言わずにケチャップの掴み取りができました。ドリンクも飲み放題で、体がすくすくと横に大きくなる理由が分かりました。

@kunukunu Do you guys make your own pizza at home like we do? We have frozen (already made, just put in oven), frozen crust (you add sauce/toppings, bake), and fresh (you make dough, add sauce, toppings, bake). Fresh basil on top is a game changer.

I wrote a tweet praising American pizza last night. This may have triggered something. Now bunch of people are argu... well, sharing their thoughts about which region in the states has the best pizza.

@mattvanswol @data_republican I had to go to county court bc a local official got a DWI. Watched the judge let an illegal go after he served 30 days for theft. No handing over to ICE. Just releasing a criminal back into the streets of Austin. That was 30 min. What would be found if someone posted up all day?

@data_republican I am no one special. These stories are in EVERY state, they are happening in EVERY major blue city across the country. All you have to do is look. It's a WIDE OPEN lane for you as a journalist, because the mainstream media will never touch these stories. It's up to us now...

Every state needs someone like @mattvanswol ! Who knew NC had this much crime and judicial activism unless you live there? Every state needs this kind of info to be spread so we all know what's going on in the other 49.

@SomeBitchIIKnow Local police blotters are a great way to narrow the search.

Which department do I submit a FOIA to about Waffle House teleportation?

I saw a guy get stabbed in a Waffle House once. Weird things happen there.

@catturd2 My Manny boy. Always begging.

Timeline cleanse … break from the political stress Monkey. ❤️ Let’s see those fur babies.

@QXsToo I’d like to see more local flavor (think news, events, maybe even sports). All we get fed is national politics on here. But the $100K in legal fees my local city spent covering officials in trouble is a big deal…with direct impact to me. I can write and post…will never be seen.

As a user, it's simple. I open the @X app. Here's what I hope to see — and I suspect many of you do too: 1. Great, informative, useful, or entertaining content (by humans, machines, or companies) 2. Real, authentic — even “boring” — posts from the people and networks I actually care about 3. No spam, bad bots, or reply farming As an X employee who uses it every day, I believe we’re actively building toward exactly this. Does this match what you want when you open X?

@NewEmergingKing An important skill. I went on a date with a dude and we got a flat on the way back. He had a spare in the trunk…had no idea how to change it. So had to call someone. Total turnoff (he did not get a second date).

Teaching the boys how to check tire tread today. Simple skill… but it matters. One day they’ll be responsible for their family. (And apparently mom’s car too 😂)

@AlexYablon Ben Smith’s book Traffic about that time period is fantastic.

What an incredible historic document of the mid 10s.